PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Daniel Cho, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL:  daniel.seunghyun.cho@gmail.com

To follow Christ means a change in the way one lived and acted.  This change necessarily affects the way in which Christ's followers were to treat their neighbors.  Indeed, Christians are exhorted to love not only God, but to love their neighbors as well, for loving God means one loves his or her neighbor.  What complicates matters is the question of how we treat a particular subset of neighbors-namely antagonizing neighbors, also known as enemies.  This is the primary question addressed in this paper:  how does one respond to the antagonisms of the enemy?

As difficult it is to answer this question, the maturity level of the person and ethnic identity vis-à-vis other surrounding ethnic identities further complicates matters in answering this question regarding loving the enemy.  To be clearer, there are two possible variables that must be taken into consideration.  First, how does one address a Christian youth with regards to loving his or her enemy?  Second, how does one's ethnic identity, particularly as part of a minority ethnic group, affect the way in which he or she can be exhorted to love the enemy?

To answer these questions, this paper will focus on a particular case study of a Korean American Christian youth attempting to cope and respond to racism in his school.  Furthermore, this paper will attempt to ground his possible responses Christologically, particularly using the thoughts of Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.