Let’s not forget the Christian demand of discipleship: “Love your enemies.” Central to the Gospel announcement of Jesus is the nonviolent love of those who would oppose us: sometimes physically and other times ideologically. At the center of discipleship is love–love for God and for neighbors. And lest we forget the criteria for a “neighbor,” Jesus makes that clear in the story of the Good Samaritan: a neighbor is the person we naturally hate. For a Jew in the first century to even acknowledge a Samaritan as anything but a despised traitor to the God of Israel was unthinkable! Yet that is exactly what Jesus called his hearers to–to equate enemies to the status of neighbor. Therefore, a neighbor is any and every person on the face of this earth that we like, dislike, or would even consider an enemy. We are called to love our enemy-neighbors.
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