I see my brother.
These words struck me as we sang them in worship today. They stirred my thinking.
What makes someone an enemy? And how do I see "my enemy" as my brother?
An enemy is someone we view through the lens of fear - someone we see as a threat. An enemy is someone who has hurt us and has the power to hurt us again, maybe even destroy us, OR someone we think will hurt us or destroy us. We view them as a danger to us, to our position, to our status or standing, to our way of life, to me & mine. We view them as the means by which we will experience loss.
An enemy is someone we relate to out of fear. Fear shapes how we think about them and talk about them. We are critical of them. We not only criticize what they do, we criticize who they are. We think of them as wrong, flawed, no good. We depersonalize them, taking away their humanness. We see them and what they do as evil. Thus, we are justified in withholding our compassion or care or concern or any attempt to understand them.
An enemy is someone whose power intimidates us, stirring feelings of being powerless and out of control. So we keep them at a distance. We have nothing to do with them. We build walls to protect ourselves against them.
So what makes someone an enemy? Is it who they are and what they do? Is it how they use their power against us? Or is it the fear that shapes how we view them and relate to them and exclude them?
What makes someone my enemy? It seems to me that what makes someone my enemy is the fear-based way I view them. I make them my enemy by how I think about them. OUCH!
If my thinking is correct, then I have an answer to my second question: how do I see "my enemy" as my brother? The answer is in changing the way I see "the other" - changing my perception of them. Rather than seeing them through the lens of fear, I/we view them through the lens of compassion. Compassion: to feel with.
To see "the other" with compassion is to see beyond the surface, beyond the behavior, beyond what they do or how they treat us. To see with compassion is to see what motivates their behavior: their fear, their pain, their struggle, their woundedness. It is to see them out of who you know yourself to be: an imperfect, struggling human being who wants what every person wants and needs what every person needs. It is to see them as yourself.
To say the same thing in a different way: to see "the other" with compassion is to move beyond reacting to what they say or do. It is to respond out of who we are as a beloved child of God. (A reaction is unconscious, automatic, unthinking. A response involves a conscious choice.) We live out of who we are, not in reaction to who the other is or to what the other does. As long as we react out of fear of "the other," we give the other power over us, leading us to use our power against them. To live out of who we are as God's beloved child is to use our power to manage ourselves and our fear which frees us to view and relate to "the other" differently, maybe even as a brother.
Viewing the other with compassion, managing myself and my fear, responding out of who I am as a follower of Jesus rather than reacting to what the other says or does - each of these three choices requires emotional-relational-spiritual maturity. In other words, to see "the other" as my brother is only possible through the transforming work of God in my life. I/we cannot do it in our own strength. Only the Spirit can change what is in our hearts. Only the Spirit can move us beyond the paralyzing power of fear. Only the Spirit can lead us beyond being critical to being compassionate. Only the Spirit can empower us to love as Jesus loved.
We live in a time of extreme polarization, in our nation and in The UMC. That polarization indicates we a living out of our fear, viewing the other as an enemy, reacting to what the other says or does. This time of high anxiety calls for emotional-relational-spiritual maturity. It calls for a Spirit-empowered response to the other. It calls us to see our so-called enemy as our brother.
Merciful God, may it be ... in me ... in us ... in your people! By your grace, may it be!
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