(To my atheist and non-Christian readers, please bear with me for this one. We’ll be back on topic - whatever that topic happens to be - next week)
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
- Matthew 5:43:45 (NRSV)
When they said ‘repent’
I wondered what they meant
- Leonard Cohen, “The Future”
It was 2021, and I hated him.
And I wanted him to die.
I was in no position to kill him. And I wasn’t about to uproot my life to bring about his death, bring shame upon my family, the shame of having produced a murderer - though many not in my family would have celebrated me had I done so.
But if I could have pushed a button to cause someone else to kill him, bloodily and spectacularly, I would have done so. With gladness. With a feeling of righteous anger and vengeance. Knowing that many people would celebrate, would be overjoyed at his death.
But I have attained great success and happiness in lot passing the multitude only the bare minimum of attention. I have a master, and that master had a stern and hard, much quoted though rarely practiced, commandment.
I tried - and how I did try - to rid myself of this hate. I told myself it was wrong, I told myself that it was sinful. I read the Sermon on the Mount and reminded myself of what the one whom I acknowledged with my lips as Lord and Master had said to do. What the one who healed the severed ear of the one sent to arrest him and take him to his death, the ear severed by his own followers, had said.
But I wasn’t able to. I couldn’t bring myself to. The hate felt good, warm, comforting in a time of fear. Here was someone I could blame for everything we were going through.
So I prayed, and asked Christ for help. And I learned how to get help, but I did not like it.
If I had a Substack at the time, or a Twitter following, I could have shouted my hate to the world and been praised for it, showered in Likes and retweets. But I didn’t. Instead it just sat inside me like a weight, a rage I couldn’t do anything about.
I had my reasons. It was easy to blame one person for the pandemic restrictions that had upended my life, stuck my wife and me at home with our children, without daycare or visits with friends and family, or trips to the library and a multitude of other things that eased the pressure that is parenting young children.
Somehow it was easier to hate him than it was to hate the government of China and its leaders, who had tried to cover up a catastrophe so as not to lose face. Easier to hate him than my own government which had been equally feckles and late in instituting travel restrictions or any of the things that would actually work. That had been deluded enough to think that “it would be racist” was a reason not to implement a travel ban. But it was a year later, and I knew that it was already too late by then.
The Dean (1) of our cathedral was a lovely woman of about my age, a mother, an expert homilist, and a kind and caring soul. And I would have to ask her for help. I would have to tell her the ugly thing inside of me. I didn't want to. I was ashamed.
I hesitated and I delayed. And then I did.
I emailed her and asked for her help. She responded within minutes, gave me a number to call her at and a time to call.
I made dinner, ate it with my family, then begged leave of my wife to go out for a walk. She squeezed my arm, understanding. She said it would be fine.
Our apartment at the time overlooked a vast parkland, so I went walking there. The weather was mild - a fine October day. I walked until I was sure there was no one around, then I dialled. The Dean picked up on the second ring. She greeted me.
Then she just said, “begin.” And I did.
And it poured out of me, like a raging river. All the hate I felt, all the poisonous, soul destroying desire for someone else’s death. A death that was public, that would be spectacular, that would ram like a knife into the heart of everyone deluded and idiotic enough to support him. That would make them suffer, make them suffer like I was suffering.
And she listened, without comment. When I paused for breath she didn’t say “is that all” or “go on.” She just listened to me, confessing my hate.
If I could have vomited I would have. I felt like blood should have been welling up out of me, exploding from my mouth and leaking out of my eyes. That was how poisonous it felt, how shameful.
“But I know it is wrong,” I finished, “I know it is not right. And I am sorry.”
And I was amazed to find that I was. Truly and deeply sorry. To have carried this pointless hate and rage within myself. To have looked upon the face of a fellow sinner and seen not someone to be pitied, not an enemy whom I was duty bound to pray for.
Then the Dean, after a pause, spoke the words of comfort over me, telling me that Christ forgave my sins, that he cast them away from us as if they had never been. She instructed me to go home and, from the Book of Alternative Services, read the prayer of reconciliation for a penitent.
Which I did.
And the hate was gone.
Gone like a vapour or a fog, evaporated and with nothing in its place. I searched within myself and couldn’t find it. It was just lifted away as it had never been.
And it stayed gone. I could not look upon the man without seeing someone to pity, someone who needed help, someone who was in over his head and drowning. And I still see him that way.
A year after this, my family and I moved across the city, and began to attend the church of a smaller parish. Two weeks ago, Advent began, and the priest of our church gave the traditional homily on Hope. As is also traditional she preached on Sin. Sin, she said, has a bad name in the modern church: it was a symbol for many of control, of oppression, or do what I say. It is something that your modern, “with it” priest is hesitant to talk about. But it is worse than a means of social control, worse than a sign of domination. Sin is not something you need to feel sorry about. Sin is something that is killing you, like a cancer. It feeds on pride, and on conceit, and on the belief that we cannot ever be the ones that are wrong. And the only way out of it is to show it to God - who sees it anyway - and ask for his help to take it away.
Children in our church, at the time the homily is spoken, are away in either nursery or Sunday School. They get a version of the same talk, but usually with more crafts and board games. If I had to describe the topic of sin to my children, I would analogize it to the end of Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Princess Mononoke.
Hatred, in the world of Mononoke, takes people over, as dripping fleshy worms of darkness and filth that grow through and extend out of their bodies. The only life it gives is the fulfillment of hatred. Moro, the dire wolf adoptive mother of the titular character, San, swears that she will kill Lady Eboshi, the leader of the fortified town whose mining operations are killing the forest. She dies before she can accomplish this. But when Lady Eboshi and a pack of hunters slay the Forest Spirit, a demigod with the power of life and death, its life force spills out as an unstoppable flood of glistening slime. This slime briefly reanimates Moro’s severed head, which bites off Lady Eboshi’s arm before dying again.
Hate gives us a feeling of power, of exaltation, of being right. But it only animates us to deeds of violence and destruction.
“Love your enemies” does not mean have warm feelings about them, anymore than “love your children” means never discipline them. Rather it means: love your enemies as you ought to love yourself. Wish for what is best for them. Wish that they mend their ways and return to what is right. Because that is what God wants for them. And loving your enemies means helping yourself.