Having been on the receiving end of decades of sibling jealousy and in one case active destructive behaviour, because of my God-given capacities though I never used them to hurt anyone but to aid and support others, I have learned not to be trapped by these words of "Love your enemy". After the same resentment factor surfaced as a reason for betrayal by my husband, I finally learned to take time to love myself which factor went missing as the guidance was always towards the sinner. Those hurt and damaged by sinful and destructive actions have a long healing process back to health which comes through our spiritual lives. I've persisted in loving through all these hurts but in the worse cases, I could not force myself to engage to keep being destroyed time and again at another's whim. God's loving grace and blessings in my life have given me the joy in life to allow for God's grace to come in and remove and live beyond the prison of hurt and worse, the real expectation of it. I can engage without being the other's victim. But that took experience of love from other quarters as others outside of my sibling family loved me for myself and their experience of my using my capacities for their and others' lives and not self-aggrandisement. The damage done by the weakness and evil in others needs due acknowledgement before we force on others the command to "love one's enemies". God wants us to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves. I never understood the latter part of the equation until my years of individualisation and maturity, free from the directives of religious establishments. Love is too strong a word for the subtleties of our interactions with a million others and the writer that sought to define the varieties of ways we use the word should be commended. Love ultimately should be "do no harm to" and thus work to assure that our actions and words do not damage the lives of other people wittingly or unwittingly. We seek only to serve God as God serves us with loving care.
On Apr 17, 2017 josetti wrote:
Having been on the receiving end of decades of sibling jealousy and in one case active destructive behaviour, because of my God-given capacities though I never used them to hurt anyone but to aid and support others, I have learned not to be trapped by these words of "Love your enemy". After the same resentment factor surfaced as a reason for betrayal by my husband, I finally learned to take time to love myself which factor went missing as the guidance was always towards the sinner. Those hurt and damaged by sinful and destructive actions have a long healing process back to health which comes through our spiritual lives. I've persisted in loving through all these hurts but in the worse cases, I could not force myself to engage to keep being destroyed time and again at another's whim. God's loving grace and blessings in my life have given me the joy in life to allow for God's grace to come in and remove and live beyond the prison of hurt and worse, the real expectation of it. I can engage without being the other's victim. But that took experience of love from other quarters as others outside of my sibling family loved me for myself and their experience of my using my capacities for their and others' lives and not self-aggrandisement. The damage done by the weakness and evil in others needs due acknowledgement before we force on others the command to "love one's enemies". God wants us to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves. I never understood the latter part of the equation until my years of individualisation and maturity, free from the directives of religious establishments. Love is too strong a word for the subtleties of our interactions with a million others and the writer that sought to define the varieties of ways we use the word should be commended. Love ultimately should be "do no harm to" and thus work to assure that our actions and words do not damage the lives of other people wittingly or unwittingly. We seek only to serve God as God serves us with loving care.