Faith Enough to Hate

James and John, two of Jesus’ early close followers, respond to the sting of rejection with a destructive wish rooted in “faith.” Such faith is really faith in our own worldview, our own understanding of who is good and who is evil, our views which are ultimately a product of our setting, culture, experiences, childhood, etc. Often, those aspects of life are what we truly have faith in, and we act from that place instead of from holy compassion. But Jesus takes the people James and John most hate and and tells a story in which the enemy is the hero and role model. What might happen if we learned to tell stories where our most antagonistic enemies are actually people we strive to be?