Love Those Who Persecute You!

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That is what Jesus says to do. But loving doesn't mean tolerating evil.

Fight in the way of God, those who fight against you. Kill them where you find them, and drive them out from the places they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. But if they surrender then let there be no more war, for God never loves the starter of war.

Turning the other cheek only gets you f****d in the ass.

I think loving someone who persecutes you is a rather perverse and unnatural reaction. I see it as a creative survival mechanism more than anything else.

It depends Let's say you're dealing with some sadistic bastard. Maybe a child is being raped by his father and then told that he will go to jail if the child says a word. Do we expect the child to show unconditional love for their father. It is unnatural and perverse.

It's one thing to voluntarily forgive. It's another to place the demand on others that if they don't forgive they are a bad person.

Many don't catch the overall theme this refers to in the Bible.

If a Christian wants God to forgive his/her sin, then that Christian must be willing to forgive others.

I've commented that (to my knowledge) forgiving someone who is unrepentant is the ONE thing God does not do but God expects man to do.

The act of forgiveness and loving someone who hates you is about reaching for a higher state of being...of being better than just what your human nature would demand (return hate for hate).

I've thought about this a lot. Something I've concluded is that God has already forgiven everyone before they even ask for it. God doesn't NEED us to ask forgiveness or even for us to pray to Him. It's about accepting the place God has for you in His plan. It's not that God doesn't forgive those who don't ask. It's that those who are forgiven do not wish to accept forgiveness for a whole lot of reasons. I could be wrong on this point, but I tend to think that people don't want to be forgiven because they refuse to acknowledge the need to be forgiven. They do not want to admit they've done anything wrong or that there is anything wrong with them in the first place.

God opens the gates of heaven to all who will accept forgiveness. God in His mercy doesn't drag or push us through those gates.

I admit to having a hard time letting certain things go, not to mention a lot of embarrassment throughout my life I wish I could just forget. I have to remind myself that even though nobody is going to ask me for forgiveness or try to make things right, I'm still obligated to forgive them anyway. If it's good enough for God, it's good enough for me.

I think forgiveness is important. You shouldn't just hate someone because they said or did one thing that you didn't like. You can tell them how you feel, but don't go thinking they're a horrible person just because of one thing they said. If someone has hurt you, don't refuse to be nice to them in other situations that have nothing to do with the incident. It's hard to love or even like your enemies, but it helps to try to look at things from their perspective.

But there's a limit to this. If someone has severely abused you, whether emotionally or physically, causing lifelong scars, you don't have to keep in contact with that person. It's best to forget them and find people who don't treat you like dirt. You can love, forgive, and try to understand that person, but don't let them ruin your life.

Loving those who persecute you is a very hard thing to do, but when it's done, amazing things can be accomplished. The rise of Christianity and the success of the civil rights movement are just two examples. Just think of how the opposite approach in the Middle East and Northern Ireland has achieved nothing but endless bloodshed.

I'm more of the "never forgive, never forget" attitude.
It's that time of year again when WW2 remembrances are held, I don't think people will be in a forgiving mood towards the nazis. They are dead, gone, and good riddance.

To hell with forgiveness, to hell with god, and to hell with anyone who advocates either.

I have tried forgiving people who have wronged me in unforgivable ways before, only to get spat on and betrayed later on down the line. My experience has proven the notion of forgiveness wrong. There is no peace in forgiveness, only being restored for a couple of moments to be ripped apart again.

And as far as me being forgiven... everything I do is justified, and therefore the point of forgiveness is absolutely moot. I don't seek to be forgiven, because what I do isn't wrong! But then again, knowing this piece of sh*t human race, according to their worthless opinions, everything I do is wrong. Why should I care?

Because there's more to this world than YOU.

And I'm not trying to invalidate how you feel. Many us have been there and know what it's like. I've been abused and mistreated going on almost 3 decades now. It took me this long to figure it out, but I'm glad I finally did. And that was none of it matters one bit. Friends can stab me in the back, enemies can keep laughing and calling names. Doesn't matter. Ima keep on lovin' people, keep on helpin' people. Let the haters keep hatin'. If I smiled at everyone I met today and ONE person smiled back, then I WON.

Let the hate and the insults come. I got more.

Unfortunately I haven't achieved sainthood yet, so loving persecutors hasn't occurred and I hate and detest animal abusers and torturers with such violent emotion that it is probably dangerous to my health, I would like to persecute them!! !

Forgoing those who persecute you rather than loving them works rather better for me - put a safe distance between you and them. Forgoing works a lot better than trying to forgive people who like harming others and have no interest in changing, they exploit the goodwill of others.

Love is a response to values. I wouldn't say that anybody has "persecuted" me as an adult, but I have run across some utter slimeballs; I did what I could to help bring about the logical consequences of their actions and then got them out of my life as soon as possible. I see no point to hating or holding a grudge – these are people to whom I haven't given the slightest thought in years. But I certainly don't love them. That would be an injustice to people, like my wife, who actually deserve my love.

So we should forgive the American/British/Israeli for bombing our homes, running tanks over our farmlands, and shooting everyone who looks suspicious? Why should anyone forgive them, when they make no attempts to apologize in the first place?

No. We're on the right side of history. Fifty years from now, our children will remember these people for what they are: Foreign invaders, and a force of evil.

Today, western civilization asks us to follow their example, but someday it will be asking us to lead them. Then we can talk about forgiving them.

