Jesus commands us to love our enemies. Our fallen nature is repulsed by such an idea. Fear not, St Columba Uniting Church in Australia has come up with something much easier: love someone else’s enemies.

St Columba Uniting Church is flying an ISIS flag with a quote from Matthew 5:44 on it:

It’s very easy for comfortable Western Christians to parade their piety by expressing forgiveness for a remote enemy that has done them no direct harm. It is a little harder for the parents in Iraq or Syria whose children have been murdered. The clergy who erected the flag have not suffered at the hands of ISIS; they have nothing to lose by forgiving ISIS. Moreover, by sycophantically sucking up to non-Christian religions, the denomination could win the coveted Order of the Politically Correct award.

St Columba ‘s exhortation might have been marginally more convincing had it been placed on the corporate logo of an organisation that the church probably does genuinely hate: a carbon spewing oil company, for example.

I wonder if they would have got away something similar involving a swastika during World War 2?