Turn the other cheek?!

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

My Bible study posse has been going over the Beatitudes. Last night, we dissected, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” It was a lively discussion, and I learned a lot. For example, I always thought of meekness as the same as humility, but the concepts are different. A humble person avoids thinking highly of or boasting about themselves. A meek person avoids retaliating to get revenge for themselves.

Those are the types of ideas that sound great in Church but don’t play out easily in real life. For example, I have someone close to me who was spurned by her normally loving and attentive prayer group. She is devastated and having a hard time moving past it. She says, “I have prayed to forgive them, but don’t I have a right to be hurt?” Great question!

That’s a question I would want to ask Jesus. Do we have the right to be hurt and offended? Maybe. But isn’t that the same as saying we have the right to be unhappy, angry, lonely, and miserable? Because that is the result of our being offended. It hurts us WAY more than it ever hurts the offender.

By expecting that we deserve to be treated well and never dissed, we are setting ourselves up for pain and being a little prideful. After all, there has never been anyone in the history of people more insulted than Jesus, so why would we think it shouldn’t happen to us? After all, people have always been very people-y. We are fickle and forgetful and generally way more worried about ourselves and our circumstances than we are about others. We are very self-absorbed. And if my self-absorbed self expects your self-absorbed self to think of me in a way I find gratifying, I’m setting myself up for failure.

As a baby Christian, I expected everyone who professed faith to act like Jesus. After all, isn’t that what being a Believer is all about? But now I realize I’ve got to keep my eyes off them and let Jesus transform me, so when (not if) they do something offensive, I can respond like Jesus. I can be humble enough to see I’m no one special and don’t deserve kid-glove treatment. Besides, most folks don’t realize it when they are being crappy. They really don’t. Consequently, praying, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do,” is always appropriate.

So, if I’m humble enough to realize I shouldn’t and won’t get specialized treatment and folks are going to be people-y and do offensive things, that’s half the battle. But we win the war when we respond in meekness. What does that look like? The world talks smack about folks, avoids them, and posts passive-aggressive memes on Facebook. We are not being meek when we react in those ways, even if we wrap it in Christian sweetness. How about we try being aggressive forgivers, love without holding a record of wrongs in our head, and pray big prayers that God blesses those who hurt us?

Easy? Absolutely not. But it’s the hard that makes us grow and look like Jesus. And luckily, there is always ample opportunity for practice, especially during the Holidays. Go out there and love those who cut you off in traffic and gossip about you. Turn the other cheek! And pray for those who don’t invite you to their Holiday parties. In this, you are well on your way to inheriting the whole earth at the end of this age!