Love your enemies

 A reflection a morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 12th May 2026

Donald Trump deleted this image after many criticised him for posting it.
He may see himself as a Messiah, but he is the opposite.

‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.’ How easy it is for us to say these words, but how hard it is for us to abide by them!

The reading we’ve just heard (Luke 6:27-38), is part of the ‘Sermon on the Plain’. It comes just after the Beatitudes which we said at the start of our service. In the reading, Jesus commands his disciples – then and now – both you and me - to respond to hatred with love, something which runs contrary to our natural human instincts.

Yet there is great psychological wisdom here. The key is the ethical principle of nonviolence. If we respond to hatred and violence with our own hatred and violence, we escalate conflict. We damage both our enemy and ourselves. Our mental health suffers.

There is nothing specifically Christian in this. Jains in India consider the highest ethical value of all to be nonviolence towards all living beings, in action, word and thought. Gandhi, a Hindu, drew on the long history of nonviolence in Indian religious thought in his successful campaign to force the British out of India.

But there is something much deeper in this for us as Christians. We believe that all human beings are created in the image of our loving God. Our God loves our enemies, just as much as he loves us. To hate our enemy is to reject God’s love for us. To take the speck of sawdust out of our enemy’s eye, we must first take the log out of our own eye.

What are the practical implications of this? Consider the President of the United States, Donald Trump. His cruel domestic policies are tearing families apart in his own country. His policy of using tariffs to bend other countries to do his bidding threatens livelihoods around the world. His boosting of fossil fuels puts at risk Earth’s natural systems upon which all life depends. And his reckless use of military force has brought only death and destruction. I can only see Trump as my enemy, and the enemy of all that is good in the world.

How should I as a Christian respond to Trump? Pope Leo IV shows us the way, I think. He has not bowed to Trump’s bullying. He has called him out, saying, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. And Sarah Mullaly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has expressed solidarity with Pope Leo, calling Christians to work and pray for peace, and to urge political leaders to pursue every possible peaceful and just means of resolving conflict.

In a spirit of nonviolence, I can speak truth to Trump and his supporters – by doing so I show my love for him. I can support those who reject Trump’s evil regime, even if it costs me – by doing so I do good to him. I can ask God to bless Trump by awakening his conscience to do good, not evil – by doing so I bless him. And I can pray that God will soften Trump’s hard heart - by doing so I pray for his immortal soul, that he may not be cut off from God’s love forever.

Only the people of the United States can remove Trump and his hate filled MAGA gang, of course. Mid-term elections are due in the autumn, and Americans increasingly reject him, according to opinion polls. We may hope that his capacity to do harm may soon be limited.

God’s love will surely defeat Trump’s hate in the end.

Forgiveness

Erica Kirk speaking at the memorial service of her husband Charlie Kirk

Article printed in the October 2025 issue of Grapevine, the news sheet of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

I suspect few if any of us had heard of Charlie Kirk before his foul murder in America on 10^th September. Aged 18, he set up Turning Point USA to advocate for conservative values on school and university campuses around the USA. He became deeply embedded in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, cultivated friendship with many of its leaders, and is credited with encouraging many young people to vote for Trump in 2024. Since his assassination, MAGA is now trying to make him into a martyr for the MAGA cause, justifying persecution of their enemies.

Like most if not all of us, I detest Donald Trump. He claims to be a Christian, but his words and actions make a mockery of it. He is an avowed enemy of the liberal, democratic views I espouse. He is making our world a much more dangerous place, and blighting the lives of millions, not least in his own country. But Trump is an old man, two years older even than me. His confused and rambling speech, and erratic decision making, suggest he may be developing dementia. He will not last forever. What really concerns me is the MAGA movement he has created, which looks set on establishing an amoral autarchy to perpetuate a US government where might is right, and the purpose of the state is to punish opponents and enrich a coterie of billionaires.

I don’t seek to disparage Charlie Kirk’s evangelical Christian faith, but I am disgusted by his political views. He facilitated Trump, espousing Christian nationalism, young earth creationism, climate change denial, and islamophobia.

Charlie’s wife Erika, however, seems to be made of different stuff. In an emotional eulogy for her dead husband at a memorial service in Arizona before a crowd of more than 100,000, she bravely offered forgiveness to the shooter who killed Charlie, saying,

"My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life..."

"On the cross, our Saviour said: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' That man - that young man - I forgive him. I forgive him because it's what Christ did. And it's what Charlie would do."

"The answer to hate is not hate. The answer - we know from the gospel - is love. Always love. Love for our enemies. Love for those who persecute us.”

It is well worth watching or reading her speech, which you can find by googling ‘erica kirk full speech’.

I am deeply moved by her words. It would have been so easy for her to express her grief through words of hate, riling up the crowd to seek revenge. But she did not, she spoke of love and forgiveness, truly Christian values. Unlike Trump himself, who spoke of hating his opponents. I think her words in that febrile atmosphere may have prevented an orgy of revenge attacks on people the MAGA crowd see as enemies. We shall see, but as the new leader of Turning Point USA, I pray that she will continue to speak words of love, not hatred, and help to bring a bitterly divided USA back to sanity, back to Christian values, back from the brink. May God bless her, may God bless America, and God bless every one of us.