“Love thy enemy” also means to fight without hatred. To fight because you are following God’s law, and that’s all. To disengage from personal rancor and pray for the person who has fallen into so much evil that you are required to fight them, without taking it personally.
Needless to say, it’s easier said than done.
But it’s also the flip side of not fighting back and letting evil people walk all over you simply because liberals keep insisting that Jesus was a wimp. And is it really all that confusing that evil interprets this teachng as not fighting back at all? Otherwise it would get its @ss kicked.
Hate comes from anger tricked by evil.
You can’t change a soul’s mind if you kill his body. To give up on a soul is what we SPECIFICALLY ask God exactly iyioNOT to do in the Our Father and every prayer for Mercy.
Our faith is afraid like Saint Peter’s was until He truly experienced Jesus’ love and mercy. It is easy to offer my life....but what about my kids’ lives or your kids’ lives? My life’s loss might save theirs but if it likely wont, then I must become a soldier that the enemy I pray for cannot hurt those innocents on my side of the line and I will seek as strongly to not hurt the innocents on his side of the line....and what fools we are to have to be shooting at each other while the devil laughs at our predicament.....his hate/anger and my fear for my innocents.
You are so right. Adversaries are here so that we know how to fight.