...do I hafta?
Mar. 15th, 2011 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird1It occurs to me that loving your enemies can actually be a pretty effective way to love someone well.
Loving people you, well, love is all well and good, but often the loving intentions get mixed up with the loving feelings which get mixed up with all your other feelings, and pretty soon you're doing things that you want to do, with very little regard for what the other person needs, but with the ever-present reasoning that "well, I'm doing what I want to, and I want the best for them, so clearly what I want has to be what's good for them, right?"
It can get very confusing. (And even unhealthy.)
Loving enemies, on the other hand...
You'd have a fairly hard time mixing up "what I want" and "what is loving them" if what you want is to smash them in the face with a mallet and laugh at their pain. Loving them, by definition, will pretty much involve putting every single thing you want aside - and assessing, through gritted teeth, what would actually be good for them, even if you really don't want to do it.
Loving enemies is hard, and painful, but eminently practical. It has to be - because feelings just aren't going to cut it.
You can't simply sit there and think loving thoughts at them. You actually have to come up with something to do. Which is... good, I think. (Certainly more likely to be helpful than the vague waves of lovingness you'd be trying to think up.)
Just my thoughts. And it's possible I'm wrong.
Loving people you, well, love is all well and good, but often the loving intentions get mixed up with the loving feelings which get mixed up with all your other feelings, and pretty soon you're doing things that you want to do, with very little regard for what the other person needs, but with the ever-present reasoning that "well, I'm doing what I want to, and I want the best for them, so clearly what I want has to be what's good for them, right?"
It can get very confusing. (And even unhealthy.)
Loving enemies, on the other hand...
You'd have a fairly hard time mixing up "what I want" and "what is loving them" if what you want is to smash them in the face with a mallet and laugh at their pain. Loving them, by definition, will pretty much involve putting every single thing you want aside - and assessing, through gritted teeth, what would actually be good for them, even if you really don't want to do it.
Loving enemies is hard, and painful, but eminently practical. It has to be - because feelings just aren't going to cut it.
You can't simply sit there and think loving thoughts at them. You actually have to come up with something to do. Which is... good, I think. (Certainly more likely to be helpful than the vague waves of lovingness you'd be trying to think up.)
Just my thoughts. And it's possible I'm wrong.
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Date: 2011-03-15 10:49 am (UTC)C.S. Lewis makes pretty much the same argument in Mere Christianity about Christian Love - that it's not about trying to produce nice fuzzy feelings when you think about people you despise, but quite simply about a way of behaviour, a way of treating people where you just try to do what's right.
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Date: 2011-03-15 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 11:19 am (UTC)Maybe loving someone is wanting them to be their own best self, and hating them is wanting them to be someone else entirely.
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Date: 2011-03-15 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 09:25 pm (UTC)Oooh... I like that.
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Date: 2011-03-15 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 06:47 pm (UTC)Gabrielle
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Date: 2011-03-15 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 12:20 am (UTC)