Dear Daughters,
Jeremy and Jessica Courtney are quite an unusual couple. In their mid-twenties, they moved from a small Texas town to Baghdad, Iraq – a rather unlikely place for young marrieds to raise their children.
When the horror of 9-11 occurred – radical Muslims destroying America’s Temple – many people reacted with horror and hate. The church that the Courtneys attended, however, didn’t cower in fear because of the terror, but continued to preach the words of Jesus found in Matthew 5:44:
Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.
Those words are easy to say and memorize, but much harder to live out every day. It’s one thing to love those with whom you live and work, but to go half way around the world, choosing to move away from family and American comforts, living among many who hate Americans was way beyond my realm of thinking.
Jeremy and Jessica took those words of Jesus seriously, and acted on them.
Love first, ask questions later
was Jeremy and Jessica’s motto when they first moved to Iraq, arriving in an area ruled by chaos and fear. The Courtney’s original plan was to help war widows, but that eventually evolved into finding surgeons for the thousands of children needing heart surgery. Birth defects caused by the 1988 chemical warfare of Saddam Hussein were the reason for many of these heart defects. Thirty years later there are still numerous troubling birth defects and cancers that rival the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.
As Jeremy met many children suffering from heart ailments, he met and made friends with Sunnis and Shias (warring sects of Muslims) Grand Sheikhs, not so grand sheikhs, turbaned clerics, Kurds, Arabs, Israelis – many who are mortal enemies of each other. But it is amazing, when countless children with heart defects become a common denominator, how some of those differences begin to melt away.
In the ten years that the Courtney’s have lived in Iraq, through many failures and successes, celebrations and disappointments among warring peoples and ideologies, they have learned a most important lesson. In Jeremy’s words:
I no longer accept the zero-sum worldview that says we cannot simultaneously be on the side of the Democrats and the Republicans; Americans, Israelis and Iranians; Jews and Palestinians; Sunnis and Shias; Arabs, Kurds and Turks. I choose them all.
I don’t lean left or right. I lean in. I lean forward, because that’s where love lives.
When I read those paragraphs, I thought Yes! That’s how we are supposed to live. Why do we mentally put labels on everyone we meet? Conservative, liberal, black, white, athletic, lazy, annoying, insecure, not deserving of my time, educated or not…
Though many Iraqis were open to going to neighboring countries to save their children’s lives, Jeremy was astounded by the statement coming from a grand sheikh when he heard that Americans and Jews would be willing to help his children:
We must stop this treatment lest it lead our children and their parents to love their enemies, leading to apostasy!
Loving hate more than the health of their children opened a window into some people’s hearts that was horrifying. Jeremy was overcome by this insight into the strength and vow of hatred, which was the main reason he committed himself to a life of Preemptive Love. Love that strikes first in the midst of anger and fear, love that is strong and fearless in the face of evil.
When a fatwa (a death threat) was issued against Jeremy and Preemptive Love Coalition, he didn’t change a thing he was doing – except to invite the Coalition members to their house for prayer. His invitation-to-pray email read as follows:
Let’s pray for the aggressors. Let’s hope to engage them in dialogue and love. Let’s hope to serve their children and their families. We should long to give them more than good news; we should give them our own lives as well.
And let’s not back down. Above all, this is our time to follow Jesus. I’ve talked a lot about preemptive love, loving our enemies, not resisting an evil person, feeding our hungry/thirsty enemies, and being at peace with everyone as far as it depends on us. But it is not just rhetoric. This is our way of life.
We love others because God first loved us in Christ. We should not be cowed into submission or fear by a bunch of thugs who want to harm us.
We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Jeremy’s book Preemptive Love, is a story about just that – striking first with love. After reading it I felt a bit weak – actually cowardly – in my loving. I thought I loved well, but when I see a love that travels over the ocean to strike enemies with preemptive love, I am amazed. Amazed that some people actually obey what Jesus says.
Instead of following Jeremy’s mantra of
Love first, ask questions later
I often
Accuse first, ask questions later
Get angry first, ask questions later
Judge first, ask questions later
I pray that I may let go of my natural impulses to accuse, get angry and judge – and learn to love preemptively – just like Jesus loved. Enemies as well as friends. If the Courtneys can travel half way around the world to love their enemies, I know that I can love those around me.
This concept could transform marriages, families and churches. Please join with me to become the Preemptive Love people in our own communities.
Love, Mom
P.S. You have probably heard about the chemical attack in Syria two days ago. Preemptive Love Coalition was one of the first responders, caring for the sick and dying soon after the news broke.
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