The Psalms are primarily a prayer book, written prayers for all occasions. If you aren’t sure what to pray go to the Psalms.
One of the categories of the Psalms (along with Lament, Praise, et al) is what is called the Imprecatory Psalms. Better known as, “cursing Psalms.”
These Psalms raw-ly call down curses on enemies. This is in the Bible.
How do we square this with Jesus’ very clear command to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44)?
There is an impulse in all religion to use God to champion our own cause. In life, we get hurt. Bad things happen. We gain enemies. It’s a fact of life. If Jesus—the sinless son of God—had enemies, don’t somehow think you will escape the same fate. Jesus’ enemies killed him.
Where we go right in praying for God to take care of our enemies is in praying our emotion to God. So, we leave it there in God’s hands. “Vengeance is mine; it is mine to repay, declares the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:19)
This is one of the singular powers of the Psalms—we are invited to bring our emotion to God, not required to work it out before we come to God. The Psalms teach us prayer is the atmosphere in which we work out our life—including the messy parts—with God.
This is crucial to you living whole-hearted because many think they aren’t “supposed” to feel strong emotion, especially an emotion like disgust or hate for an enemy. No, the Psalms say. "This is part of the catalog of the human heart we need to bring to God. Come, in prayer, with it to God who knows how to handle it."
Where we go wrong in praying for God to take care of our enemies is in thinking because we pray it to God, therefore God is on our side.
Getting this right/wrong tension right requires a dual understanding.
First, an understanding of the purposes of God.
With regard to human affairs, God is on God’s side. We are to join God in God’s purposes, not try and cajole or enlist God for ours. Our enemies are just that, ours. God actually loves the person who hurt us. He sends his rain to the righteous and unrighteous. While we were his enemies, he put himself on the cross for us. God is focused on loving people and reconciling enemies to himself. Our perception of our enemy has us stuck so that we can’t yet.
Second, an understanding of the human heart.
The heart, Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, is yacob—a Hebrew derivative of the name of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob. It means slippery, tricky, deceitful. In other words, our own heart has the ability to fool us.
It's why we can misunderstand (like the Pharisees) that praying an emotion doesn’t then make God a cheerleader for our cause. We can get caught in our heart and miss God’s purpose.
As Christians, we take Jesus’ words to heart and turn them into action. This is what obedience means.
So when we hear a command--we are commanded to love our enemies—we examine God’s purpose and use it to guide our heart so we can act on what God says is best.
Since we are human beings with emotions and feelings, we struggle.
Here are four pieces of pastoral advice about your emotion toward your enemy.
#1 Don’t discount what you feel.
You may need to listen—with some wise counsel—to what you are feeling and hear the deepest call of God’s Spirit from it. There is likely both something for you to learn and something in you that needs healing. Remember, part of the lexical range of the New Testament word for salvation is “healing.” Emotion is a signpost pointing toward healing, if we’ll pay attention to it. It's why the Psalms teach you to pray your emotion.
#2 Don’t give moral weight to your emotions.
You are a limited, fallible human being...just like the person you see as an enemy. Emotion is great feedback, but a terrible rudder. So, you aren’t “right”, you feel something. Deal with what you feel not with the conclusions you’ve drawn in a cloud of emotion. This means talking to someone trusted about the situation.
#3 Often, sincere Christians who want to do what’s right hold to an overly spiritualized understanding of relational boundaries.
Loving your enemy doesn’t mean you bring them into your inner circle. It’s not unloving to process what you feel and maintain distance from someone in the short term. You can give a cup of cold water, return evil for good, pray for, and do good to an enemy without having them in your inner circle.
#4 In commanding us, Jesus is inviting us to do the thing that heals the world and in so doing, our own soul. All commands are invitations to the life God wants us to have.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy’, but I say to you ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
-Jesus in Matthew 5
- Pastor Scott Marshall, Wichita First Church of the Nazarene