WISDOM WHISPERS™ · LOVE & RESPONSIBILITY
WHISPER 08“We cannot resolve what we continue to reproduce.”— Bishop W. F. Houston Jr.
BENEATH THE WHISPER
When Your Response Repeats the Problem
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,”
To love. In Luke 6:27, Jesus gives this command concrete expression through the accompanying instruction to do good. Love must shape our conduct toward the enemy, even when affection and agreement are absent.
Someone else may have started the hostility. Are our responses helping it survive? We can correctly identify another person’s wrongdoing while refusing to examine the conduct it has awakened in us. The injury becomes our explanation; eventually, we begin treating it as our permission.
Jesus addresses people who hear Him and commands them to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them. He does not make obedience conditional on the enemy’s apology. His command interrupts retaliation at the point where wounded people are tempted to reproduce the very evil they condemn.
You are responsible for your response; you are not responsible for another person’s decision to mistreat you. Loving an enemy does not make wrongdoing acceptable, erase accountability, or require unrestricted access to your life. Necessary boundaries and truthful confrontation can coexist with a refusal to seek revenge.
Examine what you are passing forward. Has someone’s contempt become the pattern for your speech? Has their dishonesty become your excuse to deceive? Before answering the next provocation, ask what active goodness and truthful restraint would require. Their behavior must not become the authority governing your character. Let obedience to Christ determine what you reproduce.
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