fear and loathing in loving our enemies

Lewis points out that loving others the way we love ourselves does include hating the things that others do sometimes...since we hate what we do too, sometimes...in A Year with C.S. Lewis.

But when we continue thinking about it, we see that we should hate it for the same reason...because the action is hurting someone we care about (the one performing the action). It's preventing someone we want to see succeed from succeeding. We hate it because we care.

Today, we often find ourselves so apathetic about the world that we don't care enough to hate the actions of our enemies. And it's natural for us to find ourselves apathetic: we're inundated with daily reports of violence and terror from around the world. It can leave us numb and shell shocked.

But when we walk with Him daily, He softens our hearts again. He helps us to care, even about those in other countries doing horrendous things to others. We find ourselves even able to pray for the conversion of the world's worst people. Because we begin to realize in a powerful, palpable way, that but for the grace of God, those people doing those horrible things would be us.

God, have mercy on us, a bunch of sinners.