Tangled web: following Jesus' advice about loving our enemies is not only good for our enemies, it's good for us.

DURING A RECENT SOUTHWEST EXCURSION I came back to the house to find a tarantula on my doorstep, eerily poised between me and the door. We've all seen the movies where the tarantula pauses, motionless in all its hairy, spidery glory, before it begins the creepy stalk toward its victim. The tarantula is well chosen to play that part because it is a large and remarkably chilling beast. It looks like something one wishes to avoid the near occasion of. But this particular fellow was directly in the oath I needed to take, so avoiding him was not really an option.

Tarantulas are not especially dangerous, as spiders go. There are many more black widows in this part of the world, and though quite lovely with their sleek black bodies and red hourglass insignia on their bellies, the bite of a black widow can cause respiratory paralysis and even death to small children.

But the tarantula is a bit of a false alarm, visually speaking. While it looks far scarier than the average spider, it's mostly interested in finding other spiders on which to dine. In black widow country, then, a tarantula could be viewed as a friend.

Still, I admit my first reaction to seeing a 3-inch long spider with a 6-inch leg span was to want to stomp on it. While may brain said it wasn't likely to hurt me, the fear response when it comes to eight-leggers is pretty inbred. Kill it! It's either him or me! But instead of giving in to impulse, I controlled the rising mania by sitting down carefully on the porch and keeping an eye on the creature while I waited it out.

The original wolf spider known by the name tarantula was believed to have a bite that caused a hysteria called tarantism. The only cure, supposedly, was to dance the tarantella long and hard. The tarantella, a folk dance with a rapidly increasing tempo, is a strenuous and prolonged sort of treatment tot hysteria. But if dancing helps keep the hysteria from tearing your psyche to pieces, it's a dance worth learning.

As I sat and watched the spider, I wondered if it was watching me. It did not move for a quarter of an hour. And then, daintily stretching its legs, it raised its body high and took a balletically slow promenade across the floor. I have rarely seen a creature move so elegantly.

I felt ashamed of my impulse to destroy it.

Maybe there should be a dance we could do to keep our fear of being bitten in check.

Often we fear things that are new or foreign to us even though they intend us no harm. And sometimes what we fear may indeed bite us painfully hard, like the tarantula, but only if we seem to cause a threat. Left to itself, a tarantula isn't the least interested in vertebrates as big as us. All we need to do is show a little respect, and this fellow creature will eventually pass on by.

UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF A SITUATION, LIKE THAT between one species and another, can change our interpretation of it profoundly. And addressing the dynamics can often avert a looming disaster. For example, some small amount of the violence in the world is certainly personal, but a greater part of it isn't: It has more to do with underlying forces that cause a person, or a nation, to explode into chaos. If something was done about the tensions at an earlier stage the ensuing hostilities might have been circumvented. But once both sides of a division have been bitten painfully enough, hysteria takes over and the dance of vengeance begins. Unfortunately, this dance never cures the injury, but only spreads the poison far and wide.

Centuries of bloodshed have soaked the world since the time when Cain first raised his hand against his brother, Abel. So Jesus spoke with intimate appreciation of what he was asking when he told his disciples: "To you who hear I say, love your enemies."

Jesus wasn't lobbying for some sloppy spiritual sentiment here. He recognized that fighting our enemies, even killing them, was no solution to the trouble that caused the animosity to begin with. Hating our enemies was the root dynamic that would perpetuate all the harm that followed. Therefore, the only way to change the dynamic and subvert the violence is to change our hearts. If we love our enemies, we liberate ourselves from the onset of hysteria and destruction that are the natural tributaries of the river of hate. If we cannot bring ourselves to love our enemies, the future will continue to flow downstream from the mistakes of the past and nothing new will come into the world.

THOSE WHO HEARD WHAT JESUS SAID THAT DAY MUST HAVE been astonished. How could Jesus expect them to love Egyptians, who once enslaved the nation; or Babylonians, who had held them captive in exile; or Assyrians, who had ransacked their country; or Romans, who oppressed and humiliated them now? Jesus couldn't mean for them to love Samaritans, who had squatted on their land when the nation was in exile. How in the world could a person be expected to love someone who by definition had caused serious injury and offense?

So Jesus spelled out how in the world it could be done. "Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you" These three simple acts might play a role in the transformation of the enemy, but the main purpose they serve is to transform the heart of the one performing them. Treating the enemy like a friend makes it possible for the movement of the heart to flow in a new direction. Before we can experience a change in our feelings, it is necessary to change our attitude and our actions.

And most of all, treating the enemy like a friend fundamentally alters the age-old dynamic of "an eye for an eye" retributive justice. Violence begets violence, and only by refusing to participate in that cycle can a new thing be achieved.

