New Law
A vital aspect of retail sales is the emotional reaction the customer has to the sales people. If the salesperson acts like he doesn't care about the customer, that customer is more apt to be displeased with the service or product and less likely to return. The coworkers at Kinko's are trained to greet people within 60 seconds of them entering the store and within 30 seconds of them approaching the counter. Coworkers are encouraged to smile, to talk politely, to use the person's name, and to watch for verbal and non-verbal cues that show how the customer is feeling. If the customer responds negatively, coworkers are to think about the way they are feeling and not to react emotionally but to consider how the customer feels and then relate with them in a positive way. The newest strategy is the ten-foot rule which says that anytime a customer is within ten feet, a coworker should greet that person in some way.
All of these methods make good business sense. Most of the time it seems people who come into a store are in a hurry, they are agitated about something that's not going right, someone has hurt them or made them mad and they are carrying all of that emotion with them and just waiting to dump it on someone. And they do. Coworkers at Kinko's treat them kindly and generously, until the person has left the store or the coworker is alone with other coworkers: then they let them have it. I heard one woman from a different store say that the sign above the door doesn't say Kinko's it says, "Idiots enter here." (She didn't use the word "idiot"). If customers knew what store employees said about them after they have gone, they wouldn't go back.
Recently, however, I have heard coworkers at Kinko's be reprimanded for "customer bashing." It is not a good practice to bash customers, but the reality of the situation is that salespeople are taught how to pretend to like people and, in many cases, the employee really doesn't like people very much at all. That's why we hear horror stories of abusive babysitters, unsanitary kitchens in restaurants, and prescription drugs bought off the street by pharmacists. We are taught in society how to pretend to like people without the ethical basis for truly loving our fellowman.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went beyond pretension and hypocrisy to demand a love ethic that encompasses all of humankind.
It is likely that the people who heard Jesus that day expected an end to the old order and a new, less legalistic and less rigorous ethical system. After all, Jesus was known to question the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees and to bend if not break some of the commands taught by the rabbis. But Jesus is quick to tell them that he did not come to set aside the Mosaic Law, to go against the teaching of the Scriptures: instead, he came to fulfill them. In his estimation, anyone who annuls God's commands and teaches others to do so is the lowest form of life. Jesus set the standard for obedience to the Law as beyond that which even the piciune Pharisees had attained.
Jesus went on to elaborate six antitheses in which he stated the common interpretation of the Law and how his own view went beyond the letter of the law. In the case of the prohibition against murder, Jesus took it a step further to include not being enraged and hurling epithets equivalent to idiot and moron. In the case of the prohibition against adultery, Jesus identified the sinful thought as being just as bad. In the case of the requirement of a certificate of divorce, Jesus required that the man have a valid reason, such as unchastity, before divorcing his wife. In the case of the prohibition against making false vows, Jesus went a step further and said that a person should not make any vows at all and should merely answer, "yes" or "no." In the case of the prohibition against retaliation being more than the crime -- only an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth -- Jesus demanded non-retaliation and even more. Finally, in the case of the requirement to love your neighbor, and the typical obverse "to hate your enemies," Jesus showed that a person who truly follows the spirit of God's commandments should also love their enemies.
This kingdom ethic Jesus taught is not something a person could pretend. It goes to the heart of a person's attitudes and motives. It's one thing to smile nicely to someone's face, but it is quite another to have genuine compassion and concern for the welfare of friend and enemy alike, especially when the enemy is one who wishes to harm you or your family.
John Paul Lederach, the director of the conflict analysis and transformation program at Eastern Mennonite University, learned firsthand what it was like to have an enemy. He was working in San Jose, Costa Rica as a mediator between the Miskito Indians of Costa Ricaand the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, when, one night, he received a telephone call warning him about a plot to kidnap his three year old daughter. The realization that there were people out there who hated him enough to harm his little girl helped him formulate a realistic approach to peacemaking with two seemingly contradictory biblical images concerning enemies -- "the cry to crush them and the call to love them."
With his family safely away from the conflict, John Paul worked to settle the eight-year conflict and to bring the parties together for dialogue. In the city of Puerto Cabezas, the conciliation team was to hold an open meeting at the baseball stadium. There were mobs of Sandinista youth armed with clubs, chains, and machetes, machine guns could be heard in the distance, hand-to-hand fighting and rioting was breaking out in the street. The team tried to make towards an exit in the pick-up truck they had used for a platform when someone yelled, "There's the gringo. Get him! Get him!"
