Sabbath Devotional: Love Your Enemies

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

“But I say unto you, 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 5:43–44).

This radical love is not unique to Christianity.

The Buddha taught the practice of METTA- or Loving Kindness.

The Dalai Lama taught that our enemy can be our best teacher.

The Quran instructs Muslims to "repel evil with what is better“.

The Torah teaches “when your enemy is in trouble, come to his assistance”.

Even the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote, "The best revenge is to not be like your enemy“.

I have had the unique opportunity over the past five years to put this scripture to the test as I served as an elected official on our city council. It was hard but I really loved serving our community. I put my whole heart and energy in it, and I was an effective public servant. Last year a highly partisan national organization targeted me, not for doing anything illegal or corrupt but for endorsing national candidates not of my party. They were successful, and just over three months ago, I was recalled from office. This has been unbelievably painful. Even more painful was the fact that many of my fellow ward and stake members supported the recall and spread misinformation about me.

The injustice of it all has at times been unbearable.

How do I move forward? How do I continue to show up in my community, in my neighborhood and in my congregation? Especially, when I feel surrounded by my “enemies”? I raised my six kids in this ward for the last 18 years. These feelings run deep.

One of the biggest supporters of the recall effort was a man in my stake. He would come to our city council meetings and publicly berate me. He spent hours canvassing my neighborhood to gather over 200 signatures for the recall. This was beyond difficult for me to understand.

During this time, I repeatedly asked people to have an actual conversation with me instead of just believing everything they heard and surprisingly, this man took me up on it. He came to my house one evening and sat on my couch. We talked for over an hour. We listened to each other. There were tense moments. We both cried. At the end of our meeting, we hugged. He still disagreed with me. He continued to support the recall. In fact, he put a 4 x 4 foot sign for my opponent in his front yard. But guess what else he did? He sent me a text a few weeks later wishing me a happy birthday. He showed up to the next council meeting, sat on the second row with his normal group, and instead of glaring at me, he lifted his arm and waved at me when I entered the room. He brought us tamales at Christmas, and I took him cinnamon rolls.

Is this LOVE? I don’t think we’re there yet, but we are making progress. Because at the end of the day, the relationships we have with people are what matter, not who’s right and who’s wrong, but that we’re willing to have the conversation and work together.

Pres. Dallin H Oaks in his 2020 talk “Love Your Enemies” said, “Loving our enemies and our adversaries is not easy.” President Gordon B. Hinckley observed, “Most of us have not reached that stage of . . . love and forgiveness,” adding that “It requires a self-discipline almost greater than we are capable of.” But this is exactly what the Savior asks of us when he taught the two great commandments: “love the Lord thy God” and to “love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37, 39). And it must be possible, for He also taught, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7).

How do we do this?

We LEAN IN. We strive to believe that EVERY person that we come in contact with is a child of God and is worthy of DIGNITY and RESPECT.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by Martin Luther King Jr. “All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. . . . Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until l am what l ought to be.”

And I will tell you, I cannot do this on my own. I have to pray to God “. . . with all the energy of [my] heart, that [I] may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moroni 7:48). I know that when we ask for our hearts to be filled with THIS love, this love that feels impossible, God will do it!

President Oaks said, “Knowing that we are all children of God gives us a divine vision of the worth of all others and the will and ability to rise above prejudice and racism. As I have lived for many years in different places in this nation, the Lord has taught me that it is possible to obey and seek to improve our nation’s laws and also to love our adversaries and our enemies. While not easy, it is possible with the help of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He gave this command to love, and He promises His help as we seek to obey it.”

Love.

Not just our family and friends. Not just our neighbors. Not just the people we like. But we are asked to LOVE our enemies.

And we might just find out that they were never our enemies to begin with.

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Julie Spilsbury is the faithful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.