Is Jesus' teaching “love your enemies” truly possible? Can we, as individuals, really love those who misuse or abuse us? There is a conflict on our planet. It may be that the only way this discord can be resolved is by moving to the next level—the next evolution of love.

I believe that we have reached a turning point in our spiritual evolution and that the time has come for us to prepare to move to another level of understanding of the word “love.” Life conditions on our planet are pushing and urging us to recognize what it means to love all humanity, including those we tend to think of as enemies. At the same time there is a cosmic force that is pulling us onward and upward. These two forces have brought us to a junction—a place where we are being called to go beyond our current state of being.

Richard Lynch, a Unity writer, in his book Know Thyself, stated that when human beings became self-reflective, thinking individuals, they became important to and participative in their own evolution. In his book On Love and Happiness, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit, paleontologist, and priest, described love as a cosmic force not limited to human beings but finding its highest expression through them. He called love the most universal, most tremendous, and most mysterious of all forces.

Lloyd Geering, in an article in The Fourth R (a Westar publication, July/August 2004), tells of a Christian pacifist in New Zealand pleading his case for not wishing to participate in military action. He explained that as a Christian he was bound to love his enemies. He was told by a magistrate that it was absurd that anyone could love Nazi Germans. (Today it might be Osama bin Laden.)

We can learn to harness the energies of love. It involves recognizing that we are all one, even those who we now see as enemies. “…The day will come when after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and on that day for the second time in the history of the world we shall have discovered fire,” says Teilhard.

I am convinced that the teaching of Jesus, loving your enemies, is not only possible, it is necessary in order for us to move to a new level in our evolutionary process. Charles Fillmore, one of the founders of the Unity movement, in the Revealing Word, called love the power that joins and binds the universe and everything in it. And I am also convinced that those of us who understand this must lead the way.

Rev. E. J. Niles is the chairperson of Scriptural Studies at the Unity Institute.