Loving my enemies is a hard teaching even when I’m thinking about it in the abstract, with imagined foes, or at least ones that feel sufficiently distant. But right now, in this current political moment, when I feel acutely aware of who my enemies are and the damage they continue to inflict, it feels crushing to read these words: Love, be merciful, do not judge, do not condemn.* They bring into stark relief the depth of my rage.
In moments of clarity, I confess the rage eating away at me, realizing it is slowly turning me into someone I don’t want to be, someone who relishes the very meanness I would condemn in my enemies. But if I’m honest, I have not gotten so far as to pray for deliverance from it. After all, at least my rage has the benefit of feeling reliably secure when everything else I hold dear might be ripped away at some 19-year-old’s whim.
So I’ve decided to experiment with leaning into my rage and praying through the imprecatory psalms for a while. Will this bring me any closer to even wanting to love my enemies? I’m not sure. But as Florer-Bixler points out: “…there is no point in offering up prayers about the things we ought to want. Prayer may be transformative of our desires, but it will not be so by pretending we are something we are not.”
