Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Love your enemies

Rev. Marlin Lavanhar gave a great sermon on 02/05/12 at All Souls in Tulsa, Oklahoma entitled "Love Your Enemies?" I recommend it to you. You can access it by clicking here.


How have you found it possible to love your enemies? Leave a comment, please.

5 comments:

  1. Well I just *love* watching the Totalitarian Unitarian self-described "Citizens' Police Officer" known as U*U COP make a complete U*U out of himself on U*UTube. . .

    Does that count? ;-)

    I seem to recall Jesus' contemporary*, the Roman poet Ovid, saying -

    "If you want to be loved, be lovable. . ."

    There is actually not a whole lot of evidence for Jesus loving his enemies in the Bible, indeed there is plenty of evidence of Jesus seeking to severely punish his enemies, most notably Satan.

    No?



    * More or less. . .

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  2. When we reminisce about the sports heroes of that century, there would be no Jesse Owens. No Jackie Robinson or Althea Gibson. No Muhammad Ali, [no Tiger Woods, no Venus Williams, no Michael Jordan].

    [No Whitney Houston.]

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  3. Dear Robin:

    I am not lovable all the time. None of us are. We all have our shadow side, our defects, our imperfections. What about mercy? and grace? and forgiveness?

    Most of life is B.S. as you know, and I strive to rise above it. It gives me more peace in my life.

    All the best,

    David Markham

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  4. My point was that even Jesus did not practice what he allegedly preached about loving one's enemies. If the originator of the saying does not live up to it why should anyone else?

    I like Ovid's saying because it urges is to *be* lovable if we want to be loved. It is true that he was talking about erotic love aka sexual attraction but the saying has much broader application. AFAIAC Nobody should expect to be loved if they are not behaving in a manner that can be properly described as "lovable".


    I believe that it is entirely possible to practice mercy and forgiveness without actually loving one's enemies. In fact one *can* be merciful and "forgiving" out of sheer contempt for one's enemies as Christian scripture suggests elsewhere. . .

    I am not convinced that "most of life is B.S." but I certainly agree that there is plenty of B.S. to go around, including no shortage of B.S. in the U*U religious community. . . It never ceases to amaze me how so many U*Us, including "less than perfect" U*U clergy and top level UUA leaders like President Peter Morales and UUA Moderator Gini Courter, repeatedly prove U*U principles and ideals to be nothing but B.S. via their hypocritical words and actions (or indeed their complicit silence and negligent inaction. . .) that make a total mockery of The Seven Principles etc.

    Here is another version of Ovid's saying that is pertinent here -

    If you want to be forgiven, be forgivable. . .

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  5. BTW That snotty snobbish* Stanford professor mentioned in the beginning of Rev. Lavanhar's sermon sounds a *lot* like some of the less than lovable U*Us I have the misfortune to know. . .


    * Dare I say "elitist"?

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