Love your enemies – Ian Harris (ODT 13 June 2014)

We are all one in Jesus Christ © Soichi Watanabe

In the real world, “love your enemies” doesn’t hold a candle to the use of ultimate force. Which goes far to explain why the real world is in such a mess.

Yet “love your enemies” remains the most startling and most original of all Jesus’ precepts for living. The greater part of his teaching, including the golden rule to act towards others as you would like them to act towards you, is anticipated somewhere in the Hebrew scriptures he knew.

While hating your enemies is easy and natural, it also keeps anger, resentment and hostility stoked. Turning enemies into friends changes the ballgame – and everyone gains from that. History shows this repeatedly, as when England and France buried centuries of hostility, or nations once at war joined to form the European Union, or President Nixon met Chairman Mao and set US-China relations on a new course.

Ian Harris on Sir Lloyd Geering’s themes on religion

At the age of 66, when most people are thinking of retiring, Sir Lloyd Geering began a ministry to Wellington and the modern world, as principal lecturer for St Andrew’s Trust for the Study of Religion and Society.

Now 96, he delivered his valedictory lecture this month to a crowded church and a standing ovation.

His topic was ”The Evolving City”, tracing the evolution of the city from the earliest settled population clusters and the biblical city of Cain, in Genesis, to the megacities of a globalising world and the biblical vision of the City of God in Revelation.