love thy enemies (or become them)

About two years ago, I met and chatted with a woman who was finishing law school and looking forward to using her degree and skills to serve the poor, to do justice. Her idealism and enthusiasm were infectious. Naivete be damned, I thought. I felt excited with her and for her.

I talked with this woman again recently, after she had been working the job she had wanted. She seemed unable to speak of her opponents in an inherently adversarial system with anything short of venom and judgment. In stark black-and-white terms, she raged against her opponents' inability to see shades of grey. She depicted the truthfulness of her clients as a given even as she railed against her opponents' failure to doubt the honesty of their witnesses. More than anything else, she appeared tired and frustrated.

The extent to which her passion and idealism had taken on such angry and bitter tones surprised and saddened me. As I replayed portions of our conversation, this passage (and this movie) came to mind. Perhaps we are called to love our enemies not because God has a particular penchant for group hugs; nor is it a challenge for its own sake. Perhaps we are so called because our hate for our enemies has the tendency to make us in their image, to cause us to use noble ends to justify questionable means, to transform us into the object of our own wrath and judgment. Hate begets more hate and, ultimately, defeat. Love - as both the means and the end - frees us to simply do right the best we know how, and surrender judgment of good and evil to the One who causes the sun to rise and the rains to fall on both the same.