Enemy love is not a strategy. It’s a formation path that most of us resist until life makes it unavoidable…

Enemy love is less about converting our enemies and more about refusing to let hatred convert us.

It disarms us.

It interrupts our drift toward fear, cynicism, and contempt.

It keeps us human…

Enemy love doesn’t pretend harmful systems are harmless.

It doesn’t excuse abuse, silence truth, or shrink from confrontation.

It simply insists that we can resist injustice without losing our souls.

In this moment, this polarized, bruised, anxious moment, enemy love is not optional. 

It is the narrow path by which we keep our hearts from hardening into the very thing we’re trying to resist.

Friends, the world doesn’t need more enemies.

It needs more people courageous enough to stay tender.

It needs more people who practice the dangerous, disruptive, unreasonably hopeful work of loving those who don’t love us back.

Not to win. But to become more whole.

--Jer Swigart, “Enemy Love Is Not a Strategy,” Dec 11, 2025.

https://hopefulalternative.substack.com/p/enemy-love-is-not-a-strategy  (Accessed 12-23-25)