Love Your Enemies

There is a lot of talk of enemies these days. Since his descent of the golden escalators at Trump Tower in New York City in 2015, US President Donald Trump has targeted as enemies immigrants, women, the disabled, democrats, trans folk, critics, university professors, the media, judges, civil servants, legal permanent residents, and former aides—among many others. Trump and his allies have followed up on these identifications by insulting, isolating, prosecuting, primarying, doxing, and defaming members of each of these groups.

In his 2024 presidential campaign, and now as the elected president, Trump positioned and positions himself in opposition to two sets of enemies, what he calls “the outside enemy” and “the enemy from within.” The first group are external actors, foreign adversaries and nations. But it’s the second group that has garnered his special attention. Trump has many insults to hurl at this second group, calling them “radical left lunatics,” “evil,” and “dangerous.” His cabinet appointments, his executive orders, his empowerment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and his swift actions to fire civil servants have taken aim at these newly minted adversaries.

With all this talk of enemies, I recognize at least two temptations. The first, for me at least, given the toxicity, violence, and bellicose nature of such speech, is to reject this language all together. As Michelle Obama proposed in 2016 (but later revised), “when they go low, we go high.” Meaning: We aren’t enemies: we are neighbors, fellow citizens, and humans. We have differences, yes, but we can reach common ground. There is an appeal to this approach. It seeks to minimize conflict by appealing to the better angels of our nature. But it also denies the reality of our situation in which some are indeed acting as enemies by doing real harm to our neighbors, our families, ourselves.

A second temptation, though, has come more forcefully lately. That’s the temptation to take up the toxicity as my own, to fight fire with fire. If they are going to insult and demean, maybe I should be punching back. Bullies will push as hard as they can until there is accountability that demonstrates the costs of their actions. It would be so gratifying to sling a clever insult back, to craft a viral tweet, to use the powers available to me (or available to others) at least to constrain but preferably to harm and damage. There is something very alluring about the sweet possibilities of vengeance.

Both of these temptations are real for faithful followers of Jesus. We see them playing out in the Gospels. We see them playing out on our social media feeds.

Yet, neither are Jesus’s way. Jesus didn’t call his followers not to have enemies. Nor did he tell them to defeat enemies.

Rather, Jesus called his followers to love their enemies. Jesus assumed that his followers would have enemies—he had enemies himself. But rather than playing into the violent recrimination of personal attacks, scheming, and vitriol, Jesus proposed a different path: love with truth, care with accountability.

What do I mean when I say that Jesus followers have enemies?

The Gospel writers, especially Matthew and Luke, have guidance here. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, recall Jesus teaching his followers to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27, 35).

For Matthew, this command is situated in a series of revisions of common-sense understandings. “You’ve heard it said…but I say to you” is his repeated refrain. In this case, “You’ve 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, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:43–45). It seems like common political sense that we have friends and enemies, and that we should love those closest to us and hate those who work against us. But Jesus’s sermon emphasizes that we all have one Creator. For Matthew’s Jesus, the reason that we’re to love our enemies is that God loves them, for God loves all of creation.

Luke situates this command somewhat differently. Following a series of “woes” to the rich, the full, the laughing, and the praiseworthy, Jesus invites his followers, “but I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27–28).

This command then frames a series of what have been called the “hard sayings” of Jesus. Turn the other cheek. Give your cloak also. (Matthew adds walking a second mile.) Though sometimes taken to be an invitation to acquiescence in the face of evil, New Testament scholars have pointed out that there is something more happening here. Rather than consenting to be a doormat, Jesus is pointing his followers to a way of forcefully and assertively engaging the enemy without violence. Rather than allowing an opponent to backhand you, turning the other cheek forces them to hit you as an equal. Rather than allowing an unjust adversary to defraud you of your coat (your outer garment), giving them your shirt (your undergarment) shames them by leaving you naked in their presence. (Matthew’s third example comes from a Roman military context in which going a second mile violates a law limiting the amount of service that civilians could be pressed into.) Jesus then pushes his point further, quite literally doubling down on his radical love command. He calls his followers to love not only those who love them, but even their enemies (6:35).

Here in Jesus’s teaching we have guidance on how to have an enemy. The point is not that we shouldn’t have them. The point is that it matters how, as followers of Jesus, we have enemies. We Christians love our enemies; we pray for those who persecute us.

So where does this leave us?

First, insofar as we are following Jesus, we will have enemies. Therefore, we should learn how to know and name them. When the Trump administration scores political points by targeting trans youth, denying families and doctors the ability to discern what is the best path for their children, they are acting as enemies. When political leaders of either party target our undocumented (or even legally documented!) neighbors, separating families, denying legal pathways to residency and citizenship, creating fear about whether they can leave their homes to go to school or church, the agents of these policies are acting as enemies. When political and business leaders collude to roll back community protections from industrial toxins and climate change-responsive regulations, they are acting as enemies. We need to learn how to name such actions as the actions of enemies. None of these actions are done by fiat, even if some leaders pretend that is the case. It is a mistake to pretend that they are the actions of one person. They proceed by the consent of many. Sometimes we ourselves help to facilitate such oppression by our action or inaction. All of these decisions, though, target and harm the ones that Jesus loves: the lowly, the left out, the poor. We should therefore clearly name the harmful impacts of these decisions. Those who carry them out are behaving like enemies.

Second, knowing who are our enemies, we can and should pray for those who are persecuting us. What do we pray? We pray for their conversion, their transformation to more just ways of being. We pray for God’s gracious judgment. We pray for God’s will to be done. We may even, following the imprecatory psalms (like Psalm 5), pray for their destruction (but leave it to God to accomplish it). In praying for our enemies, we refuse resignation. The chaos machine aims to ensure our quiescence in the face of so much confusion and raw assertions of power. But by continuing to pray, we continue to struggle.

Third, having enemies in the way of Jesus means extending the two hands of nonviolence. Rather than consenting to evil, or defeating it with violence, followers of Jesus creatively take up the tactics of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called nonviolent direct action. This involves naming evil actions, on the one hand, while affirming the humanity and dignity of the enemy, on the other. Followers of Jesus don’t use ad hominem attacks or name-calling. We fight like hell against injustice while respecting the dignity of every person and while working for the common good. These are the two hands of nonviolence.

To call these times “unprecedented” has become a bit clichéd. Our communities are in crisis. The effects of climate change are ravaging our homes. Authoritarian takeover of the administrative state undermines constitutional democratic processes. The obscene wealth gap allows the very rich to become much richer at the expense of the poor. Though emotionally satisfying in the short term, ad hominem vilifications won’t help us tackle these wicked problems. The political moment does feel newly perilous. Yet, Christians have been here before. “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20). This doesn’t mean that we should court persecution. Insofar as we follow Jesus and ally ourselves with the ones Jesus loves, persecution will come. And so Jesus calls us, ever anew, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

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