Love Your Enemies

Respond to evil with good — Enemies who are incarnate and discarnate in the Spiritist view — The metaphor of offering the other cheek — Instructions from the Spirits about revenge, hatred, and dueling.

Repay evil with good

1. Jesus teaches: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and slander you.” He reminds us that God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on good and bad people. Loving only those who love us is still a limited form of love.

If we treat well only those who belong to our own group, we are not doing anything extraordinary. Jesus asks for justice and kindness that go beyond the limits of personal affinity. (Matthew 5:20,43-47)

Matthew 5:20,43-47

2. Jesus repeats that there is no great merit in loving only those who love us or helping only those who can repay us. The proposal is to do good without turning every relationship into an exchange or personal advantage.

“Be merciful as the Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:32-36)

3. Loving an enemy does not mean feeling the same intimacy and trust toward them that we feel toward a friend. When we know someone intends to harm us, boundaries and prudence remain necessary.

We also do not need to pretend affection that does not exist. A relationship with someone who threatens us or has already harmed us is naturally different from a relationship with people we trust.

The old text explains this difference using language about “fluids.” In practice, we can understand it simply: a presence associated with threat or hostility awakens feelings different from those awakened by someone associated with safety and affection. This does not prevent a morally better response.

The word “love” brings together different feelings. In this teaching, it does not require intimacy; it requires giving up revenge and preserving the other person's dignity even when we need to keep our distance.

To love enemies means not feeding resentment and a desire for their destruction, trying to forgive, and not living while waiting for an opportunity for revenge. This can be a long process and does not require remaining in abusive relationships.

It also means not preventing a genuine reconciliation when it becomes possible, wishing that the other person improves, not rejoicing in their suffering, and helping them in a real need when this can be done safely. It is responding to evil without repeating evil.

4. For someone who considers present life the only reality, revenge may seem like the only way to personally create justice. Kardec states that a spiritual view changes this perspective because no conflict would be greater than the entire journey of the Spirit.

In the Spiritist view, earthly life is a stage of learning and brings together people at different levels of development. Knowing this should help us not turn the harm we receive into a reason to cultivate our own harmful behavior.

The old language goes so far as to thank the person who provides a difficult trial. It is not necessary to be grateful for abuse or injustice. The useful meaning is different: even an experience caused by someone may become an opportunity to practice patience, boundaries, courage, and forgiveness.

Moral greatness is not feeling superior to an adversary but refusing to let their behavior determine ours. Rejecting hatred and revenge requires more self-control than simply returning an aggression.

Discarnate enemies

5. The Spiritist Doctrine teaches that evil is not anyone's eternal condition. A person who today is marked by harmful behavior may later recognize their mistakes and change. Death would also not automatically erase feelings of hatred that have not yet been worked through.

For this reason, Kardec considers revenge especially useless: besides producing more violence, it could prolong conflict between Spirits over time. Forgiveness would be a way to interrupt this chain.

Responding with dignity reduces reasons for new retaliation and may even open the way to a change in the relationship. In the Spiritist view, good could also reach someone after death. This is a doctrinal interpretation, not a guarantee that every hostile person will become a friend.

Responsibility before God and our own choices

6. In nineteenth-century Spiritist language, conflicts with discarnate Spirits are related to phenomena called obsession and subjugation. This explanation belongs to Spiritist Doctrine. Psychological, neurological, or behavioral problems also need to be evaluated by appropriate professionals and should not automatically be attributed to spiritual causes.

If the message recommends understanding toward hostile people who are still alive, it extends the same attitude toward Spirits who would still be trapped in hatred after death.

In the view of the work, beings called “demons” would not be creatures eternally destined for evil but Spirits who are still imperfect. Therefore, they should not be hated; the proposal is prayer, charity, and encouragement toward repentance and progress.

Thus, the commandment to love enemies is presented as part of a solidarity that goes beyond a single life and reaches both incarnate and discarnate beings.

If someone strikes your right cheek, offer the other also

7. Jesus replaces the logic of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” with an attitude that interrupts the escalation of revenge. “Offering the other cheek” is an image of not automatically responding to aggression with another aggression. It does not mean remaining passive in the face of violence, putting oneself at risk, or failing to seek protection and justice. (Matthew 5:38-42)

8. The world's prejudices about what is conventionally called honor can create an excessive sensitivity born of pride and self-exaltation, leading a person to answer offense with offense. This may seem fair to someone whose moral sense remains dominated by earthly passions. That is why the law of Moses said: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, a law suited to Moses' time. Christ, however, came to say: “Repay evil with good.”

He went further: “Do not resist the evil they wish to do to you; if someone strikes your right cheek, offer the other also.” To a proud person, this may seem like cowardice because they do not understand that it can require more courage to endure an insult than to take revenge. But should the phrase be taken literally? No, no more than the teaching that says to tear out the eye if it causes scandal.

Taken literally, it would condemn every form of restraint, even legal protection, and leave harmful people free to act without consequences. The instinct of self-preservation, a law of Nature, tells us that we should not willingly offer our neck to an attacker. Jesus did not prohibit defense through these words; he condemned revenge.

By advising us to offer one cheek when the other is struck, Jesus teaches in another way that we should not repay evil with evil. The person should face what wounds their pride with humility and prefer to suffer an injustice rather than commit one, to be deceived rather than deceive, to lose something rather than destroy another person. At the same time, this condemns the duel, a manifestation of pride.

Faith in life after death and in God's justice, in Kardec's view, can give strength to bear patiently attacks on personal interests and pride. This is why the message repeatedly invites readers to look toward the future: the more thought rises above purely material life, the less power earthly injuries have over the person.

