SOAP Notes

The newest installment in the SOAP Notes series...

January 29, 2008
Exodus 23-24; Psalms 14; Acts 5

S: Exodus 23:4-5
“If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him.”

O: In a section detailing some of the various laws God laid out for His people, we see these particular verses about treatment of your enemy.

A: I’m fine with the whole idea of not hating people. I think most people are comfortable with that. Sure, there are people I don’t like. There are people who make me very angry, who I avoid, who I speak ill of. But nobody I can think of who I despise to the point that I wish them death or illness or anything like that.

When I think of enemies, I don’t think of hated people. I think of people who’s interests are opposed to my own. There are professional enemies, who (strangely) are often friends. And there are real enemies, people who seem to be arrayed against me in my life mission. At the moment, I can’t think of any arch-enemies. Indeed, most of the time a person is my enemy simply in relation to whatever mission I’m seeking to accomplish.

There’s the enemy of my sleep on the plane. There’s the enemy of my nose in a crowded room. There’s the guy with the dumb sense of humor who’s demonstrating it loudly and often. There’s the person in line at the store who cut in front of me with 20 items when I have one. There’s the guy at the corner who asks me daily if I have change, both as I travel to the coffee shop and as I return. These are all people I’d rather be without.

With these people, I generally regard myself as a great success when I walk away from the encounter with an enlightened “live and let live” philosophy. I think I’m great and mature and wise when I decide that I can go on without acknowledging them, and I think that doing that is so much greater than just telling them that I think they suck.

With these people, I’ll make no effort to help. The very nature of the identification of an enemy is the feeling of animosity, of opposition, we have to them. The guy who needs change, he can get it from someone else. The lady in the line at the store, well, when she drops her groceries, she can pick them up herself. The loud guy on the plane? When he starts sneezing, he can get his own Kleenex.

Only I’m confronted here with the truth of live-and-let-live. Which is, it’s wrong. Just as Jesus told people to take the clothes off their back to give to their enemy, to turn the other cheek after being struck to allow another strike, and to forgive seventy times seven times, we see that the rule goes back a long way.

If I saw someone I didn’t like drop something (a coin, an important piece of paper, or whatever), would I pick it up for them? If I saw an “enemy’s” car get rolling down the street with another driver, would I call the police? If I saw that beggar on the ground, coughing uncontrollably or shivering, would I attend to him?

No.

And so I see that I’m not mature. I’m not so great. I’m as weak and as callous and as unkind as anyone else. I live under the delusion that, as a Christian, I’ve evolved with a bemused sense of holier-than-thou disdain and disinterest in those people who offend me. I see that, as a Christian, I’m supposed to step out to prevent them from suffering, from loss, and from pain.

This verse doesn’t say that you can’t have an enemy. It doesn’t say to love a person who does you wrong. It says, though, that despite how that person may treat me, I am to act out toward them in a loving and caring way. Despite the harm that they would do me, I am to act to protect them.

P: Lord, reshape my perspective. Help me to see that to not hate is not the same as to be kind. Help me to understand that I have a mission, to share love and kindness and to spread peace and goodwill, even to those who I feel, inside, an aversion to. Let me, day-by-day, step out in small kindnesses that, over time, will transform me. Give me grace for others, and let my heart toward even my enemies be more like Yours. Amen.