Reconcile

This conversation will be somewhat familiar to anyone who has had much to do with raising children.
Adult: Did you kick your brother
Child: Yes but he was making fun of me
Adult: But you know kicking is wrong, right?
Child: He started it.
This view of the world as somehow retributive with me as the centre of restoring some sort of justice comes quite easily to children. They have to learn that although their gut reactions is to hit, shout, pinch or in some other way injure those who wrong them that this is not what is expected of them - they should seek other ways, often finding an adult, of resolving conflict.
This is our hope for our children, our expectation of good behaviour and being a part of society. So it should come as no surprise that the expectation which God has of us is similar, namely that we should love those who hate us and forgive our enemies. What we have been teaching to our children in issues of books and toys and turns on the slide should translate into towns and nations and global politics - but somehow it doesn't.
There is the very real point to be made that whilst children are often scrapping their scraps rarely lead to serious injury whereas the enemies which beset us in an arena beyond the garden fence have the ability to do us considerably more harm. Some face danger from without with a passive assignation, most would prefer to defend their families and themselves and some feel there is justice in a proactive approach to those who wish them harm.
These matters of defense and security we often refer to as justice, but in fact they often more resemble the "you kicked me first" mentality which we are so eager to erase from our children. The Bible clearly moves from ideas of justice as primarily retributive (ie I will pay you back evil like for like) to seeing justice as primarily a process of reconciliation. Instead of those indebted to God, imprisoned by sin, we become those who exist in the freedom of redemption and forgiveness.
This justice of freedom is what we are asked to exercise towards those around us - but how can that be in real life? Does it mean that we must passively concur with evil and the aggressor rather than challenge them? Does it mean that there is no such thing as a righteous anger against all forms of the degridation of humanity? Not at all. It just means that the point and which we start and to which we are returning is not to get people back for the wrongs which they have committed but to restore relationship with them.
Of course, this does not always happen. There are countless times when we come to the point of war and other activity which means that we will never be restored to full relationship with the other.  Other people may not want to restore anything at all, may not be interested in peace or God and then we have a difficult choice to make both in personal and international relationships.
There has been much written about the morality of war and it would take many sermons to explore that subject in detail - but what about us here and now. Where do we go with loving our enemies - perhaps we do not even feel that we have enemies. In all things we must plot a path of reconciliation. This does not mean simply being friendly to the folks we know, it also means really working on ourselves in those areas which we know we avoid. To use the language of another Biblical parable - we cannot cross over the street to avoid the dispossessed, injured and hurting in our society and claim that that is reconciliation.
Our justice system in the West is often retributive - you do something wrong and we will deprive you of your freedom or some of your money. But this is not a New Testament view of justice, there needs to be reconciliation on a different level and reconciliation is a two way street - there is the aspect of reconciliation which is between us and God and there is the aspect of reconciliation which spreads across community and society.
Reconciliation includes political and social causes. It involves anything which sees the other as uniquely valuable in the sight of God. Our enemies are often not enemies but simply those who have no hope or who have pinned their hopes on the transitory. We have something more than that.
In our conversation with the child we might end up saying something like - I do not care how much you are provoked there is never an excuse for kicking. God is simply saying to us - however hard you are pushed, however much you hurt, I always, always expect you to be seeking forgiveness and reconciliation.