I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you.

It just occurred to me that if you don't know what that is a reference to, then that probably felt really, really uncomfortable for you to listen to.

So let me just clarify it right now.

When I was a kid, not only in my family, but in everybody's family, there was this thing that you could do to irritate your

siblings where if there was a rule and it was like don't touch the other person

you could still get in their business and do and say all of the annoying things

you were going to do and say anyway but as long as you didn't actually touch them, it's completely

legal. It's kind of like the completely legal trick that I used to almost get away with unplugging the phone and my sister was on at that one time. It's this obnoxious do everything but

honor the spirit of the law approach and come on we've all obviously done that.

So when we get to this fulfillment of the practical law statement from

Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 about loving your enemy, my brain kicks into fourth

grade provoke my sister in little brother mode and I want to find ways to weasel around this.

Like, okay, I get it, I'm not supposed to hate my enemy.

Fine. But there's a lot of things that I can do that aren't technically hating my enemy but that aren't also

exactly loving my enemy. And I came mentally prepared to tell you what some of those things are.

Here are things that I do, and these really are

reflections of just how difficult this one is amongst all the others. Here's some things that I do

that are not hateful toward my enemy but that also fall short of Jesus's

standard that he's holding out here of fulfilling the law by loving my enemy.

One, I can do a thing in my brain where if somebody really hurts me or

really hurts people that I love or they just irritate me because they're good at

stuff, maybe I get jealous, I don't know. I can do a thing where I ascribe to them either ignorance or bad motives.

...