Love your enemies. Too many Christians turn this into a formula that is easily misunderstood. That is, they say, “The Christian must love everyone.” But if we ask how such a universal love should look in the concrete, we very quickly see that it does not work — or better, it can only work if it remains a mere feeling, pure emotion, a diffuse love for humanity.
The Bible is much too realistic to talk of such misty dreams. The Bible says we are to love our neighbors and also our enemies — meaning those we really have something to do with and not some millions of people we can easily love because they are so beautifully distant from us. ~Gerhard Lohfink, No Irrelevant Jesus
