Does God want you to be a doormat?

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go for two” (Matthew 5: 39-41).

Would you tell a physically abused wife to submit to more beatings? Would you tell an employee who is already receiving an unjust salary to volunteer for overtime work? Does God want us to be doormats? Definitely not! How then should we understand what Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel?

If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. In Jesus’ time, a slap was delivered on the right cheek with the back of the right hand. This backhanded strike was not meant to injure as much as it was meant to insult. If the aggrieved party were to turn the other cheek, the left cheek, it would then become impossible (unless the aggressor were quite the contortionist) to be struck by the back of the right hand. (Try it with another person — but use minimal force — if you do not believe me.) The one who turns the other cheek is therefore not asking for more pain but actually saying, “I do not deserve the back of your hand. Use the part of your hand with which you touch those for whom you care. Is that not what we are supposed to do for each other?”

If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. In Jesus’ time, it was not the one who was naked who was shamed but those who saw his or her nakedness. Why did the observers do nothing to stop this from happening? Thus, if someone in court were stripped of his or her coat, then proceeds to take off his or her cloak as well, and finally just stands there draped in nothing, he or she is making a powerful statement: “See what your greed has done. See, and be ashamed.”

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go for two. In Jesus’ time, Roman soldiers could lawfully conscript anyone to carry a burden for one mile. This was exactly what happened when Simon of Cyrene was commanded to carry Jesus’ cross to Golgotha. But the law then was very exact: The forced labor could only be for one mile and not one step more. Beyond the one-mile limit, the Roman soldier became liable to punishment. Thus, someone who goes for two miles bearing a Roman soldier’s pack turns the tables on his taskmaster. Perhaps, in prison, the Roman soldier would have time to reflect on the injustice he had done.

Jesus does not want us to be doormats. But he does not also want us to resort to violence, to follow the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Instead, Jesus wants to be creative in our responses to our enemies. Creative, and more…

Schadenfreude is a German word which means “pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.” We may not have one word for this in Filipino, but we are guilty of this many times. When a student of School A is asked about a basketball game being played by a bitter rival (School B) and another school (C), the student usually just wants School B to be beaten badly. From something as petty as this to something as deep as wishing (sometimes even praying) for someone’s misfortune, Schadenfreude is very much alive in our culture. Jesus definitely does not want us to treat our enemies this way.

A self-help book I once read was all about “being bigger” than those who aggravated you: If someone is always late for meetings, do not get even by being late also. “Be bigger” than he or she, and continue coming early. Do not stop sending Christmas cards to those who do not return the favor. “Be bigger” than they are, and keep on remembering them with your greetings. But Jesus challenges us beyond being better than our “enemies.” If we closely examine the responses he suggests — turning the other cheek, giving your cloak, and going an extra mile — we will see that they are meant to help our enemies see the error of their ways. Jesus’ creative solutions also include opportunities for our enemies to reflect on what they have done (even if these opportunities do entail prison time). Jesus does not just invite us to be better than our enemies. He asks that we try to help them become better. In the end, this is what it means to truly love our enemies.

Love your enemies. But come on… is this really possible?

As a Jesuit novice sent to visit our mission parishes in the mountains of Bukidnon, I met a young lumad (a member of one of the indigenous tribes in Mindanao) who had lost his arm when he was just a little boy. On the way home from school one day, he had the misfortune of crossing the path of a man in a drunken rage. With a bolo, the man mercilessly hacked off the boy’s arm and left him for dead. But the boy survived. Years later, that same boy asked to be baptized. And whom did he choose to be his godfather? Yes, the man who had hacked off his arm. Even before becoming a Christian, he was already living out what Christ taught.

To love our enemies — is this really possible? A young lumad showed me it is. And he was not a doormat. He was a doorway who opened his attacker — and everyone else who knew his story — to something better.