This morning began the way most mornings start around my
house: the dog woke me up to let him
outside, I stumbled into the kitchen to start the coffee, and I started
glancing through the paper. For me, that
paper is the Washington Post, and it
comes directly to my iPad this morning, so I didn’t even have to leave the
house to see what had happened in the world while I was asleep.
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| North Korean missile (AP News) |
The top story in the Post,
as it was in most papers and on most newscasts this morning, was about the July
4th missile test in North Korea and the combined response of the
United States and South Korea. I learned
little new – I had seen the story cross my Facebook newsfeed several times the
night before – but this morning something else happened: I heard from God.
Now, I readily admit this is not a normal occurrence for me,
at least not in this form. While I am a
person of deep and abiding faith, my experience of spirituality through the
years has not been overly full of conscious revelations and inner
promptings. God often speaks to me
through the teachings of Scripture and the sense of peace or discomfort I
experience through time in prayer. This
morning, though, there was a “still, small voice,” as they say, in my
head. I read the headline and the first
few sentences and the phrase flashed through my head, entirely unbidden: “Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you.”
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| Kim Jong-un |
I wish I could say that my first action upon recognizing
those words of Jesus from Matthew 5:44 was to drop to my knees and start
lifting up Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator, in prayer. Honestly, though, I didn’t pay them much
mind. I sat my iPad down, rolled over,
and went back to sleep for about 20 minutes.
When I awoke, though, the words kept coming back to me. “Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you.” Was North Korea my
enemy? I feel for the people of North
Korea, but I hold them no personal animosity.
The government in Pyongyang, however, is certainly an adversary of my
country and no friend to those who profess Christianity. It consistently ranks near the top of most
surveys of the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the world, and Open
Doors USA, an organization committed to serving the persecuted church, puts it
as the number one most oppressive place in the world for Christians. The supreme leader of the state, Kim Jong-un,
promotes a brutality inside the borders of his country and endangers the
geopolitical balance in the region in ways that threaten millions. In recent weeks, given the ongoing oppression
highlighted in the tragedy of Otto Warmbier and the ongoing nuclear and missile
tests, there can be little doubt that the North Korean regime and its head, Kim
Jong Un, are the enemy, not just of the United States, but of much of the rest
of the world. I have no love for the
dictator and his minions, none at all.
And then…I hear this word from God. There’s no debating it – the words are
written right there in my Bible, red letters and all. My calling as a follower of Jesus Christ, and
the calling of every Christian, is to love our enemies and pray for those who
persecute us. It’s what Jesus
taught. It’s what he did, even as he
hung dying on a cross. And, according to
the story of Saul/Paul on the Damascus Road, it’s what Jesus did when those
oppressed were the church. If I claim to
follow Jesus, and I do, don’t I have to at least try to live up to that
example?
Indeed I do. It is my
responsibility, my calling as a Christian, to pray for my enemies and those who
persecute the innocent and the people of God…even when that enemy is Kim Jong-un. Eventually, it’s my call to love him
– but I’m not there yet. But I can pray. I can pray that Kim Jong-un comes to
understand that his actions are hurting him and his people in the long
run. I can pray that Kim Jong-un will
come to care about others, even those he disagrees with, so that he will stop
torturing them and executing them. I can
pray that Kim Jong-un will realize his tremendous responsibility to provide
sane and compassionate leadership for his people who suffer under his
policies. I can pray that Kim Jong Un
will become aware that there is a better way than missiles and bombs and
torture and threats…the way of peace.
And, most of all, I can pray that Kim Jong-un will come to experience
Jesus just as Saul once did, because if he does, if he truly does, then God can
transform him. And even if I pray and
none of that comes to pass, it will have been effective, because I might just
come to love my enemy, as Jesus commands.
Some of the things Jesus commands us to do are almost
impossible, things like loving Kim Jong-un.
But can we at least start with something a little simpler? Can we start by praying for him?
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