1. Introduction - One of the best known teachings of the Christ - even among those who do not profess any Christian belief - is that expressed in the synthetic sentence "love your enemies," which we find both in the Gospel of Matthew (V: 44) [1] and in that of Luke VI: 27) [2]

Although greatly publicized and proclaimed with resolute sincerity by many of those who consider themselves Christians, it is also one of the teachings of the Master less understood and experienced in the daily acts of the corporeal life, in the face of the difficulties we still encounter, as beings in the process of evolution, to understand the offenses we suffer and to forgive those who strike us.

These difficulties, natural in the present evolutionary stage of our planet, are largely explained by the incomprehension still existing in the human being about the true meaning of love and forgiveness in Christ, true foundations of the Moral Laws of Progress and Justice, Love and Charity.

In this harvest, Spiritism, because of its character as a Redemptive Gospel, masterfully codified by Allan Kardec in the form of science, philosophy and religion, gives us the necessary light to understand this - and all the others - postulates of the Gospel of Christ, specially to show us that life is eternal and that we reincarnate to progress, hence the problems and disturbances experienced - and their causers - instruments of tests and atonement that are present in our lives and that allow us to evolve, walking towards God, towards the moral perfection possible, before our condition of eternal Spirit.

What is proposed here in this unpretentious work is nothing more than revisiting the evangelical teachings on the love to be dedicated to our enemies, having as a mark the Spiritist Doctrine codified by Allan Kardec and the gaze in today's reality, with all the complexity that characterizes human, social and political relations in modern society.

For this, we propose to analyze, first, what we should understand as "enemy" in the present day, or, in other words, to whom should be destined love according to the aforementioned Christian precept; still, we will seek the necessary understanding of the feeling of "love" to which Christ refers, especially in the face of the apparent incompatibility of the act of loving the one who desires us evil, or whom we do not consciously or unconsciously associate with; and finally we intend to understand forgiveness as a manifestation of love and charity towards our neighbor in the light of the moral laws prescribed by the Higher Spirits and codified by Allan Kardec.

2. The enemy, the Gospel and Spiritism -  The Encoder, in his monumental work The Gospel According to Spiritism (1864), dedicated a specific chapter to the evangelical precept "love your enemies" (Chapter XII), outlining, with his superior wisdom and from the master lines presented by the Superior Spirits , the lessons we must take into account on the subject.

This chapter is a true guide to lead human thinking and action in relation to this commandment, enlightening us today and always with precious observations that, if properly followed, will drive us to the path of love and charitable forgiveness to our enemies.

However, it seems strange to speak of "enemies" today. In fact, there are many people who, confronted with this evangelical teaching, say to themselves or in public that they have no "enemy", referring to someone they clearly consider as their adversary, antagonist, whom they antagonize or by whom they are antagonized. But these same people often confess that they keep "sorrows" and "disappointments" toward others, or that they do not like them well, claiming that they do not hate them, but that they do not love them either, and “indifference" is the feeling that marks the mental projection relative to them.

In a more profound analysis, there may remain the impression that the figure of the "enemy" to which Jesus Christ referred in the context of his time and Allan Kardec in his work has little relation to the reality of contemporary societies, especially those of a more civilized nature, where there is a considerable diminution of bellicosity in relations between people, despite violence and perversity still a very present reality in different human groups.

However, it is important to remember that, just as the Gospel of Christ itself, the teachings contained in the Doctrine set forth by Kardec are universal and timeless, therefore valid anywhere and at any time, which allows us to understand them and interpret them according to the reality of our time and our social environment.

It is true that today's political, social, and cultural scenario is largely unlike that of the time when Christ was among us. There has been an undeniable evolution of Humanity on the path to the construction of more democratic, just and fraternal societies, much owing to the influence of Christian morality, but also of other religious matrices, in the formation of the different generations that have succeeded each other in the last two thousand years, mainly in the western world.

Although there are still acts of violence and barbarities characteristic of an inferior, savage and primitive world, the evidence points, indeed, to the progress of mankind in various aspects, including moral issues, by fraternal charity finding, in our times, a fertile field, based or not on some religious faith, like the many and varied institutions of organized civil society that are dedicated to benevolent assistance to the helpless and needy.

The Spiritist Doctrine explains to us very well this gradual change in our world, by explaining that the Earth no longer occupies the position of the primitive world, where savagery and wickedness prevail among human beings; and it is now in the category of a world of tests and atonement, moving forward to become a world of regeneration, as Kardec teaches us in his work. [3]

Thus, in the evolutionary stage in which we live, in which evil and perversity still rages in our world, but in a more surreptitious, camouflaged way, with less incidence of clear and ostensible antagonisms, at least in the more civilized societies, the enemy to which Christ referred is not to be understood only as the "opposite", the "antagonist," the "incarnation of evil" in our lives, but in the same way  that they feel towards us, or we feel towards them, some level of dislike, from the most serious and dangerous to the simplest, and which we find in our daily life often in our work environment, family, in the neighborhood relations, in the use of social networks, in the traffic, i.e., at any moment of interaction with other people in society.

In this sense, the "enemy" can be that neighbor that we dislike, because he likes to listen to loud music at an inappropriate time; that co-worker who, although we think he is less competent than us, he was promoted by merit while we remain stationary in our careers; it may be that ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend, who we can no longer look in the face for past events, despite the need to grant him or her forgiveness, among countless other situations of the social reality that we face while incarnated in our body.

