Loving the Enemy Within: A Psychological Reading of a New Testament Teaching

Loving the Enemy Within: A Psychological Reading of a New Testament Teaching

Today I want to explore the relationship between a particular line from the New Testament and the work of healing childhood trauma. Specifically, I want to look at how one very simple and profound teaching can quietly but radically change how we relate to ourselves, our pain, and our healing process.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear about something. I’m not a Christian. I’m not a Buddhist. I don’t belong to any particular religion. What I do value deeply, though, is spiritual wisdom that has been around for centuries across many traditions. In my view, the original psychologists were sages and mystics. They spoke directly to human suffering, meaning, pain, and what it’s like to live inside a human nervous system. They understood something fundamental about how we hold ourselves in the world and in relationship with others.

Because of that, I find it really interesting to look at scripture, not as doctrine, but psychologically. What is it pointing to in our inner life?

We do this all the time with Greek myths. On one level, they’re stories. On another level, they’re symbolic maps of the psyche. I think spiritual teachings often work in the same way. There’s a moral layer about how we relate to others, and there’s also a psychological layer about how we relate to ourselves.

The line I want to explore today comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, found in both Luke and Matthew. It’s the instruction to love your enemy. To love those who persecute you or hate you.

Usually, this gets framed as a teaching about how we relate to others in the world. Our opponents, our enemies, the people who are against us. But today, I want to turn that lens inward.

What does it mean to love the enemy within?

This is where the teaching becomes really profound. In the original Greek, the word used for “enemy” isn’t just a casual rival. It refers to someone or something that is antagonistically against us. Something that hates us, persecutes us, works against us.

When we look inside ourselves, many of us can immediately recognise parts that feel like this. Aspects of ourselves that we feel persecuted by, attacked by, or undermined by. Things we’re actively trying to defeat.

For some people, that might be addiction. For others, it’s anxiety, depression, control, shame, self-sabotage, or a sense of weakness or lack of will. There’s often this underlying belief that if we could just conquer this one thing, then we’d finally be healed. Finally better. Finally free.

Take anxiety as an example. Anxiety can feel like an enemy. It disrupts life. It makes things smaller. It takes away ease and enjoyment. It feels like something that hates us and works against us. So our instinct is to fight it, manage it, defeat it, or get rid of it.

But what if we tried something completely different?

What if, instead of battling anxiety, we tried to love it?

Not indulge it. Not surrender to it. But meet it with kindness, warmth, curiosity, and tenderness. What happens when we stop relating to parts of ourselves through violence and opposition, and instead soften toward them?

This single shift changes everything about how we approach healing.

We live in a culture obsessed with battle language. We’re at war with cancer. At war with poverty. At war with mental illness. At war with ourselves. The framing is always about domination, victory, and conquest.

Jesus proposes something radically different. Love your enemy.

Applied inwardly, this is incredibly challenging. There’s often a fear that if we stop fighting something inside us, it will take over. That as long as we’re battling it, we’re safe. That the only thing keeping us sane or alive is this internal war.

But this teaching invites a completely different paradigm. Not ruling over, and not being ruled by. Something softer. Something relational.

Instead of anxiety being an enemy, it becomes something to listen to. Something to care for. Something to be curious about. What is this anxiety trying to do for me? Why did it come into being? What does it need?

So much of trauma healing and therapy gets reduced to techniques, skills, strategies, and hacks. And while those can be useful, what’s being offered here is not a tactic. It’s a fundamental orientation. A way of meeting yourself.

It’s about developing kindness, compassion, warmth, and curiosity toward the parts of you that you normally judge, fight, or try to eliminate.

For me, this has been a huge shift. And it’s something I forget constantly and have to return to again and again. The habit of being in opposition to myself runs deep. The anger, frustration, and hostility toward parts I don’t like can sneak back in very easily.

But when I remember to soften, to relax, and to meet those parts with tenderness, something opens. It’s not easy, but it’s deeply liberating. There’s a sense of coming home to myself rather than constantly trying to fix or defeat myself.

Something genuinely changes when we love what we’ve been fighting. When we love what feels like it persecutes us from the inside. There’s a surrender involved. A risk. A softening.

And often, that’s where healing actually happens.

If you’re curious, I’d invite you to try this. Just pick one thing you’ve been trying to defeat or conquer in yourself. And instead of battling it, see what it’s like to soften toward it. To be curious. To love it.

Notice what happens.

Thanks for reading. If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear about your experience of “loving your enemy” within. Take care.

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