Love your enemies

The peoples of Israel in the centuries recorded in Judges were constantly at war with their neighbours. Enemies everywhere. In many chapters, it seems that the silver thread of the Christ Messiah is missing.

Oh, to hear Mary Baker Eddy’s commentary on the chapter Judges! Didn’t she say that everything in the Bible can be interpreted spiritually?

How grateful we can be for Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of enemies given in Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 in the article Love Your Enemies: “Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect” (8:17-19).

It seems like a good time to re-read this remarkable article. I will.

On looking up Love Your Enemies in the Concordance to Prose Works Other than Science and Health, I found the listing of ‘enemy’ very revealing.

Here is the Concordance listing under enemy:

Mis. 8-9 Who is thine e

8-11 Can you see an e

8-12 except you first formulate this e

8-17 count your enemy to be that which

8-20 Whatever purifies,. . . is not an e

9-32 all that an enemy or enmity can

10-30 and this one e is yourself

10-32 Soon or late, your e will wake

42-14 or destroyed this last enemy

38-31 The e is trying to make capital

76-32 overcame the last e, death.

170-1 the last e to be overthrown;

223-27 * “If I wished to punish my e

Un. 540-16 its most potent and deadly e

Pul. 2-18 fiercely besieged by the e

2-25 e we confront would overthrown

7-13 away from the e of sinning sense

My 185-21 destroys the last e, death

283-15 Sin is its own e

300-15 overcome “the last e” – I Cor. 15-26

358-10 pray that the e of good cannot

So we are to watch our thinking to put to silence any and every thought which would “dethrone the Christ-image that you should reflect.”

Lessons for the world!

Joyce Voysey