Walking the Road of Enemy Love
How American Christians have forgotten a pivotal command and what we need to do to return to it.
Recently, my online friend Dan White, Jr. posted a great piece by Brad Jersak (who was citing and interacting with research conducted by Dan) on the perceptions around loving one’s enemies in these polarizing, highly partisan times. Quoting Dan, Brad makes this statement (with my emphasis added):
Over time, as the survey results have mounted, Dan sees a disturbing trend. 76% of those who identified as “progressive” saw “loving enemies” as complicity with injustice. And 78% of those who identified as “conservative” saw “loving enemies” as compromise with immorality. As Dan’s poll numbers grew, this was the emerging pattern. He asked his readers, “Do you think we have a problem?”
To this startling trend, Brad says, “In other words, under 25% of Christians, conservative or progressives, are followers of Jesus. But we sort of knew that.”
Brad’s piece largely focuses on the articulation of the need to recover a proper understanding of forgiveness. And it’s well worth the read. But there are a couple points that I wished to add to the discussion, hence my drafting of this piece.
The Trouble with Christianity as an Identity
First (a point to which Brad alludes), is that these findings underscore a significant issue that, as one who spends most of my professional time in the world of missiological research, I find to be an issue that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. It is in the difference between those who identify as Christians, and those who are Christians.
This may sound a bit harsh, but simply put—research data demonstrate time and again that there is a chasm between people who walk in the way of Jesus and those who self-identify as a Christian on a survey.
This is not so much a problem to fix as it is a problem to be aware of. It’s difficult to assess genuinely-held faith in a study that is not explicitly aimed at that goal. However, when we read about the “decline of Christianity” in the the United States, and other harbingers of apparent doom, it is important to recognize that what is in the decline is the number of people who self-identify as a Christian.
While this certainly can include people who once had sincerely-held and demonstrated faith and have since abandoned it, it is more likely to be comprised of people who have possessed a conflated view of Christianity with their national, regional, cultural, or familial identity (e.g., “I’m a Christian because I’m an American” or “I’m a Christian because I was brought up [insert faith tradition here].”). Rather than a decline of sincere and vibrant faith, we’re witnessing the statistical fruit of a decline in cultural Christianity.
Some bemoan this, citing a need to recapture a Christian center to American culture (and will often employ any means except gospel-centered ones to do it). But Christianity has traditionally flourished best on mission with God when it is a people on the cultural fringes speaking prophetically into the center. In no small part, the waning of cultural Christianity in the United States may be just what is needed to spark deep renewal and a fresh commitment to the way of Jesus and participating in his reconciliatory mission in the world. It sounds upside-down and counter-intuitive but…well, welcome to the way of the Kingdom!
How to Fix the “Love your Enemy” Problem: Discipleship
That such a significant number of self-identified Christians view a characteristic such as enemy love, so fundamental to the bedrock of the Christian life, as “unjust” and “immoral” is significant. It demonstrates what many have known for some time—we have something of a discipleship crisis afoot. But we’re not at the beginning of a discipleship crisis. We’re reaping the fruit of one that has existed for some time.
This is a crisis that must be addressed by a renewed commitment to discipleship. However, some of the issue in renewing a commitment to discipleship looks less like our Western, classroom, pedagogical forms of discipleship (i.e., “we’ve gotta get people the right content to disciple them!”)…and much more Eastern, focused around community and tables (i.e., “we’ve gotta get people sitting and eating together to disciple them.”).
(I would be remiss here if I did not point out that Dan talks at length about this, both on social media, and in his excellent book Love Over Fear.)
In one of my favorite books, Transforming Worldviews by the late anthropologist Paul Hiebert, Hiebert outlines three practices that foster worldview change in people.
