Chapter Four begins with a startling claim by Desmond Tutu about the breadth and reach of God’s love: “if we are truly to understand God loves all of us, we must recognize that He loves our enemies, too. God does not share our hatred, no matter what the offense we have endured.”
God loves our enemies: God loves those who hate us or who seek to harm us, and God loves those whom we hate because they have injured us, by word, deed or omission, or because of who they are or what they represent.
Now the author has my full attention!
I’m married, and I have two children, who love each other and their parents ... most of the time. I have neighbors: some who drive through the neighborhood too fast, others who are too slow to shovel snow from their sidewalks or who fail to clean up after their dogs. We all get along in my neighborhood ... except for the people who don’t talk to each other. I’m a priest, and I minister on the campus of a large university, where grudges, resentments, jealousies, passive-aggressive behaviors, slights, prejudices, dislikes, vindictiveness and animosity are a speciality of every academic department and program. In the diocese and wider church I serve on a bunch of committees and boards. “See how those Christians love one another” - I wish that were true. Sigh.
In this chapter, the Archbishop leads us into the depths of his experience as a leader of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, who was hated by those whose policies he opposed, and as a father, who was humiliated by the need to explain to his children why they could not visit a beautiful beach reserved only for whites. These personal stories give credibility to his proclamation of a God of love who commands us to love our enemies, and who has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.
His stories from the anti-Apartheid struggle are inspiring, both for the courage and patience of those who led the opposition and resistance - and for their astonishing capacities for empathy and deep theological discernment:
Malusi Mpumlwana was a young enthusiastic activist and close associate of Steve Biko in the crucial Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was involved with others in vital community development and health projects with impoverished and often demoralized rural communities. As a result, he and his wife were under strict surveillance and constantly harassed by the ubiquitous security police. They were frequently being held in detention without trial and at the time of my story involving him he was serving a five-year banning order in his Eastern Cape township. When a person was banned, not only were they literally under house arrest, they could not speak publicly or meet with any more than one other person at a time. He had somehow given the security police the slip and had come to Johannesburg and was with me in my office, where I was serving as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. He said that during his frequent stints in detention, when the security police routinely tortured him, he used to think, "These are God's children and yet they are behaving like animals. They need us to help them recover the humanity they have lost."
Time after time Tutu brings us back to the simple but powerful insight that love and forgiveness begin with our recognition of another’s humanity and with our acknowledgment of the ways in which our hatred has twisted our humanity and blinded us from recognizing and responding to our neighbors as children of God.
Tutu is practical. He writes directly about the questions for which we want answers: “How then do we embrace our enemies? How do we get rid of the hatchet forever instead of just burying it for a time and digging it up later? True enduring peace, between countries, within a country, within a community, within a family, requires real reconciliation between former enemies and even between loved ones who have struggled with one another.”
Notice how he brings the discussion home to where we live:
True reconciliation is based on forgiveness, and forgiveness is based on true confession, and confession is based on penitence, on contrition, on sorrow for what you have done. We know that when a husband and wife have quarreled, one of them must be ready to say the most difficult words in any language, "I'm sorry" and other must be ready to forgive for there to be a future for their relationship. This is true between parents and children, between siblings, between neighbors and between friends. Equally, confession, forgiveness and reconciliation in the lives of nations are not just airy-fairy religious and spiritual things, nebulous and unrealistic. They are the stuff of practical politics.
Whether in the context of systems that dehumanize and oppress those who are different from those who are privileged or powerful, or in the intimate sphere of our homes and families, forgiveness and reconciliation begin from the same clear-eyed and persistent ethic to love as God loves - completely and indiscriminately.
Ultimately, Desmond Tutu gives me the courage to face my own culpability and to take responsibility for seeking reconciliation and forgiveness in my life and among the people closest to me: family, neighbors and my fellow Christians.
God Has a Dream gives me hope - a hope shaped by the gospel. “In the act of forgiveness we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to change. We are saying here is a chance to make a new beginning.”
What truth has touched you in these pages? What has been your experience of reconciliation and forgiveness? What is stopping you from loving your enemies? Who needs to hear a word of hope and encouragement from you?
Yours in Christ,
Greg+The Reverend Gregory Bezilla
Episcopal Chaplain to Rutgers University
bezilla@rci.rutgers.edu
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