Absolutely. Bad people are stlll people. That’s more like, “Respect your enemy’s moral dignity,” though. I’m still free to believe the world would be better off if he were dead. **
[/QUOTE]
In my opinion it is deeper than that.
Re-read what smiling bandit said. Hate is a self delusion based on lack of connection. Wishing a person dead is fuel for the fire, the ‘love the enemy’ suggestion is one based on finding the connection and the humanity (or godhood depending on your viewpoint) in the object of derision/hate/aversion.
I disagree. A Nazi may be a good family man. Unless he’s neurotic, he probably thinks of himself as a good person. After all, he’s working to improve the genetic purity of the human race, while ridding the Fatherland of a deadly internal threat. Or maybe he’s just a regular guy doing his job. We all have to do our job, right? Because he’s a human being, he gets sad sometimes, frightened sometimes, and wants to be liked, but if you let him live, he’ll continue to murder innocents. The world would be a better place if you took this priceless individual, made in the image of God–I’m not being the least bit sarcastic here–and shot him. It would be wrong to hurt him just for fun, but I’m not apt to hug him or make him my Awesome Baked Macaroni With Three Different Kinds of Cheese, either. If you love your enemies, what’s left to give your friends?
I’m with you, coffeecat. People like Adolph Eichmann were sure that they were not only good people, but heroic. Eichmann told the Israeli tribunal that condemned him that he was proud of his work, because he did it efficiently. He didn’t feel like a criminal. People who do evil things are not necessarily mad, or even evil in the sense of lacking all good. Nevertheless, they should be destroyed. How can you destroy them without a healthy bracing of hate? It is sometimes necessary to kill an enemy. Armies recognize the need to create contempt, if not outright hatred for the enemy. That’s what makes it possible for the kid next door to kill them, and then come home and raise his good, peaceful, law-abiding family.
In the best of all worlds you wouldn’t have enemies. In this one, you’d better learn to love them less than your friends if you expect to survive. If you recall, Jesus, the itinerant human(IMO) preacher didn’t survive. Again, IMO. Please save the resurrection argument for another thread. That’s just my agnostic opinion. I know many of you may not agree. This thread is about what he is quoted as saying. I don’t agree with loving your enemies. Respect them, perhaps. Avoid them if possible. Destroy them if absolutely nevcessary. But love them? I don’t think so.