Instructions from the Spirits

Revenge

Jules Olivier - Paris, 1862

9. Revenge is presented as a remnant of violent customs from earlier times. Like the duel, it belongs to a period in which people responded to conflict mainly through force. The message argues that a Spiritist should not keep feeding this feeling.

To take revenge is contrary to Christ's teaching: “Forgive your enemies.” Someone who refuses every effort toward forgiveness contradicts the moral principles they claim to follow. Revenge is harmful and is often accompanied by deception because the person waits for an opportunity to hurt without exposing themselves.

When the avenger is stronger, they may attack openly. In many other cases, however, they hide their hostility, watch the other person, and wait for a moment when they can strike without risk.

Hidden revenge can also target reputation and relationships. Slander, insinuations, and manipulation may gradually isolate the person being attacked from friends and family.

When the victim enters places where those hostile stories have circulated, they may be surprised by coldness where friendship used to exist. The message strongly condemns this indirect way of destroying another person's relationships.

The appeal is to leave these violent customs behind. Whoever identifies with a doctrine summarized by “Outside charity there is no salvation” should not claim a right to revenge but should work toward forgiveness.

Hatred

Fénelon - Bordeaux, 1861

10. The message asks that love be practiced precisely where there is dislike, contempt, or resentment. Jesus is presented as an example of someone who continued teaching love even in the face of persecution and violence.

To love does not mean approving wrong behavior. It is possible to condemn an action, establish boundaries, and seek justice without turning the heart into a permanent place of hatred. This is the challenge the message calls true inner sacrifice.

The conclusion is simple: love brings a person closer to the values attributed to God; prolonged hatred moves them away.

Dueling

Adolphe, Bishop of Algiers - Marmande, 1861

11. Dueling was a custom of earlier times in which someone risked their own life and that of an opponent in response to an offense. The message states that true courage is not risking lives because of pride but going through difficulty without abandoning moral principles.

Killing someone in a duel remains homicide even when the society of the time created rules to legitimize it. An offense does not give anyone the right to decide over another person's life.

Forgiveness is placed above revenge. The message hopes for a society in which shedding blood for honor is remembered only as an outdated custom and peace has more value than wounded pride.

The only desirable competition would be to compete in doing better, serving more, and practicing good.

Saint Augustine - Paris, 1862

12. The message calls it false courage to face a weapon but be unable to endure an insult. In current reading, it is not appropriate to describe suicide as cowardice; suicidal suffering is complex and needs support and help. The moral point of the text is that preserving life requires more courage than risking it to feed pride.

Jesus asks Peter to put away the sword and reminds us that violence produces violence. The message uses this passage to condemn the idea of killing someone in the name of honor.

Jesus endured insults and aggression without demanding blood as reparation. The message therefore asks why a follower of Jesus should turn a personal offense into justification for killing.

Jesus' final example is a prayer for his own aggressors. Responding to hatred with forgiveness may be seen by some as weakness, but the Gospel presents this choice as moral strength.

Refusing a duel is not cowardice. It is recognizing that a social image of “honor” is not worth more than life. No one should hurt themselves or another person merely to satisfy expectations of pride or reputation.

The original language presents severe spiritual consequences for those who kill in a duel. The central teaching is responsibility for life: words, traditions, and social conventions do not remove the moral weight of taking a life.

A Protective Spirit - Bordeaux, 1861

13. The message compares dueling to ancient physical trials used to try to discover who was right. Today it is clear that placing two people in danger does not produce truth or justice.

A duel was planned and could result in homicide or in a death voluntarily risked. Even covered in rules and ceremony, it remained a form of premeditated violence.

The message sees in it a survival of the idea that force decides who is right. Moral progress should replace pride and vanity with dialogue, humility, justice, and charity.

Laws can prohibit certain forms of violence, but deeper transformation happens when people themselves stop considering violence an acceptable response for protecting reputation or pride.

Francis Xavier - Bordeaux, 1861

14. The question “what will others think of me if I do not answer the offense?” shows how social pressure fed duels. The message invites people to place conscience and life above the opinion of those who value violence.

Before acting, think about the consequences for families, friends, and society. The person who offended may recognize the mistake and apologize; this is far more constructive than a dispute in which someone may die.

A serious offense can cause real suffering. Even so, killing the person responsible does not undo what happened or automatically heal the wound. Justice and reparation are not the same thing as revenge.

Shedding blood often creates new pain, exposure, and remorse. If the accusation was false, violence does not make it true or necessary; if it was true, killing still does not solve the original problem.

The rule “do not do to others what you would not want done to you” reduces the causes of personal conflicts and, when extended to nations, also questions wars driven by pride and competing interests.

Augustine - Bordeaux, 1861

15. Augustine compares the violence of the duel with the violence of other crimes and criticizes the different social judgment applied to them. An appearance of education or status does not make a death caused by pride morally acceptable.

The message notes that a duel normally allowed time for reflection, reinforcing its premeditated character. It was not simply an instant reaction in the middle of a crisis.

Risking one's own life does not turn the act into courage. The message considers dueling a custom inherited from a time when physical strength was given excessive value in defining honor and who was right.

The hope is that this kind of violence disappears as society better understands the value of life and an idea of honor based on character rather than revenge.

16. Kardec records that duels were already becoming less common in his time. He uses this change as an example of how social customs can be transformed over time.

The reduction in constantly carrying weapons and in public confrontations is interpreted as a sign that violence was no longer accepted as naturally as in earlier periods.

The hope of the work is that charity and fraternity continue to remove legitimacy from forms of violence that still survive under social justifications.