Love Your Enemies ?

Jesus said to his disciples:
"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."  MATTHEW  5: 43-48

There is a reason why Christians are the most persecuted religion on the face of the earth and that is simply because what we publicly proclaim to be one of our most important teachings makes no sense at all.  It is black letter doctrine that we are to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.  No other religion has such a doctrine of loving one's enemies and no doctrine espoused by any other religious leader has caused so much fury to be expended against it by those on the outside looking in.  Now, keep in mind what riles up the persecutors is the theory of the doctrine.  Based on history, they have no worry about it actually taking hold and changing the way day to day life operates.  

At the outset, Christians were persecuted by the Romans who saw them not as a religion but as an anti-religion.  In Rome, it was traditional to at least pay lip-service to gods of the age.  One would offer a pinch of incense here and there, purchase meat that had been offered to one of the gods and generally behave as Romans would in Rome.  Christians would refuse to do these things and they were seen to be enemies of the gods and as such, the cause for whatever that was wrong which was afflicting the masses.  The biggest thing in recorded history was Nero's burning of Rome which he blamed on those damned Christians and so he had them gathered up and made to provide entertainment for the crowds.  Bread and circuses kept the Roman people happy and Nero was glad to provide them at the expense of the hated Christian cult.  This was one time in history when we actually followed the advice of our Lord and Savior.  The blood of the martyrs watered the seeds of the Church and she grew in spite of the risk to life and limb. 

We move ahead to the sixteenth century, a critical one for the Church where a fairly regarded ordained monk rightfully protested against certain practices that some renegade clerics were guilty of.  One of the greatest was the sale of indulgences.  An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due because of sins committed.  These indulgences were obtained through the practice of prayer and piety.  Certain clerics decided that since one of the pious practices one could use was the giving of alms to the poor, that they could provide an indulgence for a proper sum of money.  Keep in mind that penance in this period of Church history could be on the rough side.  If you were guilty of some major sin you could petition to be admitted as a penitent for a period of time.  This period of time would pass with you wearing sackcloth, not daring to enter the church, but rather, sitting on the outside and begging people to pray for you.  Depending on the sin, you could be on the outside looking in for years.  An indulgence would lessen the time required for your penitential servitude and could be earned by prayer and fasting and could be bestowed on you by another one of the faithful.  The rich, therefore, gave "alms" and received an indulgence from certain clerics who pocketed the money and therefore was able to remain in the good graces of the Church without all of this messy repenting by using his wealth.  This payment for forgiveness was never official church doctrine and the practice was cleaned up in the time following Luther.

But, Martin Luther still had other grievances against the Church and instead of working inside the Church to correct what was wrong, he took it upon himself to break asunder the unity of the Church and he founded his own church and set himself up as its head.  The Church was patient with its out of step employee and meeting after meeting was taken in order to bring reform and closure.  Unfortunately, it became evident that the differences between The Church of Rome and the monk were too great and Luther had no intention of compromising or accepting any explanation of the Church. The Church, after exhausting all of her wisdom and patience did the only thing she could do, she excommunicated the errant cleric and thus removed the cancerous growth from the Body of Christ.  Luther, for his part, simply renounced his vows and set up his own church.   Once this was done, it provided the precedent that if one disagreed with doctrine, one could simply shed one church and found another with yourself as its head and the one who would interpret doctrine and make the rules, it was very convenient.  This act of division has occurred over thirty-thousand times since it was first practiced by Martin Luther. 

There followed Protestant persecutions of loyal Roman Catholics, Catholic persecutions against Protestants, Protestant persecutions against other Protestants and the whole thing was rather messy and blood was shed on all sides leaving this love your enemy thing in the dust to be trampled upon by Catholics and Protestants alike. Today, there is an armistice in place.  We no longer go from town to town looking for those who are not of our denomination in order to try and burn them at the stake.  But it is just an armistice for the war can be likened to a lava field where a crust has formed.  It gives the appearance of solid ground but underneath their lies a bubbling caldera of molten lava waiting to burn through the crust and cause bloodshed once again.  We can see symptoms of anti-Catholic bigotry through the poison pen of Jack Chick and other anti-Catholic presses.  On the Catholic side, I am not familiar with any campaign to rekindle the fires of oppression but they may be out there.  But my point is that instead of spreading love and unity, the history of Christians is awash in an acid sea of animosity and discord. 

But we are all, Protestant and Catholic alike still being persecuted for the radical sayings of Jesus Christ the Son of God even though we do not effectively seem to put His teachings into practice, even among ourselves.  Our enemies know that they will suffer defeat after defeat if we were to start following what our Lord has asked us to do.  But it is a hard saying.   In the days following 9/11 how many prayers were raised by Christians for Osama bin Laden?  I know I never prayed for him and I would wager that you did not either. "Pray for those that persecute you."  When will we start to believe in the Good News?

Not every person who dies goes directly to heaven.  We wish that Mom or Dad or Grampa or our good friend, our wife or husband who have passed away are in heaven, but what if they are not?  Our love for them pulls us in the direction that leads them to heaven and I hope we are right.  But do not leave your love for them at the lip of the grave.  Purgatory is a real place.  The Poor Souls in Purgatory cannot help themselves, pray for them by name today.  They need our help - show them that you still love them and that you still care