Love your enemies

Growing up in a christian home, I was taught all the basic beliefs of Christianity. Most of them made sense, but one I had a really hard time agreeing with was "love your enemies." I began to think about it the other day, and I realized the reason I had a hard time with it is because I was looking at "love" the wrong way. I had always taken it to mean, in this case anyway, that to love your enemies meant you had to like them. You had to *shudder* be friends with them even. Well, I didn't want to be friends with those who had hurt me. I wanted nothing to do with them. So I wasn't going to love them. Then I realized, to love does not mean to like. I can love my siblings, but I'm not always going to like them, or get along with them. In fact, to like someone seems, to me anyway, to be the weakest form of love. To like someone is to appreciate them for their good qualities. To love someone is different. It is to take the good with the bad, and remain faithful anyways. In loving your enemies, you don't have to like them, you don't have to be friends with them. What is required, however, is a willingness to look at this person as a human being, to do for them what you would do for any human, to give them shelter when they are cold, food when they are hungry. It is to treat them with respect, and ultimately, to forgive them for their actions against you. A good example would be something I heard from the movie "The Interpreter." In an African village, if a man committed murder, he would be taken to the river, tied up, and thrown in. The family of the deceased then had the option of either allowing him to drown, or saving him. If he drowned, they had their justice, but if they saved him, they had the healing that comes with forgiveness. I think those who chose to save the drowning man were truly "loving their enemies." It's not an easy thing, but it is worthwhile.