Returning Love for Hate

This last week, as I continued this journey of learning more about the parable of the Good Samaritan, I researched Jericho Road itself. The more I learned, the more I realized that Jericho Road can so easily be a metaphor for our own lives!

I learned that Jericho Road is a winding, 17 mile (~25 km) road connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. The road drops 3600 feet (1,097 meters)—steeply descending or ascending, depending on which direction you’re traveling! The Jericho Road is also one of the main roads across the Judean Desert.

In a similar way, we are here on earth, separated from our Heavenly Father to learn to become like our Savior—traveling through the desert of mortality toward the promised blessings of heaven. Our journey has many unexpected twists and turns as it winds its way to our destination. It is steep, treacherous, and difficult.

While we struggle along this mortal journey, the Savior, through this parable of the Good Samaritan, asks us to watch out for those around us and help those in need. Not just those that we care for, but also those that are our enemies … He wants us to love and serve those who push us over as we struggle along our personal Jericho Road.

Jews and Samaritans were historical enemies—Christ purposefully chose a Samaritan to come to the aid of the injured traveler to teach us to love our enemies. To love ANYBODY … even someone we may have every valid reason for hating.

Who do you hate? Or if hate is too strong a word, who do you dislike? Who has hurt you deeply—so deeply that part of you is broken: your trust, your innocence, or your ability to love freely. Those of us who trust in our Savior know that He has the ability to heal these broken parts of ourselves, but sometimes this takes time and sometimes the healing doesn’t come in this lifetime. So we limp along in our brokenness, trying our best to follow His example.

But asking us to love someone who has caused our brokenness? Who has, perhaps purposefully, misused and hurt us? Who we have every valid reason and right to hate? Why would the Savior ask such a thing of us?

This last week, I have pondered this a lot … actually, there have been several periods of my life when I have had cause to ponder this; however, I didn’t write down the lessons learned then: Why does the Savior ask me to return love for hate?

I have learned it is because the Savior loves me. It is for myself that He asks me to love someone who has hurt me. I cannot move forward in becoming like Him if I am carrying anger, bitterness, or hatred in my heart. My Savior wants to change my heart, and He cannot do that if I am clinging to hurts and wrongs done to me by others.

Let me try to explain how I’ve seen this in my personal experience: if my mind is a box—there is only so much room in my mental box. If I have filled the box (my thoughts) with constantly replaying the wrongs done to me, then there is no room for anything else. No room to appreciate the beauty of my life at the moment. No room to observe the opportunities to serve all around me. No room to ponder God’s goodness to me. There is only hurt and anger and bitterness.

I have spent a lot of time trying to learn how to empty my box of anger and hurt—anger and hurt that, quite honestly, I am justified in feeling. And I have come to treasure the peacefulness of a mind free of anger, free of bitterness, free of the ugly repetition of wrongs done to me in the past—there is joy in this freedom and I embrace it!

The Savior asks me to love my enemies so that I can be free of the encumbrances of carrying the weight of hatred around—hatred breeds ugliness.

In my own journey of learning to let go of anger, I have come to appreciate the beauty of prayer and gratitude.

Prayer allows me to rage, to pour my heart out until I am wrung out and simply sob out my pain … because my Heavenly Father is my loving Father and He wants me to share my every pain with Him. I love my children and I want them to bring their every struggle to me—to allow me to be a part of their difficulties so I can share, through my own limited experience, to help them move forward. God is a perfect parent. When I pray and share my every fear, my every hurt, and my every weakness and inability to forgive on my own—He comforts, He counsels, and He heals.

Gratitude has been absolutely amazing in replacing the hurtful memories with beautiful ones. When I find my mind wandering down the dark and dreary paths of wrongs done to me, I mentally stop myself and start observing things in my life to be grateful for—these observations then lead me to see how the Lord answers my prayers. As I continue to observe the blessings I have, my eyes are opened to blessings that are direct answers to my prayers.

Did a close friend betray and hurt me? When I find myself around this person, I fill my mind with things to be grateful for and discover, in the litany of gratitude, that the Lord has brought kinder, healthier people into my life.

Does life seem overwhelmingly hard and difficult? I fill my mind with gratitude for nature, for its beauty and discover that nature teaches me that God has a season for all things, which allows me to feel at peace that I will move through this season of winter to a season of growth and warmth in His time.

I am not condoning allowing someone to abuse you—to, in any way, hurt you. You are deserving of safety—physically and emotionally. What I am saying is that the Lord wants you, His child, to also have peace of mind and that this comes by freeing yourself of hatred. Freeing yourself from allowing another person to continue to hurt you. As you learn to replace hurt and bitterness with forgiveness and love, you will learn how the Lord intends you to love that person.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us to turn our hatred into a greater love for God and for others on their own Jericho Roads.