By Angela Ryo

Among all of Jesus’ teachings, probably one of the most challenging sayings to follow is “love your enemies.” Recently, the term, “non-complementary behavior” helped me to understand what it might mean to love my enemies. The term was first coined by a psychologist from Eastern Michigan University, Christopher Hopwood. Our behaviors are usually complementary: when someone approaches us with a broad smile and kind words, we tend to do the same toward that person.  On the other hand, if someone is hostile toward us, we instinctively react likewise.  But it’s when we act in a non-complementary way, an unexpected way, it completely shakes up the other person and produces a different outcome.  

It’s like this — if an animal is biting you, what should you do?  Your instinct is to pull away. But if you do pull away, you’ll be really hurt.  The way to get out of a bite is to FEED the bite— this means act counterintuitively and push into the bite. When you do so, you loosen the jaw and then you’ll be able to pull away without further harm. (I just hope that the animal is a squirrel or a chipmunk and not a lion or a tiger…) 

I think this is close to what Jesus was talking about. We are being challenged to act in a non-complementary way. In other words, the narrative of our lives and the script we follow needs to be “flipped” in order for us to become the people God has called us to be. But still — how do we love those who have hurt us or betrayed us or wished us ill?  

I am inspired by the story of Jeanne Bishop, a former public defender in Chicago and the author of Change of Heart. She is a powerful advocate of restorative justice, a form of non-complementary action. She writes about her long journey of how she came to “love her enemy” — a teenage boy who murdered her beloved sister’s family including her husband and her unborn baby. She writes of her agonizing struggle in overcoming her grief at her sister’s brutal death. After many years of hating and resenting the killer of her sister’s family, Jeanne is able to reach out to the killer when she comes to understand that she cannot define her enemy by the worst thing that he has done in his life.  

I am quick to judge and label people for the worst thing they’ve done in their lives — especially if I feel like that was done unto me. But if we are ALL in the process of becoming who God has created us to be, I need to trust that my enemies are also in that process. In God’s eyes, I am WAY more than the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.  And so are my enemies.  

Thomas Currie, a theology professor at Union Theological Seminary, writes, “the real threat that our enemies represent to us today is that our hatred of them will define who we are and thus give them power to define the meaning of our lives. That is something the gospel is unwilling to let happen.” What defines my life? Do I live in the shadow of what others have done to me or is my life defined by God’s overwhelming love and grace? Who are the “enemies” in my life that God is calling me to love today? And here’s the hardest question of all: could it be that my worst enemy might even be myself? 

Angela Ryo currently serves as Pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Munster, IN. She enjoys taking long walks, reading, listening to NPR, and drinking good coffee with friends and strangers alike.

By Leona Chen-Wong

TJ, now 15 months old, triggers memories of my earliest AAWOL blog, written when he was just born. Back then, I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming flood of motherly love or the fear of missing out on his growth. Each passing day, week, and month reveals subtle changes in him. My parents-in-law often reassure me, “Just wait, kids only get cuter.” Skeptical at first, I now understand what they meant as I witness TJ’s development. The once helpless baby now grasps more of his surroundings and communicates without words, leaving me in awe of God’s intricate design even in infancy. I am humbled and embarrassed by how much I underestimated how God created human development, even in babies. At the same time, I am relearning so much about life and simple relationships that are correlated with love.

In recent years, I heard a preacher emphasizing to his congregation that the fruit of the spirit is singular, not plural fruits. In a way, there is also a sense of making all of the characteristics of the fruit of the spirit equal in weight without a particular order. As I experience God and watch how my son responds to our love for him, I strongly believe Apostle Paul deliberately lists out the fruit of the spirit in that order, and maybe just as he mentioned in 1 Corinthians, the greatest of faith, hope, love — love being the greatest of them all. Among the fruit of the spirit, though all represent God and his manifestation through us, love is the first and foremost, foundational aspect of who God is. As a result, the first overflowing characteristic of followers of Jesus would be love. And love can be found as the baseline for all the following lists of the fruit of the Spirit.

By Charissa Kim Allen

–>To read part I of “Love: Healing our Wounded Identities”

Just like we courageously journey to label the deeply personal core messages about ourselves in pain, we also journey to discover the deeply personal corrective truths about our identity. And just like our pain messages are scattered throughout our past, our corrective truths are also scattered within our already-lived lives. Contrary to what we may have learned about only looking outwards and upwards to find a sense of love, we can also look into and back at our messy, earthly realities to find the same answer. 

In therapeutic treatment, this looks like asking questions like:

• “Growing up, in the midst of all these violations of love, who and where did you go to for comfort?” 
• “When you look at your life, where did you experience the exception to your primary pain message?” 
• “When did you know you were truly loved, worthy, cherished, and significant?” 

