I assume in this crowd it's okay to begin a talk on Lewis in Middle Earth?
"I do not slay man or beast needlessly, and not gladly even when it is needed… War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
So says Faramir, Captain of Gondor, thereby intersecting the notion of love with the cataclysm of war; indeed, pressing the claim that war can be an expression of love. Everything that follows will follow from the fact that the Christian ethical life has as its central commitment the dominical command to love.
This love command is not an option. It's an absolute mandate. But because of the conditions of this world and the human soul, it is not always clear precisely how it is we are to love our neighbor. For instance, how do we love one neighbor when he is unjustly kicking in the face of another neighbor—whom we are also called to love? If the first neighbor—let's call him the enemy-neighbor—refuses to stop his kicking and our victim-neighbor is unable to defend himself, then we cannot love both neighbors in precisely the same way. But the question is never whether to love one or the other, but what does loving both, individually, look like now, in this moment?
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