Love Your Enemies

How to love like Jesus in the midst of polarization and pain.

By any measure, this country is fractured. We are divided by political ideology, ethnicity, religion, class, and so many other things. Social media, cable news, and algorithm-based internet engagement have made polarization more obvious than ever before.

When we meet someone, whether online or in person, our brains quickly begin categorizing them. We take their beliefs and behaviors, contrast them with our own, and decide if they are a friend or a foe, an ally or an enemy— if they are “our people” or “those people.”

We usually base membership in the “our people” group based on shared interests, similar worldviews, and common experiences. Or, to put it another way, “our people” usually look like us, think like us, worship like us, and, most importantly this time of year, vote like us.

We embrace “our people” and push away “those people.” And yet, throughout scripture, Jesus talks significantly more about how we treat “those people” than how we treat “our people.” In fact, Jesus says our faith is best measured by how we love our enemies.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you only love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"  

Matthew 5:43-47

American polarization is the highest it’s been in the many of our lifetimes. According to experts, we are at risk for significant civil unrest and political violence during this election season. Most of us have visceral memories of watching the capitol riots of January 6, 2021, and I know many of us are worried that something similar could happen again in the coming weeks.

The holidays are also approaching, a time when many of us will gather with family and friends who are deeply divided by ideologies. Things have gotten so hostile between opposing parties in my friend’s family that their relatives are boycotting a family funeral due to political differences.

What does Jesus command in the midst of this pervasive division? Jesus tells us to love our enemies. But how in the world are we supposed to do that at a time like this?

I want to explore two questions related to how we can love our enemies in the midst of all this polarization and pain:

1. How did we get here?
2. Where do we go from here?

In order to answer these questions, we’ll look to Scripture, but we’ll also touch on brain science, sociology, and psychology; it’s vital for us to engage this topic holistically if we want to learn to follow Jesus and love our enemies. 

One important caveat before we dive in: The term “enemies” can mean a lot of different things. I’m using it here is as a synonym for people with whom we have significant ideological, theological, political, and/or personal differences. I’m not using “enemies” to refer to someone who is actively harming or abusing you. This is an important distinction because I’m going to be talking about things like finding shared values with enemies and I need you to know I’m not saying Jesus wants us to put ourself in harm’s way by sitting down with someone who is actively abusing you.

Ok, back to our questions.

First: How did we get to this level of polarization? According to experts, there are three major factors:

1. The Big Sort

Since the realignment of political parties in the 50s and 60s, mostly around Civil Rights, we have been developing something Lilliana Mason calls “mega-identities” in her book Uncivil Agreement. She says:

“A single vote can now indicate a person’s party preference as well as his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and favorite grocery store. This is no longer a single social identity. Partisanship can now be thought of as a mega-identity, with all the psychological and behavioral magnifications that implies.”

During the 1950s, the Democratic and Republican parties were similar in terms of representation across race, gender, marital status, and location. This is no longer the case. We have been sorted in all of these areas, but especially by geographical location.

Non-partisan political analyst David Wasserman completed a study on “landslide counties,” counties in which a presidential candidate won the vote by more than twenty points. In 1992, 39% of people lived in landslide counties— by 2016, it was 61%. 

The study also measured “extreme landslide counties,” those in which the presidential candidate won by more than fifty points. Only 4% of counties fell into that extremely polarized category in 1992— by 2016, it was 21%.¹

Over the course of two decades, the number of people who live in a community where almost everyone shares their politics shifted from 1 in 20 to 1 in 5.

This is seen most starkly in the rural/urban divide. Zero of the twenty largest cities in America regularly vote Republican, and only three of the largest thirty-two cities have Republican mayors: Dallas, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City. Conversely, about 90% of rural counties voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

All of this sorting has led to a place where most Americans don’t just watch polarized news or engage in polarized online spaces, but physically live in polarized communities as well.

2. Polarization Cycles

The second reason for our heightened division is called polarization cycles. The big sort and the formation of mega-identities have made it not only unnecessary for political parties to reach across lines of division, it’s actually made it beneficial for them to inflame polarization.

In 2009, as President Obama gave a nationally televised speech about the Affordable Care Act in front of both houses of congress, a little-known Republican Congressman from South Carolina named Joe Wilson interrupted him by yelling, “you lie!”

It was jarring; we hadn’t seen anything like it in modern day politics. John McCain and other prominent Republicans roundly condemned the outburst, but within a few weeks Wilson had raised over two million dollars from people around the country who loved his behavior. Hundreds of other elected Republicans saw this previously unknown Congressman raking in donations and began asking Wilson to help them raise money, too.