No doubt the listeners scoffed at this recommendation from Jesus. All that benign activity will simply allow the enemy to move in and strike first! Jesus replied: "To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well. And from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic."

It was clear to many that Jesus was offering some sort of voluntary victim stance toward the immutable fact of human hatred. Let the enemy rough you up and take advantage of you, eh? That will surely change the world!

What Jesus actually proposes is not to permit our enemies the easy victory of conforming us into the image of their hatred. When we answer offense with offense, then we become what hates us, and conversely, we become what we hate. Changing the world is a long-term goal. The short-term goal is not to allow the world to change us with the invitation to violence.

Jesus pressed home the message: "Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?" Just as the impact of violence is often a precursor to retaliation, so a loving act can call forth the potential of more love. I remember a cheerful person who dropped off some cookies at a rectory office where I worked, noting on her way out, "It's nice to be nice to the nice!" Yes, but it's holy to be nice to the not-nice--to the mean, the low-down, and the obnoxious.

ON A CERTAIN OCCASION YEARS AGO, I ADMIT TO BEING THE obnoxious one. I had become embroiled in an ongoing conflict with a woman about my age who had joined a group to which I belonged.

Joanna was attractive, charming, and had a sparkle that was not missed by anyone who came into contact with her--except perhaps me. Since she had joined our group, it was as if all the energy in the ranks had been siphoned in her direction, and the men in particular fell all over themselves trying to please her. Our once-productive group had overnight become a Joanna Appreciation Club. I found myself growing increasingly cold in my dealings with this woman, though I tried to cover the horns of jealousy with a dignified reserve.

One particular afternoon, it fell to the two of us to run some errands on behalf of the committee. We were on foot, and since it had been a sunny day I was entirely caught off guard by a sudden downpour that would have drenched us both if Joanna had not had a small umbrella in her purse. Under it, we raced to the nearest doorway for more protection and then stood transfixed by the sheet of rain that ended our errands for the foreseeable future. Trapped in a small doorway with a woman who rankled me, I found my breath constricted.

To my surprise, Joanna laughed at the apparent grimace on my face. "You don't like me," she said, frankly. "And I didn't like you either, at first. But here we are. We may as well make the best of it." And she proceeded to share her story with me. What amazed me was her freedom in opening herself to me, a person who had never shown her an ounce of kindness.

Up to now the idea of being vulnerable to this woman seemed the worst possible situation. But the more she talked the more I realized we had a lot in common: the same fears and weaknesses, the same hopes for happiness and acceptance. By the time we noticed the rain had stopped it was hours later, and we were on the way to becoming lifelong friends. Joanna remains one of the holiest people I know because she had the courage to love an enemy into intimacy.

WHEN WE FOLLOW JESUS' INJUNCTION TO LOVE OUR ENemies, we liberate our hearts from hatred and fear, and we offer the opposition the chance to be liberated as well. The choice to hate our enemies makes us like them. But when we choose the way of love, we are transformed instead into the image of God, who is kind and merciful--even to the ungrateful and wicked, as Jesus says. So the advent of an enemy is really an invitation to choose: will we surrender to the ways of the enemy, or the ways of God? Which will have sovereignty, over our lives: the one we hate, or the One we love?

Yes, but--the objection comes, as it surely came in the time of Jesus. If we do this thing, offer love to our enemies, turn the other cheek, pray for them, and refuse to return their violence against us with our own form of offense, then what if they just come and get us? What if our enemies laugh our love to scorn, take advantage of our kindness, and crush us while we lie docile and unarmed?

We know The answer to that is in the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus ordered his disciples to put away their swords. We see the results at Golgotha, as Jesus prays for those who are crucifying him. The enemy does not always yield to the offering of love, and the consequences may be that the violent will seize the hour and bear it away. The cross bears witness to this reality.

As illustrator Sister Mary Southard, C.S.J. has written in a footnote to a portrait of the Crucifixion, "Jesus Christ absorbed the violence and refused to pass it on." This is the great lesson of Christian integrity: to remain true to the image of the God whose love does not bend or become one with the forces of evil. There are no good ends that justify evil means. The cross teaches us that good must choose the way of goodness or join its adversary.

Of course, the cross would be a symbol of brave and tragic heroism if God allowed it to be the last word on the subject of violence. By loving his enemies and not fighting them, Jesus conquered both them and their means: sin and death. The Christian way to defeat our enemies is not to kill them but to reconcile with them. Once we've done that, the dance of vengeance ends, and a new celebration can begin.

ALICE CAMILLE, author of Seven Last Words, a meditation on the sayings of Jesus from the cross (ACTA Publications, 1998) and collaborator on the homily service Prepare the Word (TrueQuest Communications).