Don't hold your breath about us following you.
And I stand by my statement: answering bloodshed with bloodshed in an endless cycle gets you just that - an endless cycle. I believe it was Gandhi who had observed how an eye for an eye only leaves the world blind.

But for what it's worth, I from the very beginning saw George W's military adventurism as a colossal military, financial, and moral waste that has left my country's reputation in tatters.

I want to say YES. Love those who persecute you, love them unrelentingly and unfalteringly, because the desire to persecute someone else has to arise from a deeply wounded psyche. If you hold out your hand in love enough times, over and over and over again as many times as it takes, sooner or later it will get through to them and begin some kind of healing process.

I want that to be true.

Certainly the practice of turning the other cheek and accommodating racism worked for Dr. King and his followers. We have not realized his dream by any stretch of the imagination, but a person can attend any school they can qualify for, eat in any restaurant they can afford, drink from any public water fountain they please, and sit where-ever they can find a seat on the bus without the law having something to say about it on the basis of their skin color.

Nowadays, if six white men beat the tar out of a black man because he failed to step off the sidewalk for a white woman to pass, we call it a hate crime. When Dr. King started, we called it "Teaching the n****rs some manners," and the majority of mainstream society willingly and knowingly countenanced it. I know some pretty bigoted f**ktards, but I don't know anyone who would even wish they could take it that far.

But I don't believe that it is, and cannot in good conscience counsel anyone to love all those who persecute them all the time.

Case in point: Hitler. I don't think any amount of loving hands extended would have stopped him and his from genocide. I just don't.

By the same turn, the environment that allowed him and his to take hold and flourish was created, in part, by the punitive attitude taken toward the Central Powers after WWI. A little love for thy enemies might have gone a long way THEN.

Case in point: My stepmother. Bluntly put, when she married Daddy, she was an aggressive, offensive, foul-ass b***h with an "I'm-gonna-get-you-before-you-have-a-chance-to-get-me" attitude. She looked me in the face and told me that she wouldn't run me off because it was clear that my father loved me, but that was the only reason. She acted like the Wicked Stepmother in a fairy story. It didn't take very long before I despised her every bit as much as she despised me...

...but I went on trying to treat her lovingly because she was married to my father and I loved him dearly. I don't know exactly WHEN things changed. Somewhere around the five-year mark, I think. But after that, she called me her daughter, she was glad to see me, she loved me and I loved her. NOT for Daddy's sake-- for each other, for who we were.

By the same turn, sadly, that wasn't enough to keep us together after Daddy died. Her sister had the same attitude Mom did when she married Daddy, only she wasn't about to be restrained by the fact that Mom clearly loved me. Sister ruthlessly worked at getting rid of me from Day One. I kept holding out a hand, and all that did was make her meaner and madder. When she started filing false charges of criminal behavior, I gave up, kissed my stepmother goodbye, and walked away.

All "loving my enemy" would ever have accomplished would have been that, sooner or later, I would have dropped a ball that she COULD use against me, and I would have landed in jail, with a permanent criminal record, lost my kids, and basically been destroyed. Mom would have had to watch it happen. Everyone who cared about either of us would have had to watch it happen. If the rest of my family had tried to support me in any way, she would have destroyed them too. Maybe I should have let that happen in the name of loving my enemy, I don't know. Going on five years later, I still have trouble sleeping at night because I didn't do exactly that...

...but I don't believe that any good would have come of it, either.

Case in point: I tried to treat my father-in-law lovingly from the time I met him. My husband swears that he loved me like his own child. If that's the case, I understand why three out of four children had minimal, if any, contact with him after reaching the age of majority. He would socialize with me, and even appear to enjoy doing so, but no amount of loving behavior ever changed the fact that if I made a mistake or failed to yield to his way (even to the point of beating my children), I would be crucified. I had to prove my loyalty and earn a seat at his son's table day after day after day after day; if I did not do what he thought I should, he would tell his son to divorce me and take the kids. He was a scarred, foul, suspicious, manipulative, self-serving, small-minded, petty, evil man (even when he did good things); no amount of love could ever have changed that.

I don't think there is any "by the same turn" for that story. By the same turn, I guess, I still have my husband... but there's some heartfelt advice over in L&D that might belie calling that a blessing. By the same turn, I guess, I can look in the mirror and see what I see... but when I look in the mirror, what I see is a broken, repugnant, disabled, subhuman woman who was "touched by the devil" and therefore can never bear any good fruit, who is not good enough, has never been good enough, will never be good enough, and has no reason or right to ever expect to be treated in any other way.

Those things aren't recommendations for loving those who persecute you, at least not to the ends of the earth. One person was healed, and she had that healing taken from her. No one else was healed, and I'm just as broken (maybe more) as I would have been if I'd risen up, bitten back, and said "YOU WILL NOT." Or "I WILL NOT. Or whatever.

I think you have to take it on a case-by-case basis, and re-evaluate at frequent intervals.

I don't think you should meet enmity with enmity (at least, in 98.7% of cases; in the case of someone like Hitler, there really wasn't anything to do but exactly what was done-- the only thing that could have been done differently would have been to assassinate him or stomp his machine out before it really got going). I don't think you should walk around with a "the best defense is a strong offense" attitude.

I think you should try to hold out a hand even to those who treat you badly.

But I also think there's a time to cut your losses, cut the suffering of anyone who happens to be caught in the crossfire, withdraw any farther attempts at loving behavior, and retreat to a secure and defensible position.

Ask a battered woman about loving her abuser.