“You can’t hold on to love and live by the law of the jungle…” John Mark McMillan
Why love?
Why hold on to love?
And why should I love my enemy?
Worldly-Love might perpetuate the species.
But Enemy-Love might save our humanity.
Because maybe Enemy-Love is what makes us human, the most human. And if human, then maybe like God too.
Some say…
That love is just an evolutionary trait. Love is just an attachment mechanism keeping children by their parents for protections and provision. Love is just an attachment keeping parents near their children.
Romantic love is just the adult version of this so that people will have babies and start the process all over again.
Sacrificial love—if there is such a thing—is just perpetuating the species. It is selfishness evolved.
But then why sacrifice for anything beyond your family?
Others will say…
That love is just a social-psychological trait (selected by evolution) to keep the group and the tribe connected, safe, and secure.
We sacrifice our food for our children, and our lives for our tribe, because that is what keeps us all living. And if we all live, then maybe my children will live, even if I do not.
Altruistic behavior is really just a dynamic and flexible group survival trait—selfishness evolved on the tribal level.
But then, why love your ENEMY?
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Jesus says…
“Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?… And if you greet your brothers only, what are you doing more than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)
Loving those just like you is nature.
Loving your enemy is divine.
Loving your enemy is hard to rationalize as an evolutionary trait. It is a square peg within the round hole of natural selection.
Enemy-Love doesn’t save your children, or support your tribe, or protection your clan, or care for your country.
The Call to Love
The call to love your enemy is exactly the call beyond our animal nature, our natural impulse, our common instincts.
It is the call to be “perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
It is the call to be part of another family, a more perfect family, the family of God who all seek to live on the seventh day.
It is the call to be more than a beast. To be brothers and sisters to all.
Holding on to Humanity (and Divinity)
The call to Enemy-Love helps us see all of humanity as…humans. Not as monsters.
The call to Enemy-Love is a call to hold on to our own humanity. Not to become a monster.
The call to Enemy-Love promises that when we live in our humanity—for the humanity of others—that we are actually receiving again the the divine life God had given and is giving to us through the Son in the power of the Spirit.
For the Love of Humanity
When we live in the borderland between beastly nature and divine blessing, we don’t understand how the law love and the law of the jungle fit together. Maybe we need to learn to embrace one and ignore the other?
Or as John Mark McMillan puts it in “Borderland”:
“Help me holy Jesus, won’t You show me how to live?
I’ve got monsters at my table, I’ve got Bibles bent like shivs…You can’t hold on to love and live by the law of the jungle.”