Imaginary Enemies

I hope I wasn’t the only one who grew up with imaginary friends. I also had real live friends, but my two imaginary friends were the most reliable. Always there when I needed them!

Since then, both of them have moved on, or I have moved on. Perhaps both.

There comes a time when the imaginary people must move on, and we must move on. Definitely both.

Just as there are reliable, imaginary friends, there are reliable, imaginary enemies. People we have pitted against us, even though they may not even exist. Imagined enemies we have learned to hate.

I noticed when our president spoke against imaginary enemies in his eulogy for Charlie Kirk. His words reminded me of Fredrick Backman’s definition of hate in his novel, “Beartown.”

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.

At about minute 24 of the eulogy, the president referred to debates he’d had with Charlie Kirk. According to the president, Kirk did not hate his opponents. That, the president explained, was where they disagreed. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want what’s best for them,” the president proclaimed to a cheering funeral crowd.

Like any president ever, ours has a long line of opponents, enemies he has made here and there. And yet, I’m not sure all of his enemies are real. I wonder if his love for having an enemy can threaten to create imaginary enemies, enemies that invite people to hate even further.

Hate is so powerfully stimulating, it can baptize a crowd of Christians in an amnesia bath, foregoing a substantial pillar of the Christian faith: love thine enemies (real or imagined), do good to those who hate you, offer the other cheek, and so on.

When there is tension in the air in our society, in your family, or in your work, you are in charge of only one person: You. You cannot change the people around you, especially your enemies, but you can decide how you will move through the tension.

• How do I want to show up in this anxious time of our country?
• What emotion do I need to notice in myself, so that it does not get the best of me?
• Am I watching too much news? (I appreciated Danielle Webster’s words in this episode of The Prairie Beat podcast.)

Blessed are you as you wrestle with your place in this anxious time, for you will be filled with the real live love of the God who came to live among you in a real live body simply to love. Love. Love.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash