Love My Enemy? by John Monday

I grew up in the midst of the greatest endeavor that man has ever undertaken. In 1964, six weeks after my birth, my parents moved from Tennessee to the Space Coast of Florida. Although they didn’t have job’s or a place to live, they knew they wanted to participate in this great American adventure, and they weren't the only ones.

Brevard county was a boom town in those days, a legacy that’s easy to see still today. Houses and businesses were being built at astonishing rates; the population was exploding. All the schools were new and filled with the children of engineers, scientists, and skilled craftsman of every sort. Hope and ambition permeated everything.

The common purpose both drew and cultivated a common ethos. Everyone was dogmatically patriotic, socially and politically conservative, hard working, prosperous, and christian (at least in my perception). These things were, to me, not just my way, or our families way; they were the American way, and anyone that felt differently simply wasn’t American.

Vietnam war protests, hippies in San Francisco, marches and riots over racial inequality, were more alien than the moon. Seeing those things on TV never made sense to me. In large part I wrote them off as some sort of fantasy, no more real than Gilligan’s Island or Star Trek. And I firmly believed that those news stories represented a meaningless minority of miscreants and troublemakers.

From the summer of my 16th year, I began working construction at the Space Center, some of the proudest work of my life. I first worked in an old Air Force hanger that was being converted into a lab for the many science experiments that would fly on the new Space Shuttles. And later on launch pad 39B, converting it from a Saturn V facility to a Space Shuttle launch pad.

It was this young man who in 1986 had an opportunity to spend a semester in London, England. To say that I entered an utterly different world would be an understatement. I went to one of the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan cities in the world. I was alone and removed from everything I had ever known. It turned out to be one of the best and most formative times of my life.

The “student” hotel I lived in was filled with both collegeians and young travelers from around the world. There were only a few other Americans, and they were from places like Boston and New York. While I made friends quickly, I always felt different. Maybe everyone did.

On Jan 28th, 1986, one of my new friends from Boston knocked on my door and told me there was some news I might be interested in. I went downstairs to the common room where the only TV was located, and I learned that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded 73 seconds after lift-off from Kennedy Space Center. This was the first Shuttle to launch from the newly-refurbished launch pad 39B and the first manned space flight that I had not personally witnessed.

I was shocked and riveted. After two or three minutes, my Boston friend shrugged nonchalantly, said “Hmm, that’s to bad . . . We’re going out to get something to eat, you wanna go?” I couldn’t believe how little he and all the other Americans cared. Didn’t they understand how important and tragic this was?!

They left, and I sat in front of the TV, but not alone. The other person in the room was a student I hadn’t really made friends with. He was a young man with whom I had nothing in common. He spoke very little English, was Muslim, and from Libya. He turned to me and, in broken English, said, “I’m sorry.” The two of us sat there alone for more than an hour while I tried to process both the tragedy and the empathy from this “enemy of America,” and a genuine camaraderie developed.

Three months later we were watching the same TV. This time the room was full as American Fighter Bombers virtually destroyed Tripoli. I had no idea what to do, what to say, so I sat next to my Libyan friend, said, “I’m sorry,” and watched TV.

I wasn’t apologizing for my country or taking a moral or political stand on the rightness or wrongness of this military action. I was just sorry that my friend’s country, his home, was being bombed.

I learned a lot from my time in London, and from my Libyan friend I learned this. It’s much harder to judge people once you’ve become their friend.

43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Jesus
Matthew 5: 43-45

Sometimes it takes the kindness of a Libyan Muslim for us to understand the words of Jesus.

John Monday