A Few Shiny Pebbles

Once again, talk radio’s Dennis Prager discussed the macro, public sector of life, and the micro, private sector, with regards to morality. As I wrote earlier in a post on “Turning the Other Cheek”:

His point is that there are (or should be) meaningful differences in the way we behave in private and public. For instance, the fact that something is all right in private, such as wearing comfortable clothes, does not necessarily mean that it is right to wear shorts and a tank-top to a public church or synagogue, or to an important meeting. Prager compared several of the moral obligations of life in their micro and macro aspects.

This time he pointed out that “Love your enemy” is one of those precepts that cannot be carried out in most, if not all, circumstances.

Now, in thinking about “loving your enemy”, you have to make it clear that an “enemy” is not someone with whom you merely disagree, or someone vying with you for a position, or any other such person, because we ought to save the word “enemy” for someone we think is bad or evil. And someone who is bad or evil is not someone with whom it makes a lot of sense to speak of love. It runs from not making sense to love an enemy to being outright dangerous and even deadly to do so.

Again, to paraphrase something I posted before, Dennis Prager has always insisted that it is imperative to clarify your viewpoint, and certainly the idea of “love your enemy” has been part of the vocabulary of life for over two thousand years. We should investigate such long-lived concepts to see why they have carried currency in the marketplace of ideas for such a long time.

Along with its lesser-difficult concept of “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, this idea of loving someone who is either potentially or definitely bad or evil is hard to deal with. Why would Christ insist on something so obviously problematic in everyday life? There are saintly people around at any one time who live the absolute of “love everyone”, but the facts of life preclude my doing so, and most people I know of would agree with me. So what could this mean? Even if you aren’t religious, the moral guidance of Christ can hold meaning for you as it speaks through the ages.

Certainly people such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., found the idea of loving your enemy filled with meaning. With Gandhi, the Hindu and Martine Luther King, Jr., the Christian, their reasoning on the idea was deeply involved with the religious, and they both practiced what they preached. However, I believe that had their primary enemies—the colonial English and the majority of Americans—were the kind that allowed their beliefs and actions to succeed. Had their enemies been instead, for Gandhi, the Nazis, and for Martin Luther King, Jr., White Supremacists or KKK members only, they would not have succeeded, however heartfelt their beliefs. As it was, both men were murdered by assassins because of their body of beliefs.

Since for most of us it is highly impractical to love our enemy, and it is often difficult to love our neighbor, what meaning can we find in the concept?

I looked at the phrases, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”, and “Love your enemy as you love yourself”, and it occurred to me that the answer may be found in the word “love”, especially in the idea of “loving yourself”. What does this kind of love mean? Since we’re talking about Christ, I know that it is not egotism. It’s not a grasping selfishness. It’s not a sociopathic or psychopathic single-mindedness about oneself. I think it might mean to respect yourself and to insist on living the best life, which to Christ would be the best moral life, the virtuous life. It would mean to regret weaknesses and work to eliminate them, and to sincerely repent moral transgressions. It would mean to believe in justice and decency, and to believe in being the responsible custodian of those things which belong to you, or which you use, or over which you have dominion.

I think this is important, because it means that this is therefore the kind of love you are to have for your neighbor or for your enemy, and I think this gives a whole different meaning to the precept. In a sense it means to insist that your neighbor also lives up this moral code by doing your best to be an example and also to be a responsible member of a neighborhood community. It means trying to stop your enemy from doing bad or evil, as you would stop yourself. It means, as Confucius says somewhere, to recompense kindness with kindness, and transgressions and evil with justice. Just as you would not be an addict, or a bully, or neglect your surroundings or those who depend on you, you must insist on the same from your neighbors and your enemies, and when they do not meet that obligation, you must see that justice is observed. To stand by while your enemy is doing evil when you can do something to fight it, is to aid and abet that evil, which is to aid and abet a moral transgression, and not loving your enemy enough to insist on the living of a virtuous life.

This almost sounds paradoxical, an insistence upon a love that is so strict an observance of the moral and virtuous that it commands punishment, but it is really at the same time an insistence on an impartial justice. A system of impartial justice is one of the great achievements of humankind.

Remember, Christ tells us there is a Heaven and Hell. Whether you are religious or not, we are looking at this idea of loving your neighbor and enemy with an eye to what Christ may have meant by it, so we have to take into consideration the fact that when he said it, it was in the context of his whole belief system. I think this means we can interpret the precepts by assuming that if we prevent someone from doing the evil that would send them to Hell, we are loving them (and we are loving our neighbors in the greater context of humanity, those who would be their victims without our intervention). If they succeed in doing evil, then the only chance they have is to face their just punishment.

When Christ stopped a group of people from stoning an adultress, he is not just saving her, and bidding her to go and sin no more, he is also saving the potential stoners from doing wrong themselves. (This is a part of the story that I had never seen before I started thinking about what it means to love your neighbor.)

This means that you are obligated to be judgmental, and to act on your judgments. But all of this only has meaning if you, yourself, meet the requirements of someone who truly loves himself or herself, if you, yourself, strive to live the virtuous life. It also means that, just as you would wish that your neighbor helped you in a dangerous or tricky situation, so you must do the same with respect to your neighbor. Just as you would prevent yourself from carrying out a bad or evil action, you must work to prevent your neighbor and your enemy from doing the same. You must see that civil and criminal punishments are carried out, as justice demands.

In short, you must be a moral person, a good citizen, and a worthy opponent. You must be brave against evil and grateful toward decency.

To think that you would stand by when your neighbor or your enemy transgressed, is to say you would ignore the virtuous life for yourself and behave badly. This kind of loving is a responsibility and a moral obligation. It often requires something that people call “tough love”, but which is actually loving your child or relative enough to want to prevent them from doing themselves or others injury. This principle must be carried out in terms of an enemy’s actions.

In this Memorial Day weekend, we need to remember and to honor those who so loved their neighbor that they fought to prevent our enemies from carrying out their evil intentions, and so loved their enemies that once America had been victorious we turned the other cheek to give the defeated enemy the aid and support necessary to rebuild their country both in infrastructure and with the values of democratic government.

This is an injunction to be strong and brave and decent, and is in itself the demand for a difficult but extremely worthwhile life.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson's Website, The Random Yak, Adam's Blog, Maggie's Notebook, Webloggin, Cao's Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Colloquium, Conservative Cat, The HILL Chronicles, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Nuke's news and views, Pirate's Cove, and The Pink Flamingo, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.