We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Enemy Love

Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial

 Rob Hogeslag via Compfight

Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus shared the story of Paul Keane who offered his own burial plot to Tamerlan Tsarnaev if his family could not find a cemetery that would accept his body. You’ll remember that Tsarnaev was one of the men who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings and was killed in a shootout later in the week. Paul Keane is taking Jesus’ command to love our enemies very seriously. I wonder how the world would be different if in the wake of such hateful acts more of us could find it in ourselves to reach for love, against our more natural instincts.

From Zack’s blog:

In many ways it seems this path to perfection is a much more difficult path to tread than simply not doing certain things. After all, I don’t know about you, but my first, second, and third reactions to the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and every other event like that was not – “I know you destroyed lives out of hate, but I choose to love you anyway.”

I kind of doubt that was Paul Keane’s first reaction either. But unlike me, Paul decided to actually take Jesus at his word and live out this most difficult of callings in one of the most difficult of situations.

Related Reading

The All-or-Nothing of Kingdom Living

Nothing is more central to the kingdom of God than agreeing with God about every person’s unsurpassable worth and reflecting this in how we act toward them. Nothing is more important that living in Christlike love for all people at all times. In fact, compared to love, nothing else really matters in the kingdom. In…

Sermon Clip: The Worst of Sinners

In this short clip, Greg Boyd discusses Paul’s definition of love. In the full sermon, Greg talks about how in this dog eat dog world, we’re programmed to judge others. But to love others with unsurpassable worth, we must ascribe worth to them at cost to ourselves. In this sermon, Greg talks about how to…

Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain

These things need to stop as it relates to our faith and our politics. Image by Katie Tegtmeyer. Sourced via Flickr.

Q&A: Condemning Sin

Q: I have a question about how you answer the rare occasions when Jesus apparently felt it necessary to publicly condemn sin: like the cleansing of the temple and his very strong judgments on Pharisees and rulers in Matthew 23. Also John the Baptist who not only preached strongly regarding public sins but was imprisoned…

Topics:

The “Kingdom Now”: Reflections on Magical American Christianity

One major problem American Christians face is that we tend to embrace a magical view of the Christian faith. We assume that if a person “prays the sinners prayer,” “surrenders their life to Christ,” and “accepts Jesus as Lord of their life,” this somehow magically “saves” them and will sooner or later magically transform them…

God’s Church is Not “Pretty”

This week we’ve been looking at various aspects of what it means to be the church. Today, I want to address the paradox of how the church can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Jesus came into our fractured world to manifest the beauty of God’s reign and revolt against the evil…

Topics: