“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:27-28
Rifles and a backyard table
Yohanna Katanacho, a Palestinian Christian and scholar, taught me the foundation on which to rebuild my understanding of Israel and Palestine: love. As a young believer, he sensed God’s clear command to love his enemies. An impossible task for a Palestinian in the late 1980s, when soldiers could shoot Palestinians if they did not present their papers promptly and properly. He had friends who had been injured or killed. But Yohanna prayed and asked God to give him this love for his enemies.
One frightening night, with three M-16 barrels leveled at his head, Yohanna lifted his hand to his chest and said, “I have a heart here that loves you.” The words surprised everyone, him most of all. He spoke with the soldiers for 20 minutes. When one finally said, “I wish all Palestinians were like you,” Yohanna answered, “No, I wish that you were like me.”
His witness wasn’t agreement with the system that threatened him. It was a refusal to surrender a human face to fear.
I learned this lesson on a quieter street and at a far lower tension in my back yard. My pastor had challenged us to love our enemies in church one Sunday. What enemy? I wondered. After some thefts in the alley and a steady traffic of strangers in my alley behind my house, I realized I did have an enemy: Michael, the neighbor dealing drugs from his mother’s garage. I started praying, not eloquently, just, “Lord, help,” while folding laundry and rinsing plates. Then the smallest changes began to happen, in me. I allowed my daughters to play with his girlfriend’s daughters. Wendy and I talked, drank coffee together, then prayed together. Eventually Michael would come by also for a piece of cake, some lemonade on a hot day. And kindness. As kids played in the sprinklers, we shared kindness.
One afternoon I told the truth: “My pastor asked me to pray for my enemies. I’ve been praying for you ever since. You’re kind to the girls and to your mom, but I hate the dealing in the alley. My daughters play here.” He nodded and listened with respect. “Thank you for saying it straight,” he said.
Enemy-love did not mean pretending harm was harmless. It meant naming the harm and still offering a chair. Between raised rifles and a patio table, the same foundation held: we accept humanity; we do not accept the harm. And prayer, halting, ordinary, stubborn, became the doorway to both.
What Jesus actually commands
Jesus is crystal clear: love your enemies, bless them, pray for them, do good to them. (Matthew 5:43-48, Luke 6:27-36) Paul adds: overcome evil with good (Romans 12:14-21). And the church’s guardrail: our struggle is not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12)
Enemy-love is not approval; it is a way of seeing and acting that names harm precisely while protecting the vulnerable. It refuses dehumanization, no slurs, no blanket hatred. Yet it also prays blessing: repentance, restraint, and repair rather than revenge. Truth and mercy travel together, so accountability becomes part of love. Practically, this means praying and working for good outcomes: the release of captives, safety for children, just leadership, and bread and medicine for all. Enemy-love keeps a boundary: “this must stop” while keeping a chair at the table. “You are more than your worst act.”
Prayer as the first work in me
Before anything changed outside, prayer changed me. It unclenched my jaw, steadied my voice, and gave me courage to tell the truth without contempt. My pattern is simple: first I lament, “God, this happened, and it was wrong.” Each time I pray, I hear myself say: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12). I cannot pray these words honestly unless I extend forgiveness, even toward those who have harmed me. Then I entrust judgment to God so hatred doesn’t take root. I ask to re-humanize the other. “You know my enemy’s name. Let me see what You see” without excusing the harm. I intercede for specific outcomes: Hearts turned from killing to protecting life, plans for violence restrained, captives freed, the bereaved comforted. And then I act as I’m led: set a boundary, share a meal, make a call, give, advocate. Prayer doesn’t make me passive. It makes me clear. It teaches me to say a firm “no” to harm and a faithful “yes” to the person. So even a backyard can become a place of peacemaking.
“What about Hamas?”
People often ask me this, as if one faction could define an entire people. It can’t. Palestinians are not our enemies. They are neighbors with faces and names, parents racing to clinics, kids chasing soccer balls, grandparents guarding recipes and stories. Still, because the question keeps returning, I will ask it too – but I will ask it in Jesus’s way. Jesus commands us to love enemies, pray for them, and to do good – not excuse harm, but to refuse the lie that a person is nothing but the worst thing they have done.
So how do I hold this? I tell the truth about violence and demand protection for the vulnerable. Jesus prayed even for those who nailed Him to the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). (If He could pray that, how can we refuse prayer even for enemies?) I pray very specifically for repentance and restraint among fighters and commanders, for the release of captives, for children to be shielded, and for leaders, on every side, who would rather choose mercy than victory. That is how I keep two sentences together: This must stop. You are more than your worst act.
Five-Step prayer for your enemies
- Name the harm (lament): “God this is what happened… It was wrong. Receive my anger and grief.”
- Release revenge (entrust): “Judge rightly, not my rage. Guard me from hatred that corrodes love.”
- Re-humanize (imagine): “You know my enemy’s name. You knew them as a child. Let me see what You see without excusing what they’ve done.”
- Intercede (specific asks): “Turn hearts from killing to protecting life. Restrain hands planning harm. Free captives. Comfort the bereaved. Provide food, medicine, and safe passage. Raise leaders who choose mercy and truth.”
- Act (noncooperation with evil + active good): “Show me the next faithful step: a call, a meal, a boundary, a letter, an offering, a witness.”
Consider supporting efforts to put “love your enemies” into action in the Holy Land. Here are several organizations that embody this difficult but necessary command. Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem trains communities in nonviolence, healing, and reconciliation, showing that love can be a force for justice as well as peace. The Parents Circle-Families Forum brings together bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the conflict: by sharing grief across enemy lines, they transform pain into a witness for reconciliation. Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of former soldiers, demonstrates love of neighbor by telling the truth about occupation, even at personal cost, because exposing injustice is a first step toward healing. Each of these groups chooses humanity over vengeance, and truth over silence, modeling what it means to obey Jesus’ words to love our enemies.
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