Training for the Battle

 This week's study is on Luke 6:27-30:

 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away. 

 I was reading somewhere that before the world's militaries started changing their training in the late 20th century, less than a quarter of soldiers in war ever fired their rifles. There were a few reasons for that. Sometimes they were scared. Sometimes they were uncomfortable in the moment with the idea of killing another human being. And sometimes they just didn't know what to do and froze up.

Psychologists looked at the problem and changed the training so that the decision to act aggressively was taken from being an intellectual decision ("Oh I am being shot at. I guess I should do something. Oh but could I live with being a killer? And if I stick my head up to take aim I could die! Hmm.") to an instinctive decision ("Gunshots? Fire and move!") 

This is why you see pictures of soldiers in boot camp bayoneting stuffed dummies and yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" in unison. They are overriding the natural instinct of self-preservation and training the flesh to do what is required of it, without delaying and deliberating.

Jesus is doing a similar thing here, but instead of training his army to kill, he trains us to love. Instead of dehumanizing others, he tells us to love them, even to the point of treating them like we would treat ourselves. Other people are not "other" creatures, but "us."

He lists a bunch of scenarios where we might revert to our instinct to lash out and hate. Do we naturally want to be friendly and generous with that disrespectful and backstabbing colleague? Do we naturally want to remain vulnerable to the person who has assaulted and shamed us? Do we naturally want to give more of ourselves to those who robbed and bullied us already? To people who manipulated or pressured us into doing things for them that we didn't want to do? Do we naturally want to let people keep things they took from us? Unless you're a perfect saint, I would guess your answers in those cases would be an emphatic "No way!"

Jesus asks us to overpower our instincts and to allow his Holy Spirit to train us to act differently. We look at the scenarios in our lives that could be dangerous and we decide in advance how we are going to act. If someone cuts you off in traffic and almost causes you to get in an accident, is that the moment you want to be weighing the strengths and weaknesses of being Christlike? In that moment, you're probably just as emotional as the soldier who is being shot at, your veins flooded with a mix of anger, fear, confusion, hatred, judgment, and cowardice. Are you training for that moment? Or do you just plan to wing it?

Jesus challenges those of us who are listening to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. He wants us to prepare for the battle against our flesh before it happens. He wants us to know what is expected and to be ready to live it out. Go through the training scenarios Jesus mentions and imagine what you would do, and then what you should do. Same for the training scenarios you know you tend to fail at. What will it take for you to win the battle? Train in peace so that you can win in war.