Jesus speaks many times in Scripture about loving your enemies.  Turn the other cheek.  Treat the least of these like kings.  Man it sounds great.  It sounds hard but it sounds great.  It's pretty cut and dry.

I was listening to the Mars Hill podcast today on my drive from Jacksonville to Pensacola.  For Lent, Mars Hill was going through the story of Jonah.  I honestly had never read Jonah in that way.  I'll let you listen yourself to hear the whole story, but one thing in specific stuck out to me.  Shane Hipps talked about the anger that Jonah felt because God spared the people of Nineveh.  Most times I simply passed that over.  But Jonah 4:1-3 says, But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry.  He prayed to the Lord and said, “Please Lord , was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.  Therefore now, O Lord , please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” Jonah would rather die, than live in  a world where God forgave the people of Nineveh.  He pointed out that Nineveh was the capitol of Assyria, a vast empire at the time.  They had enslaved and intermarried with Israel.  And that was the worst thing that Israel could have happen.  When Jonah got to Nineveh, he was wanting God to over throw Nineveh as justice for what they had done to Israel.  But God forgave the evil of Nineveh and showed Jonah truly what it meant to love his enemies.

In our culture, I think most average people don't have true enemies.  Sure Seminoles don't like Gators, but sports teams aside, most people strive to be liked by most people.  People will act in certain ways to allow others to like them.  Sure sometimes, people don't like each other, but rarely do we come across a life or death situation.  Rarely are we in America oppressed.  So the hunt for me is for an enemy.

I had a rough week.  I had an experience that I believe may have created a situation where I can love on someone I normally wouldn't, someone hostile to me and my belief.  The truth is, we don't need to find an enemy, or someone hostile to our faith.  In this postmodern society, hostility toward faiths is mostly a thing of the past.  What true for you is fine, but it's not true for me.  It's time to love in a way that changes the world.  We are to be a beacon of God's love.  That's why we are to love our enemies.  Because, as Shane points out, God loves indiscriminately, even those who enslave and destroy his people.  And if He can do it, we should too.