가장 어려운 명령: 원수를 사랑할 수 있는가

The Command That Resists Us

Most moral teaching flatters us, because it tends to confirm what we already wish to believe about ourselves. The instruction to love our enemies does the opposite, demanding a response that our nature instinctively and stubbornly rejects. On a hillside in Galilee, according to the account preserved in Matthew, chapter five, Jesus urged his listeners to love their enemies and to pray for the very people who mistreated them. The words sound gentle enough until you pause and imagine actually obeying them in a moment of genuine injury. To love someone who has wronged you, deliberately and without any apology from them, feels less like wisdom than like surrender. Yet the sheer difficulty of the command may be exactly what makes it worth examining rather than dismissing. Difficult teachings, after all, tend to reveal far more about us than the comfortable ones ever could.