\u201cRepay no one evil for evil\u2026..live peaceably with all.\u00a0 Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, \u201cVengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.\u00a0\u00a0 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>Romans 12: 17\u201421<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have to go too many days without coming across a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 story of revenge \u2013 some variation on the spurned lover who cuts off the sleeves of their ex\u2019s clothes and gives their silver car a coat of red gloss paint.\u00a0 Many books and films are driven by a revenge-type plot, building up the tension until the bad guys gets their comeuppance, with the sense of relief that brings.\u00a0 There seems to be endemic in humans a\u00a0 desire for personal justice that is powerful and potentially deadly.<\/p>\n
But God wants us to find different ways of dealing with vengeance; different ways of handling people who wrong us.<\/p>\n
It feels like passive acquiescence, but it\u2019s not.\u00a0 The negative commands in the Bible: \u2018do not repay anyone evil for evil\u2019, \u2018do not take revenge\u2019, \u2018do not be overcome by evil\u2019 \u2013 are balanced with positive ones: \u2018be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone, live at peace with everyone\u2019, \u2018leave room for God\u2019s wrath\u2026 feed [your enemy]\u2026 give him something to drink\u2019, \u2018overcome evil with good\u2019. These actions require us to be proactive; they place the initiative with us.<\/p>\n
That makes sense. Most of us have to work hard at not coming back with the snide comment, not wanting to get ahead of that car that undercut us, not firing off that passive-aggressive email.\u00a0 Revenge keeps evil in circulation, whether in a family or on a motorway or between nations.<\/p>\n
Loving our enemies in tangible ways (\u2018feed him\u2026give him something to drink\u2019) seems so counter-intuitive.\u00a0 And it is.\u00a0 But no less counter-intuitive than what we see in the cross, the supreme demonstration of God\u2019s love for us, even \u2018while we were God\u2019s enemies\u2019 (Romans 5:10).\u00a0 It\u2019s there we see a different way of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 responding to hostility.\u00a0 In seeking to overcome evil, how could we not expect to be called to do the same?<\/p>\n
<\/i>Antony Billington writing in www.parishpump.co.uk<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cRepay no one evil for evil\u2026..live peaceably with all.\u00a0 Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, \u201cVengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Phone_number(s)":"","email_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-more-pages","tag-featured"],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nwbchurches.org.uk\/stanley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}