Wilson’s congressional opponent in South Carolina, a Democrat named Rob Miller, also used the incident to fundraise, bringing in 1.5 million of his own in the weeks after. This previously obscure House race ended up raising over twice as much as any other in South Carolina that year.

This was a turning point in our electoral politics. Over the past fifteen years, research shows that negative campaigning and polarized rhetoric raises more money and turns out more voters than the opposite. There is absolutely no incentive for a political candidate to run an issues-based, positive campaign because they will almost always get less money and fewer votes.

All of this was what experts call “the cycle of polarization.” Ezra Klein describes it like this is his vitally important book, Why We’re Polarized:

“To appeal to a more polarized public, political institutions and political actors behave in more polarized ways. As political institutions and actors become more polarized, they further polarize the public. This sets off a feedback cycle: to appeal to a yet more polarized public, institutions most polarize further; when faced with yet more polarized institutions, the public polarizes further, and so on.”

The Big Sort and Polarization Cycles are helpful in understanding how we got here, but there’s one more factor we often overlook.

3. The Elephant and the Rider

The way people make moral judgements (deciding what is right and wrong) is radically different than most of us have been led to believe. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt came up with the elephant/rider analogy and popularized it in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. In it, Haidt writes:

“The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant… If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense.”

This theory posits that the rider seeks out data to justify the direction in which the elephant is already heading. This practice of searching for information that supports our underlying beliefs and group membership is sometimes called confirmation bias.

Stats about confirmation bias vary slightly depending on how the studies are conducted, but it’s estimated that 80-90% of people exhibit confirmation bias when making everyday decisions, and closer to 95% exhibit confirmation bias when it comes to politics and ideology.²

This means that 95% of people’s riders will choose to ignore or dismiss evidence if it goes against the ideological direction in which their elephant is heading. In Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein puts it like this:

“The post-Enlightenment view of humanity is that we are rational individuals whose actions may be inflamed by instinct but are ultimately governed by calculation. But what if it was the other way around? What if our loyalties and prejudices are governed by instinct and merely rationalized as calculation?”

These three major factors— The Big Sort, Polarization Cycles, and the Elephant and the Rider— provide a helpful framework for how we’ve gotten to where we are today.

So that leaves us with our second and final question: Where do we go from here? Jesus says true faith is demonstrated by loving our enemies, but how do we do that when it feels like we’ve got more enemies than ever? I have three ideas.

1. Explore Common Values

Did you know you most likely have shared values with your enemies? It may not feel like it, but you do. The problem is that our group identity often transcends any areas of agreement we may have. We embrace “our people” and push away “those people.” We support in-group members and we oppose out-group members.

Social scientists have proven time and time again through experimentation that people will dismiss, compete against, and even outright discriminate against those they perceive to be in an out-group. Most people will do this even if they have nothing to gain. Here’s Ezra Klein (Why We’re Polarized) again:

“We do not need to hate or fear members of an out-group to turn on them. We do not need to have anything material to gain by turning on them. Once we have classified them as, well, ‘them,’ that is enough—we will find ourselves inclined to treat them skeptically, even hostilely, because that is what we are use to doing with anything we see as ‘them.’”

If we can move past the in-group vs. out-group mindset, we find that we can build bridges across our divides. For instance, most people are either generally conservative or progressive in their outlook. At their best, conservatives want to “conserve” good things and prevent us from moving toward bad things, while progressives want to “progress” away from bad things and move toward good things.

As you can imagine, problems arise when we disagree on what is good and what is bad. We often don’t take the time to learn what conservatives want to conserve and what progressives want to progress toward; instead, we lump those on the other side as “those people” and treat them like enemies.

If you’re a progressive, the next time you’re talking to a conservative, ask them what they would like to conserve. And then genuinely listen. You might hear them say things like, “I want to conserve this economic policy because I believe it helps lift the most people out of poverty.” You might disagree with the policy, but you can find common-ground on the shared value of helping people in need.

Same thing if you’re a conservative. Ask a progressive what they want to progress away from. Maybe the’ll say, “I want to progress away from discrimination in the workplace so that women are paid the same as men.” You might disagree on the best way to do that, but you can find common-ground on the shared value of ending discrimination.

Now on the other hand, if a conservative tells you they want to conserve White Supremacy, you can say “Absolutely not!” Or if a progressive says they want to burn down every institution in America, you can say, “No thanks!”

Not all conservatives stormed the capital. Not all progressives want anarchy. Lumping people into polarized camps is convenient because it makes us feel better about ourselves and our group, but it’s counterproductive to following Jesus. And overall, Christians should be much less concerned about partisan labels and group identity.

When we are considering a policy, politician, or political party, the question shouldn't be, “Is this conservative or progressive?” The question should be, “Is this Christlike?”