The Spiritist Doctrine clearly shows us that these aversions can be originally raised in the present reincarnation or, also, what is very common, can derive from past lives, which are still present precisely because we did not solve them at the right time, and the hostilities of the past remain intact or, given the progress already made, they come back as remnants of capital enmities in previous lives.

Likewise, Spiritism throws light on another phenomenon that finds in the enmities of the past one of its main origins: the obsession carried out by Spirits over others, incarnated or disincarnated.

The Encoder, in the mentioned Chapter XII of The Gospel According to Spiritism, gave special attention to this form of enmity, pointing out, in the item "The Disincarnated Enemies", that there may be enemies between the incarnated and the disincarnated, and that "the enemies of the invisible world manifest their wickedness through obsessions and subjugations, which so many people are exposed to, and which represent some of the tests of life"[4].

It is noteworthy that the theme of the obsession has a vast Spiritist literature, including the works of Manoel Philomeno de Miranda  (Spirit), through Divaldo P. Franco’s psychographics, which reveal several examples of the malevolent effects of the obsession of evil Spirits in the face of incarnate enemies, and the reason of their evils, disagreements, and antipathies or sorrows is found in past lives.

We find, therefore, that in our different corporeal experiences we are confronted with various and varied persons who, for present or past reasons, lead us to varying feelings of antipathy, enmity, aversion, more or less intense, and is, without a doubt, the Divine Mercy which enables us, through the various reincarnations and in accordance with the appropriate reincarnation plan, to exercise our free will, to recover our debts and to solve the remaining problems, in order to progress in our spiritual improvement.

3. Love dedicated to enemies - The Gospel of Christ, in its essence, is the Gospel of Love – a feeling as a true amalgam to unite the different souls and them to God, love figures as the focal point of the teachings of Jesus, the basis of the Second Revelation, which propelled mankind to a new period in its evolutionary march.

Because of their importance, there are several evangelical passages that show love as a divine command to sustain all Christianity.

Indeed, in the Gospel of John, it is inferred that the love of one's neighbor, in the words of Christ, is a commandment that finds a pattern in the love dedicated by Him to all men. Such a high standard may at first appear to us as something difficult, if not unlikely to be attained in the evolutionary stage in which we find ourselves; for, let us remember, Jesus faced in incarnation all earthly hardships and with immense physical sufferings sacrificed his own bodily life for the sake of Humanity.

But it is also true that Christ himself, notwithstanding on placing His love for the other as a model to be followed, explained the postulate of love to his neighbor by a parameter closer to that understood by the man of his time - and of any time: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew, XXII: 39).

Allan Kardec, in his excellent analysis of this commandment of the Master, from the teachings of the Superior Spirits, left us a valuable lesson in explaining that:

"To love our neighbor as ourselves, to do for others what we want others to do for us," is the most complete expression of charity, since it sums up all the duties to the neighbor. You cannot have a safer guide, in this case, than by taking what we want for ourselves. By what right would we require of our fellow beings good procedures, indulgence, benevolence, and devotion if we ourselves do not have them? The practice of these maxims leads to the destruction of selfishness. When men take them by rule of conduct and by the basis of their institutions, they will understand true brotherhood and make peace and justice reign among them. There will be no more hatred or dissension, only union, concord and mutual benevolence. [5]

It cannot be forgotten that in the words of Jesus, to love one's neighbor as oneself is the second commandment, similar to the first and the greatest: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your thought" (Matthew, XXII: 37).

Thus, we can rightly say that it is love - to God (Law of Worship) and to our neighbor (Law of Justice, Love and Charity) - the Major Law of the Doctrine of Christ, which sums up all the other commandments and obligations of men before God and between themselves.

However, nevertheless the divine origin of theses commandments is clear and obvious, it seems legitimate, even to the Christian in good faith and convinced of the power of the words of Christ, in the intimate encounter with his conscience, to ask: how can we love the one who harmed us? How can we forget the offenses we suffered from our enemies, as if they had never occurred? How, in the light of the Divine Law of Conservation, can we love our enemies, knowing they can offend us again and even put our lives at risk? Is it possible to learn to love those for whom we have no sympathy?

These and many other similar questions arise and still challenge human thought, even those who are most faithful to the teachings of Jesus. Likewise, the Spiritist is not safe from such inquiries, doubts and anguish about the correct conduct in the acts of life, and perhaps he may even feel it more than others who profess different religious beliefs or who do not care about matters of spiritual nature, given the scientific character that Spiritism encourages it to be employed by the one who dedicates himself to the study of its Doctrine, founded on reasoned faith.

In addition to the Gospel of Christ, which is the Second Revelation of the Laws of God to mankind, Spiritists find in Allan Kardec's works - the maximum expression of the Third Revelation - safe and solid sources of knowledge and consolation, without forgetting of many other complementary and faithful works, to the Spiritist Doctrine, brought to us by Superior Spirits through the mediumship of true missionaries of Good and Love, like Francisco Candido Xavier, Divaldo P. Franco, Ivonne do Amaral Pereira, among others . (This article will be completed in the next issue.)

 

The author is a Police Officer in the State of São Paulo. Professor of the Police Academy "Dr. Coriolano Nogueira Cobra". Professor at the University Center Anhanguera Sao Paulo - Campos Vila Mariana. Teacher in preparatory courses for public tenders. Postgraduate in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedural Law. Student of the course of Spiritist Doctrine of the Spiritist Center Nosso Lar Casas Andre Luiz.