Blessing the Enemy
Gerard David, “Christ Nailed to the Cross” (ca. 1491)
At the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast, which ostensibly exists to bring Christians across the political spectrum together, enemy language made a surprising appearance. In Harvard University professor Arthur Brooks’ keynote address, he urged his listeners, both Democrat and Republican, to heed the words of Jesus: “Love your enemies.” In response to Brook’s words, President Trump remarked, “Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you.”
While it may surprise few that the President responded this way, what surprised many of us in the evangelical community is how many of our people agreed with him.
During a July 31 interview with Lou Dobbs on FOX Business Channel, for instance, Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress stated that if evangelicals voted for Joe Biden, they will have “sold their souls to the Devil.” On August 28, another Texas Baptist pastor Jack Graham tweeted that he, along with a large number of faith leaders, had been confronted by “filthy blasphemous infidels” after a gathering with Trump. And in a tweet on October 10, Franklin Graham described opponents to Donald Trump as “enemies” who would forfeit “the very lives of Americans.”
Plenty more instances could be enlisted, but suffice it to say that Christians (including progressives) have liberally marshalled enemy language in the name of Jesus over the past four years.
It bears asking, of course: Didn’t Jesus command us to love our enemies? Did he not explicitly forbid us to curse them? And isn’t all this enemy talk how we get into trouble, by dehumanizing our opponents and excusing our own acts of violence, whether verbal or physical?
Shouldn’t we avoid such violent language altogether?
If we look to the ancient Book of Psalms, which functioned as Jesus’ own prayer book and which for centuries has taught Christians how to talk to God in both private and public, the answer appears to be both yes and no.
As the Psalter sees it, enemy language does indeed belong to faithful living, not because the psalms come out of an ancient culture that didn’t know any better, but because enemy language is honest about life in an often-cruel world. It’s honest about the heart of darkness that lies within and it’s brutally honest to God about all the God-damnable things that demean and distort our humanity.
That’s the “yes” part. That’s the part that many of us as Christians may be drawn to initially. But the “no” part, as I argue in my book Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as.a Guide to Life, is something that we as Christians should heed, too.
Psalm 109 is illustrative. The psalmist here begins with a cry for help: “Do not be silent, O God!” Following a vivid description of his harrowing condition, the psalmist rails against his enemy who has oppressed the poor and needy: May his days be few! May his posterity be cut off! He loved to curse—let him be cursed! The psalmist ends with thanksgiving to the God who has delivered all the needy, like him, from their enemies.
This isn’t a psalm for polite company. Nor is it a psalm for those who wish to remain indifferent to the harsh realities of the world or to deny the visceral desires of the human heart. It’s a psalm for people who look at the world for what it is: full of broken people, dark forces, and harsh conditions.
According to the psalms, anybody can become an enemy, and the harm that comes from our enemies is real. The German scholar Othmar Keel counts ninety-four terms that the psalms use to describe enemies—a list that includes predatory beasts, bulls, snakes, armies, evildoers, cities, profit hunters, and death. It also includes friends who suddenly turn into enemies, which is regrettably becoming more common these days.
Yet it’s important that we as Christians not misread the purpose of enemy language in the psalms. Praying against one’s enemies is most emphatically not a license to do violence to others. Nor is it an invitation to indulge our urges to call anybody who opposes us an enemy.
Its goal is healing, not self-gratification. Its goal is to get us to entrust ourselves wholly to God, rather than to nurse our revenge fantasies—or, worse, to act upon them.
We as Christians also ought to follow Jesus’ example, which in many ways echoes the language of the psalms. How does Jesus handle enemy talk?
First, he never denies the reality of enemies—human, natural, or satanic. Nor does he tell his disciples to avoid using enemy talk. For Jesus, enemy talk accurately describes the world as it is. In the first three Gospels, for example, he quotes Psalm 110:1, with its enemy language, without feeling any need to correct the psalmist.
Second, Jesus commands us as Christians to love our enemies, he calls us to bless those who curse us, and he tells us to pray for those who persecute us. He charges us to be merciful, just as our Father in heaven is merciful, as Psalms 18 and 103 would remind us.
Loving our enemies, of course, requires an extraordinary humility. Every cell in our broken hearts resists it. We desperately want God to strike down our enemies—not to help us to love them.
If I’m honest with myself, I too find myself desiring what President Trump desires: to “knock the crap” out of my adversaries. I too wish to hurt those who have hurt me. I once worked for a company where the mid-level manager repeatedly threw me under the bus in order to save face with the CEO, and all I wanted to do in response was to kick him in the teeth, to borrow the curse language of Psalm 3.
But if I take seriously the good news of Jesus, I have to acknowledge my own tendencies to behave in enemy-like ways. I too have dehumanized others. I too have judged others without mercy. I too have remained indifferent to the suffering of others.
In the end, the brutal reality of the cross of Christ confronts all of us as Christians, no matter our politics or theology, with the possibility that we are simultaneously enemy-makers and victims of enemy-behavior.
As we head closer to the November elections and the possibility of increased tension in our society, along with increased hatred between neighbors, we do well to heed the words of Jesus. If our enemies violate the order of God’s good world, then we call them out. If they’re needy in anyway whatsoever, then we take care of them in Jesus’ name.
And at all times, regardless of circumstances, we love them and we bless them and we serve them. Anything less is a betrayal of the gospel that we proclaim and a denial of our call to lay down our lives for our neighbors—for Christ’s sake, no less.
And so we pray:
O Lord, you who ask us to do the impossible—to bless our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to love those who seek us harm—we pray that you would do the impossible in us: change our hearts by the power of your Spirit so that we might love our enemies as you love them. Help us also to remember who our true enemy is: Satan, death, and the spiritual forces of evil. Perform, we pray, a miracle in the heart of our enemies as well that they might know and love you as a merciful good Shepherd. In your mighty name we pray. Amen.