It doesn’t matter if something is right-wing or left-wing, it matters if something is right or wrong.

2. Get to Know the Elephant

The next tool to help heal polarization comes from leaning into the elephant/rider framework. As I mentioned above, most of us are making intuitive decisions below the conscious surface before our rational thinking kicks in. The Elephant starts marching before the Rider even processes something, moving toward things we intuitively like and away from things we intuitively dislike; the more we do it, the more established our brain’s neural pathways become.

This understanding of brain science should change how we engage with people across divides. Ryan Self wrote a great piece about this very thing on his Substack. He writes:

“People spend a lot of time trying to convince the rider with facts, figures and logic but if the elephant doesn’t want to move it won’t. If you try to understand someone’s emotions, fears and underlying motives—the elephant—you may find more success at winning people over to your side, or at least helping them understand your position.”

Loving our enemies looks like connecting with people on an emotional and relational level before we attempt to argue ideologies. To put it another way, stop arguing with the rider and start getting to know the elephant. 

In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion, Haidt talks about what makes our elephants lean one way or another. It’s called Moral Foundations Theory. This theory posits that there are five moral foundations, or five criteria that humans use to make moral judgements about things. They are:

1. Care
2. Fairness/Equality
3. Loyalty
4. Authority
5. Sanctity

Haidt’s research suggests that more conservative people place a higher value on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, while more progressive people place a higher value on Care and Fairness. This is not to say that progressives don’t care about the first three or that conservatives don’t care about the last two, but they weigh them differently.

This weighing happens subconsciously. The elephant is the one who intuitively decides whether something is moral or immoral using these foundations and then, consequently, the rider provides intellectual justification.

An example of this in action is the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020. While the vast majority of protests were peaceful, some of them escalated to looting and violence. Many conservatives who value loyalty, authority, and sanctity were disturbed by the lack of order they saw on television, and so their elephants dismissed all BLM protests as immoral. Many progressives believe fighting for equality and caring for victims of police brutality is more important than anything else, so their elephants excused violent behavior at the protests.

These moral divisions were further inflamed by partisan news and social media outlets who show their target audience only what they know will engage the consumers emotions, fears, and moral foundations. In other words, they play to their target audience’s elephants.

I was first learning about moral foundations theory around this time and I tried to employ them in a conversation about BLM with one of my more conservative family members. I tried connecting with their elephant first. I knew this person placed a high value on authority and order, so I talked about how damaging it is to an orderly society when people abuse their authority—like the police officer who murdered George Floyd. 

Abuse of authority leads to disorder and unrest, so addressing police brutality becomes absolutely necessary to preserving order in our society. They weren’t fully convinced, but our conversation changed the way they saw and talked about BLM after that.

We can love our enemies and push back against polarization by exploring common values and getting to know the elephant.

3. Love like Jesus.

Last and most importantly, we do it by loving like Jesus.

After he was illegally arrested, beaten up, mocked, and hung on a cross, do you remember what Jesus did for his enemies?

When they came to the place called Calvary, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals, one on His right and the other on His left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 23:33-34

When Jesus said “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he wasn’t preaching empty words; he was predicting his own behavior and calling all of his followers to do the same.

We don’t get to decide who is worthy of love and who isn’t—Jesus decided that 2000 years ago on the cross.

Every single person you meet is worthy of love. Not just any kind of love, either. Sacrificial love. When we look at the people Jesus prayed for that day, we can easily categorize them as his enemies, but I don’t think Jesus saw them that way. To Jesus, they were God’s children. Maybe they were lost like the prodigal son or gone astray like a lost sheep, but they were children nonetheless.

A fourth century church father named St. Jerome put it like this:

“All of God's enemies perish; not that they cease to exist, but that they cease to be enemies.”

Jesus told us to “love our enemies” because he knew that we can’t love someone for very long without them changing from our enemy to becoming our sibling. Jesus wanted us to see that, for the Christian, the entire world is “our people.” 

So the next time you come across one of “those people,” remember that Jesus considers them worth dying for. And if Jesus considers them worth dying for, who are we to treat them with anything less than dignity and love?

These profound words from Dorothy Day have been burned onto my heart since I first heard them years ago:

“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

Jesus is calling us to seek peace, be merciful, resist polarization, pursue justice, and to love our enemies—even, and especially when, it’s difficult.

*Much of this content is pulled from a sermon I preached at our church on 11/3/24. We won’t usually be posting sermon content from the previous week here on Substack, but we’ve done so the last two weeks because of the upcoming election. We hope it’s helpful!

1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/purple-america-has-all-but-disappeared/

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8685219/