So about watching British crime shows during the pandemic—I can’t say it happened on purpose. It started with missing persons cases in creepy English forests and village fetes, with inspectors unearthing clues and discovering the most unlikely guilty parties responsible. No plot celebrated loving your enemies. It became so strangely comforting to end each day seeing crimes solved and enemies overcome in 90 minutes or less!!!
Why I Love British Crime Shows
In days full of bad news, unreliable information, reports of conflict, fear inducing facts, and public service announcements about restrictions blamed on an enemy none of us could see, we were all potential victims. It felt good to watch bad guys get what they deserved. And it didn’t hurt that the characters sounded like ones I remember from Peter Pan, the Aristocats, and Mary Poppins. No show ended without the triumph of good over evil. I was hooked.
I slept better watching criminals get caught. Do you like knowing perpetrators pay? Loving your enemies isn’t instinctive. Maybe you’ve laid awake at night wondering when a guilty party in your life would be caught. Perhaps you’ve prayed for them to regret pain they caused. We yearn for enemies to be overcome.
We don’t want love to win because we’re innocent. Even cute grandmas wearing flowered dresses and serving tea can hide hearts of darkness in their cottages—trust me. I’ve watched a lot of episodes! Isaiah 53:6 says we’ve all gone our own way, a different way than “good,” so God put it all on Jesus for us. That makes me the enemy of God.
Did you read that? !?!?
Plot Twist
Turns out I AM the enemy! And YOU. We deserve to get “taken down to the station” and declared guilty. All of us went our own way from God’s way, “And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Someone totally innocent gets all the blame for all the hurt we cause each other. I never saw an episode like that. It’s unthinkable. Jesus takes the blame.
Apparently, I have a lot in common with characters in the British crime shows —and I’m not talking about the DCIs. (That’s Detective Chief Inspectors for you non-British show binging friends)
Where Loving Your Enemies Got Started
The pandemic reminds us all we live in conflict. Evil lurks here to cause pain. Thankfully, the guilty party has been exposed, and his days are numbered. It will take more than a chap in a gray suit to be sure he gets what he deserves for wrecking peace from creepy corners of earth.
When victims feel “the sting of death” in British shows, their loved ones don’t usually scream or threaten people with baseball bats (confession here). They usually just put down their scone and look away saying, “I think you should leave now.” But we want revenge. Justice.
Loving your enemies started with Jesus.
In one crime episode I watched, a British secret service agent gave his life so his team could live. We honor such sacrifices on holidays like Memorial Day in the United States. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13). We honor ones who give their lives for us, but we don’t think of loving our enemies. Yet God loved us when we were still His enemies. With his intentional, sacrificial death in our place, God’s Son Jesus was the willing One “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” (Galatians 1:4)
Just like that, the enemy’s fate was sealed. Season over. Like every episode of every season of every British crime show, “The sting of death is sin … but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Corinthians 15:56-57). We can be the friend of God (John 15:13-15) instead of the enemy of God (James 4:4). That’s not what we deserve, but God can do that. And did. That’s grace.
Last Words on Enemies
So to end a month reflecting on how to make peace with our enemies, even ourselves, let Jesus speak the final word in Matthew 5.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” (from Matthew 5)
