Loving Ourselves and Others Part 5

September 19, 2026

We were made to love, but sometimes we choose not to love. Why would we refuse to do something so natural to our souls? There are many reasons. Among them are inherited or learned prejudice, feelings of superiority, projection, apathy, and, perhaps most powerfully, hatred.

Let us reflect for a moment on hatred as a reason we withhold love.

When we are harmed—or threatened with harm—our defenses naturally arise. We turn our attention toward protecting ourselves. We develop intensely negative feelings toward those who have hurt us, those who have harmed someone we love, or those whom we believe intend to injure us. From the suffering we have endured, anger arises. If that anger remains unexamined and unhealed, it may harden into hatred.

Anger and hatred, however, are not quite the same. Anger can alert us to danger, awaken us to injustice, and give us the strength to establish necessary boundaries. Hatred goes further. It builds a wall between the other person and us that love cannot easily pass through. It may reduce that person to the harm they have done and convince us that their defeat or destruction is necessary for our safety. It may cause us to demonize someone, a family, an organization, or even a culture.

Hatred is both reactive and retaliatory. Its retaliation may be active and openly aggressive or hidden and passive-aggressive. Either way, hatred carries an intense energy directed toward the perceived enemy. We may believe this energy protects us from further injury. Indeed, hatred may have begun as the wounded self’s attempt to keep us safe. This is why relinquishing it can feel so frightening—almost as if we were lowering our defenses in the presence of danger.

When hatred has become our protection, even the thought of extending love toward an enemy may seem like a dangerous breach in our defenses. Love may appear weak, naïve, or completely irrelevant.

Yet Christ instructed us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He calls us to love even those who wish us harm and those who have harmed the people we cherish. Why would Christ ask something of us that seems humanly impossible?

First, love for an enemy reflects God's nature. Jesus reminded us that God causes the sun to rise upon both the good and the evil and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous. Divine Love does not deny wrongdoing, but neither does it withdraw the essential dignity bestowed upon every human soul.

Second, loving our enemies interrupts the cycle of hatred and retaliation. Jesus taught this, as have moral and spiritual visionaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malala Yousafzai. Hatred answered with hatred multiplies hatred. Violence answered only with retaliation produces further violence. When even one person refuses to return hatred for hatred, evil cannot perpetuate itself through that person.

Third, loving our enemies protects our inner freedom. When we live in resentment, those who harmed us continue to occupy our minds, hearts, and bodies. They may be absent from our lives geographically yet remain painfully present within us. Love and forgiveness gradually release us from hatred’s prison. They take away the enemy’s power to determine the condition of our souls.

And fourth, hatred is not inactive— it eats us from the inside out. It can overtake our lives, become its driving force, and steal our joy and original purpose.

Loving our enemies does not mean approving of evil, suppressing our anger, or pretending that we were not wounded. It does not require immediate reconciliation, especially when there has been no repentance or change. Nor does it mean remaining in a dangerous or abusive situation. Love may require distance, firm boundaries, truth-telling, accountability, and consequences. We may vigorously oppose another person’s actions while refusing to deny that person’s humanity.

When we are threatened or have been harmed, we may become inflamed with the desire to even the score. Anger fuels hatred, and the agitated ego prepares for battle. The ego possesses strategies, armor, weapons, and intelligence. It knows how to defend, retaliate, and wage war. These capacities may sometimes be necessary for protection, but when hatred rules the ego, it can easily become an instrument of vengeance.

Christ calls us to another way—not to become less human, but to allow our humanity to be transformed by the Divine. He calls us to let the soul lead the ego, using the ego’s strength, intelligence, and capacity for protection without allowing it to become possessed by hatred. This is the movement from egocentricity to soul-centricity—from personality to soulality.

Loving an enemy may not change the enemy. But it changes what the enemy can produce within us. Hatred is no longer permitted to reproduce itself in our hearts, direct our behavior, determine who we are becoming, or destroy our serenity.

I believe that loving our enemies is impossible when attempted by the ego alone. But Christ did not ask the ego to accomplish it alone. He invited us to draw upon the Divine Love within us—a love strong enough to confront evil without becoming evil, to seek justice without seeking revenge, and to resist hatred without becoming possessed by it. The qualities of soul are superpowers that move us beyond the ego’s limitations.

Spiritual Practice

Bring to mind someone, some group or culture, toward whom you may carry hatred or deep resentment. Without excusing their behavior or surrendering any necessary boundary, ask God to prevent that hatred from determining the condition of your soul.

Inquiry

What hatred may still occupy a place within us? What truth, boundary, or act of justice may be needed? And what might become possible if we asked the Divine to begin transforming that hatred—not all at once, perhaps, but one honest and courageous step at a time?

Prayer

Dear God,

I pray for the power of Your love to transform any hatred in me that lives in me or arises within me.

Amen