Long Lost Enemies

We were enemies, we just didn’t know it yet.

Sitting across the small table for two was my friend Andrei. Both of us had been invited to speak at a conference on Enochic Judaism. If you don’t think the topic was riveting enough, the conference happened to be taking place in a monastery in Tuscany just outside of Florence, Italy. 

We were having cappuccinos and cake. I was familiar with Andrei’s work. He is a professor at Marquette University. But this was the first time we had met. From his initial greeting, it was obvious that he was Eastern European. We hit it off almost immediately. As you can imagine, finding a “normal” person at this sort of a conference (as defined by me) is like finding a needle in a haystack. In a room of sport coats with patched elbows, Andrei was a polo shirt kind of guy. With a smile and a hearty laugh, you could tell when Andrei was in the room.

So we sat outside at a table overlooking the Tuscan mountainside. I asked him about his story. He told me about growing up in the Soviet Union, his childhood, his service in the Russian military, his university and graduate studies, and his move to the USA. After hearing his story, I asked what he did in the Soviet Army. “Infantry,” he said.

He then asked me my story. I told him about growing up in Michigan, my military service after high school, my undergrad and graduate studies in Israel/Palestine and England. I told him about my growing family.

As a new friend, he asked what branch of service I was in. “The Marine Corps,” I said. He asked what I did in the Marines…”Infantry,” I said. I remember us smiling at each other, and then it dawned on us at the same time. We were enemies.

We weren’t just different world-view enemies. We were real enemies. Andrei’s mission in the Soviet infantry was to train to kill his enemies – to kill me. And my training with guns, knives, rocket launchers, and even my bare hands, was to kill the godless members of the Red Army. Without any drama intended, our shared occupation simply was to kill each other.

A few sips of cappuccino allowed us to figure out what to say next. I broke the silence. “We would have destroyed you,” I said with a smirk. We both laughed.

We went on to finish our cake, trading stories about our time in the military. I bet ten times during our conversation, he chuckled and said, “I can’t believe I’m having coffee and cake with a Marine.” When the bill came, he insisted that he pay and had the server take our picture so he could send it home and tell everyone that he had bought cake for a United States Marine. 

We weren’t really enemies. We had just been convinced that we were. We weren’t really enemies, we were just pawns in a serious game that was being played way above our heads. We were just two friends with similar interests who had been taught that we should hate each other. 

Andrei got me thinking about who my “enemies” are today. I’m too old to have real enemies anymore. The Soviet threat shifted to Iraq and then the Taliban. Now, who knows who’s next? But most of my enemies now reside a lot closer to home. 

Maybe it’s the Christian nationalists who I generally lump into a group that I like to call “crazy” or worse. Maybe it’s the conservative evangelicals whose teachings, I believe, have strayed far from Jesus for the pursuit of power or political gain. But it’s a two way street. Maybe I’m the woke liberal who has traded in the gospel just to make everyone feel good about themselves.

Sometimes, we face our enemies. Sometimes we have no choice since they sit around the same table on Thanksgiving. But for the most part, we distance ourselves from our enemies, at least I do, preferring the comfort of my echo chamber. We let go of relationships on social media and even in real life.

Sometimes we might have to let go for the sake of our own safety and health. But I wonder if we still aren’t getting played? I wonder if we still are pawns in a serious game being played way over our heads?

Our divisions are real, and our ideologies have a real impact on our own lives as well as the lives of others, including those on the margins. I still want to fight for justice. I still want to reclaim a better Christianity. And yet as my Palestinian friend Daoud Nassar continues to say, “We refuse to be enemies.”

On that Tuscan countryside we were enemies, we just didn’t know it yet. But twenty years earlier, we were friends, we just didn’t know it yet either.