“Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
So when Jesus says “love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies-or else? The chain reaction of evil- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate bring irreparable damage to its victims.
We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious deaths brought to six million Jews by a hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by blood-thirsty mobs, in the dark horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated against millions of God’s children by unconscionable oppressors.
But there is another side which we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Modern psychology recognizes what Jesus taught centuries ago: Hate divides the personality and love in an amazing and inexorable way unites it.
A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr. Christmas Speech, Dec. 25, 1957
Related:
Living Together in Peace – Martin Luther King, Jr.; 1964
Surrendering to the Paradigm of Love
Creative by Nature 
He was a very smart man. The news this week was all about the multiplication of hate.
The more complete quote was “Love your enemies as yourself . . .” The part “as yourself” is actually a clue to the question of why we should love our enemies. Most NDE testimonies include descriptions of a process called “the life review”. It is during this review in which we get to experience what it was like to be on the receiving end of our actions while we were occupying the human bio-vehicle. Not only that, but we also experience the ripples — iow, how our actions not only affected those with whom we were directly involved, but also those whom we might never have actually met, but who were nevertheless affected by our actions. For example, let’s say we happened to treat an employee unfairly, terminating them for something that wasn’t even their fault. We will not only feel exactly what that employee felt, but also how their family might have suffered as a result of our unfair treatment. The bottom line — there is no separation, no self & other, except in our imagination. In the life review, we meet the enemy, and it is us, so why not get a head start and recognize that while here?
Incredible insight. Thank you for giving me a ray of hope…
You are welcome!!
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