Monday, July 25, 2016

When "Love thy enemy" gets real

Imagine holding your ten month old son in your arms and your unborn daughter in your belly, a horizontal line of AK47s pointed at you, crying out to God to let you die before you see your family killed in front of your eyes. Imagine being plagued by nightmares for months and years afterwards, not being able to hear the enemy’s dialect of your own language without suffering an anxiety attack. Now imagine showing love to these same people as they flood back into your country only ten years after having left it. The woman whose story this is was literally seconds away from being executed by Syrian soldiers on the very last day of the Lebanese war. For six years she battled acute fear of anyone speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent. Now she serves among the refugee community living in Beirut, helping Syrian mothers access healthcare and register their kids in school, listening to their own stories of war trauma. She is loving her enemy - because Jesus told her to.

“I don’t like Syrians. If a Christian Lebanese tells you he likes Syrians, he is most likely lying.” The man who, very bluntly, said this to me grew up under Syrian occupation and, during his college years, took to the streets to protest the regime that had oppressed his countrymen for 15 years (and that’s not counting the 15 years of actual civil strife). Today he happens to be the director of one of the only organizations in Lebanon reaching out to Syrian youths who find themselves stuck indefinitely in a (to them) hostile country. He’s made it his personal mission to reach out to the 53% of Syrian youth who feel unsafe in Lebanon, to the 41% who feel suicidal, to the 94% percent who are not in school. He is loving his enemy - because Jesus told him to. 

Multiply these stories by a few thousand and you start to get an idea of what it’s like to be a follower of Christ in Lebanon. When Jesus said “Love thy enemy,” he wasn’t talking about the annoying neighbor across the street who lets his dog poop on your lawn. The divided, tribal nature of Middle Eastern culture is not one a westerner can begin to understand unless he/she visits the region. Western believers like to think, consciously or not, that we invented Christianity and that our sanitized interpretations of Jesus’ words are the right ones, forgetting that Jesus said those words here, in the Middle East. I, a white western woman, have no idea what it’s like to love my enemy, because I have never truly had an enemy. Would I be so exuberant in my love for Jesus if it meant serving the very people who were about to kill me and my family? The very people who played a significant hand in tearing my country to shreds?

“I’m so thankful God doesn’t answer all of my prayers, because with my little faith, I prayed to die before my family did. But God said, ‘No. I want to give you more than that.’’’ This woman knows what it is to love her enemy. She has lived the cost of following Jesus. 

Oh that I may someday have that same faith, grace and compassion. 

2 comments:

  1. excellent, what a true and great picture of Jesus's commands being acted out sacrificially!

    ReplyDelete
  2. excellent, what a true and great picture of Jesus's commands being acted out sacrificially!

    ReplyDelete