By Charissa Kim Allen

My work as a therapist is anchored in the modality of Restoration Therapy, where I conceptualize each client’s story in two organizing camps: love and safety. Here, I will only focus on this first camp, love. In my conceptualizing, the love each client did or did not experience throughout their lives, especially in their formative years, informs their basic identity. This basic identity is best expressed in terms of uniqueness, worthiness, and desirability. When a person experiences violations in the camp of love, they hold a wounded sense of identity. 

In treatment, I walk alongside clients as they explore the violations of love that have informed their wounded identity. More than just emotions (mad, bad, glad, sad), I help clients understand the primary messages to their identity that they thematically act upon, even if unconscious. Primary messages are those “I am” statements about ourselves that surface in pain. Here are some examples: “I am…unloved, unworthy, insignificant, alone, worthless, inadequate, unacceptable, unwanted, defective, not measuring up.”

By Eunhyey Lok

The Kingdom of God — what can I say or write about this that hasn’t already been written and said? And yet, it has been at the center of why being a Christian means so much to me.

Having been raised in a Korean immigrant church, North American evangelical teachings shaped my theological lens through an emphasis on personal piety — individual salvation from my sins through the sacrifice of Jesus. While I never stopped believing in the necessity of that part of the gospel, in my 30’s I hit a wall in which I couldn’t connect to why it mattered. What I didn’t understand then is that this gospel for my own individual soul felt hollow because it was not the whole gospel. Jesus’s gospel about the Kingdom of God being at hand included more than just my salvation from sin.

By Yuri Yamamoto

“But she is my mom… Why does she reject me?” Cried a grown white man hidden under a white hospital blanket. I met the man only once and don’t remember much about him. But he was suffering far away from home and expressed his loneliness and desolation. I tried to see him later, but he never wanted to see me again and soon left the hospital.

It was a long time ago. I was still new to the chaplain training and was awkwardly navigating my way around raw human emotions of others and my own.

By Sarah D. Park

Boxes of baby clothes that will span the first full year of my son’s life, donated by friends and friends of friends.

A ride-or-die bestie who flew in from another city to sleep train my baby so that I could rest.

Enough friends and family to fill 3 months as they rotated staying in our guest room, helping out as I healed from giving birth.

Food I did not have to cook myself. Praise God.

By Diana Kim

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” 
-Matthew 20:16

Neoliberal capitalism has warped our sense of self, to the point where we are cogs in the greater system, forced to move in the pattern that has been determined for us; ultimately, productivity is constantly demanded and any leisure or rest is considered a waste of time. The more you move, the more you grind. The more you grind, the more you produce. The more you produce, the more acceptable you are to society. We are groomed to always strive to be the best, no matter what the cost or the means.

This can come at the expense of others or even ourselves. This lifestyle is not only exhausting: it is not the life we are meant to live. Yes, we are meant to be stewards of our time and energy, to do the best we can with what we are given, but that doesn’t mean that we are to be worked so hard that we no longer know ourselves apart from the work we do or produce. What the world demands of us is not what God demands of us.

By Wendy Choy-Chan

Luke 10:27 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10:29: And who is my neighbor?

“Love” is a transitive verb that needs an object. I [subject] love [verb] my neighbor [object]. In speaking of love, all too often we look at the object to decide whether I should love it or not. Chocolates are yummy, therefore I love chocolates. Spiders are scary, therefore I do not love spiders. 

In Luke 10, however, Jesus did not focus on the object of love. He did not define neighbor [the object of our love] as someone who is near us, therefore we should love him/her; nor did Jesus define neighbor as someone in need, thus giving reason for us to love. Instead, Jesus focused on the subject — “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36)

The good Samaritan [subject] loves [verb] the man who fell among the robbers [object], making the man his neighbor by his love. That is exactly God’s love — “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). We were separated from God and we didn’t even know we were in need; yet God loves us, loving us to become not his neighbors next door but his own family, and the Spirit transforms us to be like Christ, making us to be lovely and lovable.

“Therefore sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive.” (Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation [Thesis 28])

What a different outlook! 

I admit that there are people whom I find difficult to love. But instead of crossing them off my “neighbor” list, there is a better way. God’s love is powerful and redeeming. It has power to soften my heart towards them, thus freeing me from the prison of selfishness to give myself to them. When I love them with God’s powerful and redeeming love, they become my lovely and lovable neighbors.

“God’s Love does not find, but creates, that which is loveable to it.” (Tuomo Mannermaa, Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World [p1])

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Wendy became a Christian while attending Queen’s University in Canada. She graduated from Fuller Seminary in 2016 with an MA in Theology, and from Multnomah Biblical Seminary in 2023 with a DMin in Heart-based Spirituality and Christian Formation. Wendy lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters, and serves as a minister at Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle.

By Tina Teng-Henson

In a Facebook world
Who is not my neighbor? 

I find myself buying my college friend Aaron’s little daughter’s clay-made jewelry.
They’re clear across the country 
in Pennsylvania
But we’re in touch
Because her dad and I still connect
Once a month
To pray for Harvard 2004 alumni friends 
Who once were neighbors
In Cambridge, Massachusetts
20 years ago.