The sermon on the mount was a moral quantum leap at the time it was delivered. “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” You aren’t getting that anywhere else. Additionally, the entire narrative around the crucifixion of a perfectly innocent victim is designed to put the “what if I’m wrong” voice in the back of your head when you’re engaging in mob or retributive violence.
Do you have a lot of experience and knowledge around other non-Abrahamic world religions to make such a bold claim?
Because I can think of at least a few (Jainism, various Chinese schools of thought, etc) that capture the spirit if not the exact message of "love your enemy".
Yeah, the Buddhist or Jain approach is more about detachment and non-harm. It feels almost clinical in its universality. “Love your enemies” is much more personal and emotionally demanding. It’s not just “don’t hurt people” or “be compassionate to all beings,” it’s specifically telling you to have positive feelings toward people who are actively trying to harm you. Combine with the innocent victim motif and you get something really unique.
> It feels almost clinical in its universality. “Love your enemies” is much more personal and emotionally demanding.
To me, “Love your enemies”, feels abusive -- or being groomed for abuse. Love those who hurt you. I agree that is more emotionally demanding, mostly in a personally harmful way. I'll take Buddha's approach to Devadatta over the Jesus "love your enemy". I can have compassion and understanding for an enemy, I would even say it's vital to preventing further harm -- understanding them, their motives and having compassion with that understanding. But loving them? That feels more like inviting violence while pleading with them to stop while handing them a stick. Of course there is a fine line of overlap and in the end both can be taken the same way. I simply believe compassion and understanding is more meaningful and less likely to be used to keep one in an abusive situation.
I agree.
My own experience with it, being forced to go to "bible study" and many Christian events/groups in my youth; is that it is an ideology pushed by very despicable people who will constantly behave in extremely abusive ways and require of you that not only you let them do that but you actually "love" them (by acting in ways that are against you own values and serve them in a very practical way).
The amount of emotional/psychological abuse coming from the women in charge of those bible study groups was absolutely maddening. I have many horror stories.
Now, I can understand why they say and do the thing they do; and I can definitely be compassionate about their shortcomings that makes them behave that way. I could almost forgive them. But I definitely cannot "love" them under any circumstance. As far as I'm concerned, they are an illegitimate dominant force and need to be fighten for good.
I think the ideology of "love your enemies" is pushed hard precisely for case like this. They intuitively know they are pushing a lie to enslave others to their bullshit and if people ever figure out what's going on, they need to have a "failsafe" to avoid retaliation.
I dumbfounded when people push Christianity as something worthwhile and even good. They are responsible for a lot of suffering, obscurantism and unjustifiable domination and a whole lot of warmongerings.
It still happens today and is still a way to brainwash a lot of people and forbid them from thinking for themselves. It is an utterly destructive ideology and the only reason the world is what it is today, is because some people got wiser in France a few centuries ago and said that they have enough of the bullshit.
I think the modern tentative of presenting Christianism as something good is because they have lost the war and have fully migrated to deceptive "argumentation", wolf in sheep clothing style.
Jesus was not the first person to preach the concept of loving your enemies. At the very least, everything he preached was based on existing Jewish philosophy, particularly the messianic strain of Judaism he was a part of, but it also existed (and preceded Christ) in Buddhism, Taoism and the Babylonian Councils of Wisdom. Nothing Jesus preached was unique.
I suggest a look at the Esoterica channel on Youtube for a perspective on Jesus as a historical figure in the context of Judaism at the time[0]
I think you’re (or, whoever you’re referencing) is conflating conceptual similarities with actual equivalence. Even if Jesus was building on Jewish tradition, The Hebrew Bible is full of imprecatory psalms calling down curses on enemies. Even the most expansive interpretations of “love your neighbor” in Jewish law didn’t extend to active enemies.
See my other response on eastern thought. “Babylonian Councils of Wisdom” is vague
He's referring to: Do not return evil to the man who disputes with you;
Requite with kindness your evil-doer,
Maintain justice to your enemy,
Smile to your adversary. (Akkadian, before 1100 BC)
