Loving and Forgiving Our Enemies as Part of the Struggle for Racial Justice

Reflections from our church’s Unlearning Racism book study

I look forward to our weekly Unlearning Racism book study group.

A Minneapolis policeman murdered George Floyd in May of 2020. In response, church friends and I wanted to do more than express our shock and outrage.

As we kicked around ideas, one thing became clear — our knowledge and understanding of how racism and white supremacy work in this country was at best uneven. Some of us had never learned the history of Jim Crow and his contemporary cousin, Dr. James Crowe, Esq.

So that’s where we started.

Over the last four years, we’ve read and discussed over twenty books — including fiction like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. We’ve delved into Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent and The Warmth of Other Suns, her study of the Great Migration, about which we were clueless as well.

Now we’re reading the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II’s engaging book, The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear.

This is the most current of all our reads. So our discussion readily connects to the daily news — especially as this election year unfolds. Yes, there will undoubtedly be a white man in the White House. But it doesn’t have to be a rabid white supremacist.

Hearing President Biden use that term — probably not one he grew up with — gives me hope.

This week we read how Rev. Dr. Barber carefully built his fusion coalition, bringing diverse communities together on common ground — churches, unions, migrants, parents, and LGBT+ people.

Twenty thousand people peacefully assembled at the state capital to challenge right-wing extremist’s attempts to overturn North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. They introduced this and other legislation to strengthen their power and disenfranchise the progressive movement.

One of their Moral Movement rallies took place during Holy Week of 2013. Rev. Dr. Barber found and preached about the similarities between their action and Jesus leading his fusion coalition into Jerusalem during the original Holy Week.

The people were jubilant but the powers that be’d were determined to stop him at all costs. Up to and including, taking his life. He didn’t let that stop him from loving them.

Loving and Forgiving Our Enemies

As he hung on the cross, Jesus said a prayer for them. “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.”

According to Barber: “He loved his enemies to the very end, the Bible tells us, holding on to the moral center of his campaign, even in the face of death. When he died, the whole world went dark. Even still, a few from his movement held on.”

That passage sparked deep questions. What did Jesus mean when he said that? What does it mean to love and forgive our enemies?

A lively discussion ensued.

How can we possibly love folks we don’t even like? People we see doing dangerous things like threatening the future of democracy?

Loving our enemies doesn’t mean inviting Tea Party types over for tea. Forgive does not mean excuse. However, holding people accountable for their actions is a loving thing to do. Just like holding ourselves accountable for our own actions is a self-loving thing to do. Especially when we hold love in the spiritual light of wanting the best and the highest for one another.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about this: “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” He believed and taught that we can transform people with our love. It’s that strong. He also said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

It sounds good,, especially politically. It gives our movements the moral high ground. And we spiritual activists certainly are not about calling for revenge or any form of violence. We don’t wish them ill. After all, Gandhi said, An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

But how do we open our hearts to folks we oppose politically?

It comes down to our Oneness.

If God is all there is, and there’s no spot where God is not, then, we are all One in God. Like it or not, we are one in spirit with those we consider our enemies.

One path to love is to remember that when someone does hurtful things, it’s because of their own wounding. What kinds of traumatic wounds could possibly cause blue bodies (police) to shoot and kill black bodies?

A healing book we studied, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem explores this in depth. Menakem does a great job of explaining, while not at all excusing, these horrific deeds.

One of our group members, Cathy, has a black belt in Aikido and teaches a relational form of it she calls Conscious Embodiment. She discusses loving our enemies: “Aggression comes from a wounded place in the heart. Beneath that wounded place is the place of infinite love, compassion, generosity, kindness, and wisdom.”

This explains to me why someone can be so kind and loving to members of their own tribe, and yet act so hatefully towards ones they consider ‘the other.’ Cathy also said, “The idea is to join with their energy, come back to your own place of love, and invite the other person back to their place of infinite love.”

Sounds nigh on impossible.

But it’s not.

Daryl Davis, a black man, decided to make friends with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Two hundred of them. As a result of friendly, exploratory conversations, they all resigned from the Klan and gave Daryl their robes.

Jesus spoke, taught, and preached in the Aramaic language. These discussions got me wondering if Jesus was down with the oneness thing when he spoke about forgiving his enemies.

Writer/Scholar Neil Doublas-Klotz is the go-to guy on this topic. He studies and writes about comparative Semitic hermeneutics. Say what? Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are Semitic languages, just like French, Spanish, and Italian are Romance languages, all with roots in Latin. In other words, linguist siblings, with common roots.

And hermeneutics is, according to the Oxford online dictionary, “the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts.

So I got out in his book, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus. Here’s some of what I found.

In Aramaic, Father forgive them, they know not what they do, reads as Hwa abba shbuwq l’khun la geyr yad’lyn mana abdyin. The opening phrase, forgive them, means to return someone or something to their original relationship to Reality.

When we forgive, we’re to see the person as a breath or soul just like ourselves, abiding together in God. One way God was described back in Jesus’ day was with the phrase ‘yes and no’ shorthand for the combination of being and nothingness that God is. Spirit and material. The All in All.

Sounds like Oneness to me!

The rest of the line tells us to not judge what another person is working towards, on, or through in their life. We can’t know where they are on their journey or assume what’s true for us is true for them. Everything is happening within realms Divine, even if we don’t understand or like what we witness.

Another way to say this is that the other person may be working out a Karma in a context we know not of. It’s not ours to judge.

Knowing this, can we respond with compassion to a wounded soul acting from their hurt, just like we act from our hurts? Again it doesn’t mean filling up with warm fuzzies, as much as patience and understanding. I like the phrase, there but for the grace of God go I. Any of us could be in their shoes.

What about loving our enemies?

Douglas-Klotz works with the teaching, love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. In Aramaic, it reads, L’khun deyn amar ana ladsham’lyn ahebw lab’eldbabaykuwn wa abedu d’shaphiyr layleyn d’saneyn l’khun.

Jesus’ words instruct us to find a rhythm that matches the one who is out of step with us. The Aramaic definition of an enemy is one whose rhythm and breathing don’t harmonize with ours. How beautiful and melodic is that?

He tells us to use a slow back-and-forth love to match the other’s rhythm. Once our two rhymes entrain, harmony is restored through love. This may not happen all at once but through a progression starting with tolerance. This means just being willing to be in the same room with them.

Once we’re willing and able to accept and tolerate the soul that is our so-called enemy, we progress to mutual respect. And from there to friendship.

Can we make another person tolerate, accept, or respect us? Probably not. But let’s not allow their response to deter our efforts. Jesus didn’t say to only love your enemies if they’re cordial. No, the challenge is to love them regardless of what they do.

Some may respond to our doing that by treating us even worse. They may see our behavior and wonder what we’re smoking.

Or maybe, just maybe, they’ll ask themselves why they’re so hellbent on making us wrong or bad. Both Jesus and Dr. King had enemies become friends by loving on them.

I know, I know, how can we love folks who would destroy us and our kind? Or the planet for that matter?

It may not be easy. It may take time. But if we are all One, then we’re connected at the root. And that root is God, or Spirit, or the Divine Substance we’re all made of.

If nothing else, let’s bless them with their best and highest good. Even if that blessing is the one Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevya had for the Russian ruling despot: May God bless and keep the Tsar….far away from us!

Namaste!

Marilyn Flower is a sacred fool who writes fiction, poetry, and blogs, inspired by the practice of SoulCollage®. Her books: Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction, Creative Blogging, Bucket Listers. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!