At the sound of that voice there is a picture that has remained frozen in my memory. In this picture I can look out into that crowd and see the faces of young people, some whom I knew. There was a certain frenzy in their faces as their eyes turned and riveted on me. I was the enemy. Only this time, I represented the enemy they could never touch. What had for years been the source of their economic hardships, the source of the weapons for their enemies, the source of their oppression was now within their grasp. I represented America and all the suffering they could never alleviate. In their eyes I could see the years of frustration, of lost loved ones, of a pain that festers into resentment and boils over into an uncontrolled anger.The rest is a blur of a few seconds. We leaped for the truck and started the 15 yards through the mob toward the only exit. The first thing that hit us was a logging chain that shattered the windshield, sending glass into our arms and faces. By the time we had gone a few feet, there was not a window left in the truck. I can still feel the blows of stones, a two-by-four landing on my shoulder, and the splatter of Carlitos’s warm blood that hit my cheek from a blow he received in the back of the head. Miraculously, he did not pass out as he drove slowly through the stoning gauntlet.Minutes later, we were in the local hospital, where we were cleaned and stitched up by a Cuban doctor. I remember sitting in that hospital waiting room, my eyes and head jerking at the sound of shouts or gunshots. My mind was racing with one thought, “Just take me to a safe place.” I felt a fear that crossed over into paranoia.In less than a year, I had been accused of being a Sandinista spy, my daughter’s life had been threatened, I had received multiple assassination threats, I had been called a dog of the CIA, and I had been stoned.I no longer question the suspicious, paranoid attitudes of those in war, for I know the craziness of a fearful mind that looks behind every person for a threat. I no longer wonder how it is possible that one group could see another as a real threat to their existence, for I know what it feels like to be falsely accused, arrested, and interrogated. I no longer doubt the reality of an anger that flows into hate, for I have experienced such an anger within my own heart, and I have been the object of such hatred.When I hear those powerful, almost embittered words from the psalmist, I no longer have a need to dismiss them. Instead, in so many of the conflicts I see today around our globe, I am drawn to the cry that flows from the angry heart. I have come to believe much more deeply in the proper place of righteous indignation. In too many places around the world I have felt and seen waters running down a river of pain, echoing the psalmist’s cry. I am convinced that reconciliation has a home in that river that seeks deliverance and justice.
That threat to the life of his child, however, caused John Paul to look at John 3:16 in a new way. The act of God reconciling the world to himself involved him giving his only Son. To us this seems incomprehensible. It is this love that we aspire to bring to the world. John Paul admits,
I recognize that I barely understand its real height and depth, much less am I fully able to practice and live by it. I only know that this love ultimately sustains life and is the essence of the very nature of God, who sought reconciliation with the enemy through the sacrifice of his only child.As Christians, we do ourselves little favor by developing theologies of easy peace accomplished through promises of humanistic love. Quite frankly, there is nothing human about loving your enemy. To live faithfully in the face of enemies is possible only with a deep spiritual connection to God’s love and a willingness to live as vulnerably as Jesus.
John Paul Lederach understands what it is to come face to face with your enemies and to know that, in spite of the desire for God to bring a stop to the injustice and cruelty of our enemies, we all were once God's enemies for whom he gave his only son in order to bring about our reconciliation.
Jacob DeShazer also understands what it is to face one's enemies. He was the bombadier of one of sixteen B-25 bombers that attacked Japan after Pearl Harbor. After hitting their targets, they were not able to locate their landing site in China and were forced to parachute. DeShazer was soon captured by Japanese soldiers and taken prisoner. He suffered much torture and horrible prison conditions. They had all been condemned to death, but Emperor Hirohito had commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
For almost two years, DeShazer and the others struggled with starvation, fought dysentery and other illnesses, froze in winter without blankets, and baked in summer with no ventilation. At times the airman grew so angry at the brutal guards that he worried about his sanity. In quieter moments he wondered how they could be so inhumane.
Things suddenly got better: food rations increased and some books were given to the prisoners, among them a Bible. DeShazer finally got his turn to have the Bible for three weeks. He read it through several times.
The book seemed to come alive; in his dark cell, it appeared illuminated. Certain passages seemed to blaze with brightness.He read the Prophets six times. Jesus Christ fit every detail prophesied about the Messiah! Clearly Jesus was more than just a good man.DeShazer memorized Old Testament passages, the Sermon on the Mount, and the first Epistle of John. He thought about what his parents and sister had tried to tell him for many years. Now it all made sense.
DeShazer's conversion experience brought him an inner peace and joy. His dirty cell and the abuse no longer held any horror. Death held no threat. He was to learn what real love could mean.
One day after the exercise period, DeShazer’s guard hurried him toward his cell, shoved him inside, slamming the door on DeShazer’s foot. Instead of opening the door, the guard kicked the prisoner’s foot with his hobnailed boots.DeShazer desperately pushed the door until he could free his foot. His mind blazed with rage.However, Jesus’ words came to him: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them, which despitefully use you.”Nursing his foot, DeShazer wished for a while that his mind would go blank; instead, all the Scripture God had helped him memorize flooded into his mind. Calming down, he decided, God commanded me to love. What a wonderful world it would be if we would all try to love one another. I’ll try.The next morning was the test. DeShazer greeted the guard respectfully in Japanese.The guard gave him a puzzled look and said nothing.Every morning, the prisoner offered friendly greetings and received no response. Then one morning the guard walked straight to DeShazer’s cell, and spoke to him through the door. He was smiling. DeShazer asked about his family. From that time on, the guard treated him with respect and kindness, once even brought him a boiled sweet potato. Another time, the guard slipped De-Shazer figs and candy.
After the end of the war Deshazer wondered what would happen to the Japanese people. In 1948, Jacob DeShazer and his wife Florence returned to Japan as missionaries. The Japanese had already heard of his experience in the prison, and thousands of people wanted to see the man who could forgive his enemies. One man who heard was Mitsuo Fuchida who had been the flight commander of the 360 planes that attacked Pearl Harbor. As a result of DeShazer's testimony, Fuchida became a believer and the two of them accepted one another as brothers and worked to spread the gospel throughout Japan.
For these men, loving their enemies was not just a religious sentiment nor was it merely a humanistic act. We are to love our neighbor as well as our enemy because God values all human life. Most of all, it is Jesus' sacrifice that instructs us: while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son (Rom. 5:10). Jesus calls us not merely to pretend like we like people, he requires that we respond with genuine love, a love that goes beyond the letter of the law to fulfill the spirit of the law. If we get our hearts right, we will be able to be the kind of disciples Jesus sought as he preached his sermon on the mount.