Doesn't everybody love HAT?

Today, I am my own enemy. Actually, I was reminded that I could very well be someone else's enemy. Me? Enemy? I love all peoples! Ah, but what if other people find it hard to love me?

I wondered: who stays up at night hating me with every fiber of their being? Who in their right minds (or wrong minds) is thinking that I'm the enemy that needs their love? Who finds it difficult to love me? Who wants to read me I Cor 13, citing passages about unconditional love because they dislike me so much?

I can think of many people right this very minute (at least two, for certain) who might think I'm a liberal nut. And perhaps they still love me despite that "flaw." There are probably quite a few who find my world views, my religious view, my cultural perspectives, and my political preferences slightly more than aggravating. These people probably pray for me every night (perhaps not in kindness though surely in earnestness).

What do I do about that? How does HAT deal with and respond to the knowledge of being someone else's enemy? How does HAT respond to the awareness of being unloved, perhaps even hated.

What does it mean, to be the enemy? How does that change my perspective? Knowing that I might be prayed for, prayed over, not b/c I'm perfect and holy and doing God's work, but because I'm hated, despised, impure, sick, incomplete, unsaved, dead inside. Because I've fallen short. Prayed for b/c someone wants to give me their other cheek. Loved despite my shortcomings. Loved despite my lack.

It is difficult for me to reframe the questions so that I am the "other" -- the enemy, the weak, the unloved. (I said in full awareness of the problematic "othering".) I have grown up believing I am "saved", that I carry the "Good News", that I am created in the perfect image of God, and that I am the one doing the loving and ministering and saving. I go "out there" to save "them" and win them "back" to Christ. A part of that echoes the CMA evangelistic upbringing of my early days in VN.

Defined or redefined as the enemy and not as the soldier in the conquering army of Christ (crusaders, folks, remember the crusaders?), I am thrown into a completely different discombobulating space.

I think of the millions of people around the world who are affected by the decisions we make here in the U.S. Military decisions, political decisions, consumerist decisions, religious and cultural decisions and reasons, etc. When we are reframed as the enemy, it's not so easy coming into other people's spaces brandishing our hero badges and claiming to rescue lives.

Figuring out the hard stuff means finding out how I can embody Christ, show Christ's love, when I'm viewed as the stranger, as the hated enemy with the evil, dominating intent in mind.

Strange as it seems, as an enemy, I gain more perspective than as the friend.