Love Your Enemy: The enemy Within & Without

Love your enemies, so the Bible instructs us. Is it just a moralistic dictum? More so, is it practically possible? I am neither a theologian nor an expert in matters pertaining to religious doctrines but hear me out.

The term "enemy" is used in reference to hostility or hatred for a particular person, group, or nation. It’s also possible to be one’s own enemy. The perceived individual qualities of a particular enemy can be seen as the personification of our unconscious tendencies, the shadow aspects (as coined by Carl Jung) of ourselves that are denied and disowned. Thus, the enemy possesses the disowned part of the self.

Let’s say you deny and disown your natural tendencies to anger, hostility, and pride. You are more likely to interact with people who possess such attributes, or have a tendency to perceive innocent acts as illustrations of aggression and hostility. Such cases serve as a mirror to reflect back your disowned attributes. You are more likely to term such individuals enemies out of indignation. This is projection.

There is a simple analogy I use to illustrate projection. Let’s say you are watching a movie with various scenes of violence projected on a wall. The laptop is the source of the video, but the aggression is seen on the wall. Fairly, who is the enemy? Is it the wall, the laptop, or the movie? If we look keenly, we can easily see a part of ourselves in the enemy. Is this the reason why the Bible prescribes us to love the enemy?

Is loving your enemy a covert way of encouraging integration of the shadow? Shadow integration entails the acknowledgment and acceptance of attributes assigned to the enemy. This includes accepting one’s anger, lust, hate, greed, dishonesty, envy, pride, aggressive tendencies, anxiety, evil, among others. You can’t control anger without first acknowledging your capacity for it, and so it is with other traits. Anger is a natural emotion that has helped the human species to fight or flee from danger. All of these traits we regard as negative are natural and adaptive.

Loving your disowned parts (enemy) entails deep appreciation and acceptance of the duality of being, without necessarily succumbing to one or the other fully. It is imperative to acknowledge that too much sun leads to droughts, famine, and desertification, while too much rain leads to floods and famine. The excesses of both states lead to catastrophic consequences. It is the balance of both states that leads to positive results. As such, a windy and sunny day is the best day for washing clothes.

Naivete isn’t a virtue; being dangerous is. Naivete can be equated to the attribute of a mother who presumes immortality and doesn’t allow the child to attain independence from her. She might term it as maternal instinct, but this position destroys both the mother and the child. In animalistic terms, if he can’t hunt, he starves. More so, if she can’t run, she’s eaten. Those are the rules, the predator targets the weak or the young.

Such a parent has projected her insecurities and denial of mortality onto her child. Otherwise, she ought to admit she can’t always be there to provide for and protect the child, which offers her the opportunity to promote and encourage his individuation.

How is it possible that the excess pursuit of good yields evil in the long run? Picture a woman in an abusive relationship who stays in the abusive marriage in the virtue of endurance and upholding the marriage vows: in sickness and in health, and other idealistic things couples say to each other under the influence of powerful emotions. Other factors might also be in play: “What will people say?” “Staying for the children,” societal/moral obligations that purport to say “the wife builds and destroys the home with her own hands,” and the psychosocial pressures of raising the children alone.

Her stay in the marriage might be “justifiable” in her own terms, or societal/moral terms. But in the long run, the relationship dynamics are detrimental to her and the children. Her body, self-concept, self-esteem, self-confidence, and mental health are fractured. It goes without saying, the more you move upward on a staircase, the larger the distance of your fall; the more massive the potential injury.

The more such a woman can recognize and accept her projected capacity for violence (attributable to the abusive husband - the enemy), the more she can be in a position to stand up for herself, exit the relationship, and sue the abusive partner. In doing so, she will have become dangerous: an integrated monster. Therefore, loving the enemy within and without.

How, then, can she be able to recognize the enemy within? The enemy without acts as a psychological mirror, reflecting her shadow aspects i.e., her anger, aggression, hostility, entitlement, and hatred. What if she purports not to possess such emotions and instincts? Well, then, isn’t she a human? More so, the fact that she is in an abusive relationship has afforded her those emotions and facilitated their repression.

The attribution of our shadow aspects onto enemies enables their formation and continued existence. The more we continue to dump our unconscious, unacceptable emotions onto other people, groups, and nations, the more we perpetuate evils in society. If World War I and II were catastrophic, then a war in the modern world could wipe out the entire human civilization; almost equivalent to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as depicted in the Old Testament. Loving your enemy, thus entails loving the enemy within and without!

I suppose you could make the necessary changes to transform your life and make it more meaningful. You could take up a new role, act differently, and embrace your fate. The choice is entirely yours, regardless of the chaos in your life. More specifically, your attitude.

“Our disowned aspects come bearing gifts. We see in others what we like and don’t like in ourselves” ~Debbie Ford

    ~John Wanjiru

 Mental Health Professional  

wanjirukjohn@gmail.com