Love Your Enemies

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”—Matthew 5:44

The commandment to "Love your enemies" is a difficult one, but the rest of the verse breaks it down into increasingly easier steps.

Blessing them that curse us is almost as abstract as loving them, but I interpret it more specifically as wishing them well. It takes an awful lot of charity to wish well on those who wish us ill, but it may help to remember that that Savior felt all the pain experienced by everyone, even the jerks. If we wish for bad things to happen to others, we should remember that the Savior will feel those bad things, too. Perhaps we had better wish for good things to happen to them, for the Savior's sake, if no one else's.

Doing good for those that hate us is fairly doable, partly because it's a matter of action, not attitude. We can do good for them that hate us, even if we also hate them. We don't need to love anyone to perform the action of serving someone. We could merely go through the motions, performing charity, even if we don't feel charity for them. Of course, the goal is to come to feel charity for others, but we can start by merely acting like we do.

And if nothing else, we can pray for them. They don't even necessarily have to be charitable prayers. We can pray for hearts to be softened and changed. We can pray for others to see the errors of their ways. We can pray that others will feel impressed to repent. Granted, we should be careful not to be hypocrites. It's not fair to pray for others to repent and change if we're not striving to repent and change as well. We should pray for the Lord to help us soften our hearts and forgive others as well as praying for the Lord to help others soften their hearts and repent.

We should love our enemies. If we can't bring ourselves to do that, maybe we can still bring ourselves to bless them, if only for Jesus sake. If we can't bring ourselves to bless them, we might be able to do good for them. And if we can't do good for them, perhaps because of circumstances outside of our control, we can at least pray for them, or at least about them. Merely praying for others is a bar low enough that just about anyone can reach it. Of course, we should aim higher than that, up to and including loving our enemies, but if we're not quite there yet, don't worry. This commandment has multiple tiers. We can start wherever we are and strive to develop greater charity for our enemies from there.