203. How can a person get along with an enemy?
I think it is very difficult to say what really helps a person get along with an enemy. One will have all the possible negative feelings towards the enemy: hatred, enmity, jealousy, and so on. And finding a way to relinquish all of these negative feelings is really hard. The first step to getting along with an enemy, however, is forgiveness according to me. By first considering forgiving one's enemy, one succeeds in having the courage and heart to consider the recovery of the relationship between them.
The next step is having a heart to understand the enemy's situations. I believe that each an every individual in this world has his/her own behind stories that might have caused them to do wrong doings. Sometimes, we even face situations where we have to do wrong things in order to fix situations. A small example for this is a high school student drinking due to peer pressure in order to keep his high school life safe. But the fact is, we do not know how many students in that gang is dedicated to force others to drink; asking another student to drink might have started with only one popular person's ideas and other followed. We also often see articles talking about murderers having killed people due to their genetic problems or mental problems. It is utterly sad that we often classify people as good and bad. So, even your enemy might have his/her own situations.
Most importantly, throughout the process in getting along with an enemy, one needs to kill the heart of revenge. One should stop thinking about taking a revenge because revenge is what makes the enmity grow.
Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44)
Probably following this statement in the Bible is really hard. But perhaps we can try to kill the negative feelings we have towards enemies first.
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