Luke 6:27 :

“But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,

As a software engineer, I know all about software “loops”. These are processes that repeat over and over. As a programmer, you have to be careful with these processes because if you don’t provide a way out of the loop, the process will continue “endlessly” and cause the computer to do nothing but loop over and over until it is turned off by force. We usually see this when our computer “locks up” and just won’t let us do anything with it at all.

This is similar to the cycle of hatred that we see repeating in many relationships where one person hurts another person and later that person hurts back. This loop can happen at the individual level, the family level, the “gang” or tribe level, the cultural level, and even the national level. What we read here is a solution that has been proven in history to work when Christians do it. Instead of hating back, try loving back.

To tell you the truth, this is impossible for mankind because we naturally feel the need to lash out and pay back. This kind of pay-good-for-evil behavior, being completely unnatural, requires a force beyond humanity to power it. Jesus didn’t talk about it here, but we have His Spirit in us as believers now. That’s why Christians have been so successful in many places in taking cultures out of the pattern of hate. The power of God drives the Christian to love at any cost because the Christian knows that this is exactly why they came to the truth. Someone else took a risk to take them out of “the cycle” of death and the passion to do the same burns within until it is repeated.

As believers, our focus should be on God’s glorious grace to us in breaking the death cycle and bringing us real hope and salvation. Because Jesus reversed the cycle, we also want to.

I want to make a note about abuse. God is not allowing evil to go unchecked. The fact is, they are going strait to Hell if someone doesn’t help them. We are not to enable a murderer or thief to go on sinning, but the only way to convert a thief or a murderer is by the cross of Jesus. The idea here is that if we have a personal choice to take a loss to stop the cycle, we should do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. I honestly can’t do this. I have to have God’s power because I can tell you right now, I won’t do it by myself. I am trusting that if the time comes, I will have the power.