Just before Christmas, I read in the Guardian the surprising story of Anita Smith.
She is the widow of Ronnie Smith, the American teacher in Benghazi shot
down in the street by Islamic militants. The photograph accompanying
the article shows an attractive young couple and their child in Austin,
Texas: a scene utterly removed from the people and streets of Benghazi.
The reason Anita made headline news around the world is that she
claimed in a CNN interview
that “I don’t want any revenge --I want them to know that I do love
them and I forgive them.” In her interview she explained why Ronnie
and his family went to Benghazi, “He wanted to shine the light and the
love of Jesus to the Libyan people . . . it was just about the love and
forgiveness that we know from God.”
Anita
acknowledged that her response to Ronnie's violent murder seemed
unlikely: “It may sound crazy,” she told Anderson Cooper, “but it is
God’s Spirit putting this inside of me.” The Spirit had led her to write
a letter. “I want all of you--all of the people of Libya--to know I am
praying for the peace and prosperity of Libya. May Ronnie's blood, shed
on Libyan soil, encourage peace and reconciliation between the Libyan
people and God.” When Cooper asked Anita how she would explain Ronnie’s
death to their son Hosea, she said she will tell him, “There is no
greater thing to live your life for than for Jesus.”My initial reaction
was one of dismissal: how can her announcement have any grounding in
reality? It seemed like a weird and inappropriate response; she is just
saying what she thinks she has to say; she is falling back on religious
platitudes. Does she even appreciate that these people might try and
kill her too? How irrational, how naïve, how foolish.
I
confess that my prejudices and presuppositions lay somewhere behind my
incredulity. I am used to hearing such things from Mennonites and
Quakers, but it is not what I expect from a white evangelical from a large multi-campus, non-denominational church in Austin, Texas.
Analyzing
my reaction, I realized there was more at work than my own prejudices. I
realized that for me, the irrationality/naïveté/foolishness of loving
your enemies only hit home when someone with enemies actually said they
love them. I suspect this is true for others. After all, most of us play
with the notion of loving and forgiving enemies far from the context of
actually having to deal with enemies. I usually file this commandment
away under the category How To Deal With Annoying People not under How
to Respond to Someone Who Wants to Kill Me.
This
Martin Luther King Day I would like to suggest that we need to revisit
the well worn stories of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights
movement and ask ourselves why we don’t react to them with the same
surprise and incredulity.
