The Real Enemy

When we feel beaten up and we feel that we have had enough of life’s pain, sufferings and battles, we cry out in despair “When will I run out of enemies? When will my enemies leave me in peace?”

As Christians, the Lord never promised us a life without enemies. In fact, He seemed to be so sure that we will always have them that He advised us to simply love them. “Love your enemies,” the Lord said. He Himself had enemies. As good a man as Jesus was, He had the scribes and the Pharisees who always looked at Him with hatred and antipathy. Some of His countrymen saw in Him as someone who was not a friend of Caesar, a threat to the Roman Empire. Then there were enemies in His own circle of friends. Judas is not the only one, There was Peter who wanted to tempt the Lord and make Him run away from the cup of sacrifice. Finally there was the archenemy, the tempter in the desert who wanted Him to kneel down and worship the evil one.

We have our personal enemies and we also have national enemies. There are people who seem to have taken it to themselves to make life more difficult for us. It seems that there are some people who are troublemakers by nature. These are the kinds of people who will disagree with everything they see and hear. Their mission in life is to criticize. Their mission in life is to express their displeasure about everything. If you arrive at an agreement, these are the same people who will not be satisfied. They will continue to criticize the agreement and they will wait until it is proven wrong. In the end, they will say. “I told you so, I told you it would happen.” There are those who threaten our lives, our property and our security. There are those who tempt us into laziness, into greed and lust and dishonesty.

When all these people have been won over to our side, we still have to contend with the greatest enemy, the “SELF”. Our greatest enemy is the sinful self, the old self urges us to take the easy way out, the self that tells us to get over others, otherwise, they will make a fool out of you. It is the self that will choose hatred and revenge rather than forgiveness.

We also have enemies on the national level. We have terroristsreal or imagined. We have selfserving politicians and appointed public servants who have begun to like power and have become afraid of losing it. We have a taxation system that has become a load that the poor find impossible to carry. We have a government that opts to raise revenues by legalizing things immoral. We can lay the blame on our situation on all things and on all people and on all events of the past. But we will get nowhere unless we accept the blame on ourselves.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. Let there be change in the society and let that change begin with me. Jesus won over all His enemies because He was true to Himself. We too can claim victory over all these enemies if we recognize the enemy within us that we have started to pamper and to protect and to safeguard.