The first is the practice of examining our own worldview. We must intentionally become aware of the fact that the way we think isn’t necessarily the only, best, or right way to think. For example, I am a stickler for punctuality. I’m the kind of person that will arrive to his destination early and sit in the parking lot until I decide it is an appropriate time to walk in. But I’ve also been made aware that this isn’t the only way to think about time. In some instances, it’s not the best way to think, and in some instances it’s a downright wrong way to think (lest I become one of those people who show up early to a party, in clear violation of cultural norms surrounding parties!).
The second is the practice of exposing ourselves to other worldviews. When we’re regularly exposed to people, especially other devoted followers of Jesus, who see the world, read Scripture, and think very differently than us, it enlivens of our nueroplasticity—the ability for the brain to change and rewire. Part of my growth in my overly-zealous punctuality has been spending time with friends in other cultures who view time more relationally than mechanically. For many of my African friends, for example, something “starts” when all the right people have arrived, regardless of whatever mechanical time is designated as the “start” time. Than can be unsettling for those of us addicted to our calendars, but there’s something exceptionally beautiful and freeing about organizing one’s time around relationship and not being in willful servitude to Microsoft Outlook. By spending time with people of other cultures, I’ve been challenged by what I’ve observed to be a more biblical form of time management (primarily because that’s precisely how the biblical cultures interacted with time). As a result, though I’m still on time or early to nearly everything, I’m much more graceful for those who view things differently—and I even cut myself some slack every now and then.
The third is the practice of developing living rituals. Being a Pentecostal, we tend to view the word “ritual” as a bit of a cuss word. We’ve historically associated ritual with that which constrains the spontaneous move of the Spirit. However, this is something of a false dichotomy. Hiebert’s operative term is living rituals—that is, rituals deeply connected to meaning. We have these in our culture (even us Pentecostals)—wedding ceremonies, graduations, etc., etc.
But one that has been lost in American culture is the ritual of table fellowship. We tend to see eating on very pragmatic terms (e.g. “food is fuel”) and we see this reflected in the changing architecture of our homes, doing away with formal dining rooms in favor of eat-in kitchens that optimize convenience for a culture that rarely eats together as families, let alone welcoming others to the table.
But a living ritual that directly chips away at the polarization evidenced in Dan’s data, and that provides discipleship rhythms that can form Christians into being, well, more like Christ, is a regular rhythm of extending and receiving table hospitality. That means, both inviting people to your table and allowing yourself to be invited over to others’ tables (there are subtle differences of how we benefit from both extending and receiving hospitality, but that’s a topic for another day).
My own doctoral research at Fuller showed that there was a heightened opportunity for this sort of table fellowship when it was organized around rhythms on the calendar. Meaning, events on the calendar—whether it be a Labor Day cookout, a regularly practiced Friday evening Sabbath dinner (as we do in our home), or the Sunday afternoon feast that has historically been so common among Italian-Americans. This underscores a helpful nuance here…you don’t need to invent reasons to invite people to your table. You only need to welcome them into the rhythms that already exist on your calendar!
One Final Thought on Jesus
I’m convinced that one possible reason why this data reveals such a dramatic departure from the way of Jesus is quite simply that we don’t spend enough time talking about Jesus. In our churches, from our pulpits, in our conversations with one another, many things preoccupy our time and energy, and frequently Jesus takes a back seat. When that happens repeatedly, people begin to lose a grip on a Jesus-formed faith.
I’m not saying that the Church cannot and should not address all areas of our lives—only that when we do it should be through a Christo-centric lens. It should be formed and informed by the person and lordship of Jesus.
When the extent of our discipleship deals with finances and marriage, when our musical worship is narcissistic projections of ourselves onto melody, when our preaching is void of unction and focused only on felt-needs…when we’re preoccupied with many things other than Jesus…we should not be surprised when this has a formative affect on our spirituality.
If we want to be a people who look like Jesus, we must recover the practice of being a people who adore Jesus together—whether in our worship, in our shared life as his people, or in our affections and desires. I believe the answer is simple as it may sound, though surely more difficult to walk out.