Tag Archives: enemies

Forgive Some Liberals Today

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forgiveForgive some liberals today.

It might seem a little facetious to treat holding different political opinions as something that needs forgiving. But we can be bitter even towards someone who has done us no objective wrong, like a manager who turned you down for a much-needed job.

So I will say…forgive some liberals today.

Is that hard to hear?

It’s probably safe to say that liberals – the media, whiny celebrities, Portland protestors, entitled college students and their PC safe-space police, and the outgoing president you never really prayed for – are amongst the closest thing to real enemies we have in this country. At least, that is how they exist in our minds. Isn’t it? Forgiving them feels like sponsoring their mindset, yielding ground, or “letting them get away with something”. It feels, for lack of a better word, a little dangerous.

It isn’t.

And it’s a good thing, because Jesus doesn’t give us any exception clauses to the command to forgive. For he forgave us. There are a lot of decent people like you on the other side of the aisle who are disappointed this week. We’re supposed to be salt, not salt in the wound. Who’s “right” doesn’t matter. Godliness matters. (And it might even have power to win them over to our cause.)

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We Have Some Enemies to Pray For, Christians

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Let our prayers for their salvation rise even if the bombs must fall.I stared numbly at my laptop this morning, watching reports of terrorist attacks in Paris Orlando fill the screen

Immediately the chatter began. Discussion of whether our nation’s leadership is doing enough, whether these acts truly represent Islam, how to respond going forward…all those arguments that you either want to flee or are all too eager to join.

Instead, I took refuge in praying for the families of the victims.

But later, I logged on to my Facebook account, hours after the tragedies…and was hit with an entirely new wave of grief.

At pictures.

Pictures of American military equipment assembled in rows with captions like “ISIS is doomed”…cartoons of American power symbols making their way overseas…snapshots of U.S. troops offering ominous proclamations to the Islamic State. The grim ill will echoing from the post-9/11 era, the hyper-patriotism that seems to go so naturally hand-in-hand with American Christianity.

Perhaps I have changed over the years, for I found myself aghast.

And struggling to reconcile it to the words of Jesus:

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