A watch has gone missing. A nine-year-old boy is angry. But given Jesus’ command about how you should treat your enemies, how will he respond?

I’m feeling stoked with my nine-year old, who has just exercised one of the genuine and most elusive human virtues. And in time for Christmas, too.

It started with what might be considered an overly compassionate move by my wife: she let the local maniac in to play. This boy speeds up the second law of thermodynamics. He can dismantle anything in seconds. And then reconstruct it in an unrecognisable fashion in even less time.

Not only did my ‘sympathy for the devil’ bride let Nutjob into the house; she actually let him into our son’s room. When EJL returned from after-school care to find his room, er, slightly less organised than when he left it, he understandably was perturbed. And he expressed it. He became fairly ugly there for a while, kicking and wailing and uttering curses. His seven-year old brother started practising karate moves on the deck chairs for the next time they ran into Nutjob.

“We hate him!” they cried. They even beseeched me to head over to his house and sort the little &^%* out.

It got worse when they realised that Nutjob seemed to have pinched a small $2 watch that shot out plastic bullets. Well, maybe he pinched it or maybe it’s lost under the bed somewhere. Or maybe the cat took it. Or something. But MAYBE NUTJOB PINCHED IT!!

Being great fans of Jesus’ approach, my wife and I started muttering something about loving your enemy. This didn’t go down well in the heat of the moment. OPL thought it was ridiculous: “That’s stupid”, was how he described the Son of God’s teaching.

This cast my mind back to Scripture class earlier this year, when I had been relaying the account of Jesus saying these very words, and the seven year-olds in front of me were just staring back at me in disbelief. “This adult has NEVER seen a cartoon,” they were thinking, “There isn’t a Ninja Turtle alive that would agree with him. It’s all about vengeance, man”.

I explained to them that Jesus was pretty damn radical (I don’t think I used the word ‘damn’) and, no, his teachings wouldn’t work all that well as an animated cartoon, although he did break some tables once and there’s some gory stuff at the end of the story that might work on the screen (Mel Gibson thought so).

But I was struck by what an outlandish teaching it is: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 5, verse 44). Who in the ancient world, let alone the postmodern one, would ascribe to such a vision, even at Christmas time? Who could even cope emotionally with such an attitude? Surely it’s psychologically damaging (Nietzsche thought so).

We all sat down to dinner, occasionally coming back to the fact that the watch had gone walkies. OPL was still fuming at the end of the meal, overcome with rage and disbelief at the insult that is stealing.

But EJL was acting differently. He had come over all quiet. He asked to leave the table and started paddling a tennis ball up and down. He seemed to have gone somewhere deep inside.

After finishing my wine, I suggested to him that we both go down the street to Nutjob’s house and ask him about the watch.

“Nah,” said EJL, “I don’t need to. I’m going to love my enemy.”

It was the words “don’t need to” that got me. “Don’t want to” I would have expected. After the flush and bluster of offence had passed, EJL was happy to avoid the conflict. But “don’t NEED to” says something different.

Thanks to God, he had found somewhere inside where the crime could be forgiven and vengeance was not required. He knew it was wrong to steal; but he didn’t have to rectify it himself. Divine justice was just that—the work of the divine, not him. He could cope with the offence. He managed to love, rather than hate. Some sort of forgiveness and peace was at work in his heart.

There are plenty of heads of state who haven’t got that far.