Answering Hate With Love
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. Our natural disposition is to answer hate with hate and evil with evil. But here Jesus bids us do the very opposite to this, to love our enemies and do good to them that hate us, suppressing the natural inclination to pay back the enemy's own coin, to "give him as good as he gave us." It is a blessed possibility that Jesus opens for us, that our emotions towards men need not be at the mercy of theirs to us. Why should they be? Why should we allow another to govern our emotions? Why should we place our feelings at the mercy of those who are not kindly disposed to us? Why should we leave it to the other man to pitch the keynote of our relations with him? To do so, is an acknowledgement of inferiority. We simply admit that the other man has a stronger personality than we have, and that we can only yield to his domination. The trouble is, we think it is manly to curse back at those who curse us, to demand "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But such a standard of manhood belongs to the savage. Surely it has no place among civilized people. The highest ideal of manhood is realized only when one becomes man enough to conquer hatred with love, to overcome evil with good. How it would revolutionize society, what a continual joy it would make the fellowship of man with man, if we would cease answering enmity with enmity, malice with malice, curses with curses, and learn to follow Christ's way-answering hate with love.
