I used to play Civilization IV, which is a videogame that simulates the rise of civilization from humble hunter gatherer days all the way through launching rockets into space. It modeled everything from economics and scientific research to diplomacy and culture. There were a lot of ways to win, but my favorite was a cultural victory. If my civilization was culturally more desirable than the next one over, there was a chance that its citizens would abandon their own civilization and join mine without me having to send in the military at all. In the game you could generate these Great Artists which would create some masterwork which would give your culture a huge spike. So I would build a new city pretty close to a foreign civilization’s city and then send a great artist to it and the culture spike would be so big that they would join my civilization.
There's a common expression that also happens to be true that we ought to kill our enemies with kindness. Being kind to someone who hates or despises us, or whom we ourselves might just hate or despise, will not literally kill them, nor, despite our grave fears to the contrary, will it kill us. But the more and the longer that we earnestly and sincerely attempt to love them and be kind to them, the harder and harder it will be to regard them as our enemy.
And as great of an improvement to our lives will it be to no longer feel that those that we love are our enemies, our consistent and persistent manifestations of our love to them will change them and their regard for us. Loving our enemies even and perhaps especially when they show no inclination to love us back is actually a preemptive strike for peace.
“We love him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).
Christ gave us the example of how to deal with those who thoughtlessly or maliciously bring us pain and suffering. Love them first. They may not want it. They may not like it. They may fight against the invidious changes that our love is working on them and their feelings towards us, undermining their hatred and dissolving their resentment and replacing cold hostility with warmth and affection. But eventually, they will love us because we loved them first.
It is tempting to wish that just once, they would make the first move. That they would love us first, that they would apologize first, that they would think about and see to our needs, rather than us always having to be the bigger person and make the first move to bridge the great divide.
If we are very lucky, perhaps they will love us first and we will grow in our love for them. But a much more likely scenario is that we continue in our mutual loathing for our enemies, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move, all the while stockpiling our list of grievances and complaints. We have a choice. We can hold onto our righteous anger and our completely justified bitterness and resentment and ensure that neither we nor our enemies will ever have peace. Or, we can put up with the temporary awkwardness and indignity of loving someone first who doesn't deserve or appreciate or reciprocate our love, because in the long run we will be able to enjoy a relationship of mutual love and affection that is infinitely better than allowing ourselves to be forever tied to an enemy that will not let us know peace.
It is not always easy loving first but to have someone abandon their hatred towards us and to love us because we loved them first is always worth it. I hope that we can follow our Savior's example and love first, so that we, like Him, can draw people into our lives who love us because we love them.
