“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘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.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”[1]
War rages around us. Depending on how and where you live, you are likely either in the midst of it or at least exposed to reports of it. We have increasingly less and less ability to shelter ourselves from what’s going on in the world around us or plead ignorance to it. The easiest thing to do is to become overwhelmed and check out altogether. We all do it sometimes. The second easiest thing to do is to criticize others for the way they’re responding. It’ll always be more facile to point fingers at others for doing things wrong than to do it better yourself. The hardest option is to figure out how to effectively engage conflict in a beneficial way. Not only with posts on social media, or verbal statements that we don’t live—but real, active responses that create change. My guess is that most of us fall somewhere in between the two ends of the spectrum. We care, we want to do something, but we don’t know how. If you’ve really tried engaging the great conflicts of the world—war, poverty, violence, corruption, slavery, etc.—you’ve likely discovered that these issues have been functioning in cycles since the fall of man, and those cycles aren’t so easily broken. These are issues of complexity, stemming from the seed of sin in human hearts. So, what do we do with a world full of raging conflict when solutions aren’t so simple? How should the church respond when we are constantly over-stimulated by how much need surrounds us?
I want to suggest that the Word of God and the example of Jesus’ life offer far more practical instruction than we give them credit for. It’s easy for us to view Scripture as an ethereal set of ideas that we apply to emotions and then wonder why we feel lost when it comes to knowing “what to do.” In reality, there is so much practical instruction in the Word that we could quickly fill a lifetime obeying what it says:
“Go and make disciples, teaching them to obey what I’ve commanded.”[2] “Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and the imprisoned.”[3] “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”[4] “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.”[5] “Thus says the Lord: do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.”[6] “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.”[7] “Rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”[8] “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.”[9]
Sounds to me like we have a lot of assignments. These commandments are answers to the problems of a broken and hurting world. These actions are a healing balm to souls that don’t know the touch of the Savior. Scripture goes on and on, with so many more passages than just these, with answers to our questions of “what to do.”
We’ve squandered our freedom if we allow it to mean that we have the “right” to respond to contention however we want. If that’s what our freedom means, we should be ashamed of it. The Prince of Peace never gave Christians the “right” to act how the world acts. In our carnal nature, we fight offense with defense, violence with violence, death with death. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But Jesus of Nazareth met hatred with love, He met sin with grace, He fought fire with water instead of adding more flames.
If we are governed by the Holy Spirit that He left in His place, we’ll act in this manner too. We have access to the God who gives creative solutions to complex problems. This is the God who sent a baby to be a King, a King to be crucified by His own creation, His own creation to be given life through His death. How opposite from the solutions we come up with on our own—He is most certainly creative beyond our wildest imagination.
One of the most grounding, effective, tactful approaches to conflict we can take is to remember that we are not of this world,[10] and respond with the opposite spirit: Bless those who persecute you; feed and give drink to your enemy. There is nothing more disarming than having your attack responded to with a hot meal. There’s nothing more humbling than having your hatred met with gracious love. Who is your enemy? Are you making an active effort to love them? Who do you look at with eyes of judgment for how they live? Is your life showing them an example of how to do it better?
Here’s the beauty of Romans 12:20 and its reference to Proverbs 25:21-22: after instruction to turn the other cheek and love our enemies, we are told that this “heaps burning coals on their heads.” Of course, after the commandment to be so gracious as to feed our enemies when they harm us, this can’t mean we then scorch their heads with literal fire. Burning coals have multiple different meanings in Scripture as a symbolic picture of both wrath and cleansing. What element can both burn and cleanse at the same time? Fire. Vengeance is His, and He will judge sin righteously in a way we never could. We are to show His radical grace and love to all, and leave the judgment up to the Lord. In so doing, this Love refines by fire and we actually cleanse our enemies with mercy.
This was His instruction to us: Do not be overcome, but rather be the overcomer.[11] A commandment, not a sweet idea. If we are not the overcomers, we are bound to be the overcome. Apathy can creep in to any of us, and it’s the fastest way to grow sluggish. Countless times in the records we have of Jesus’ ministry, He shows us in real-time how to do what He commanded. He didn’t leave us without examples. It’s not theoretical. Sitting back in passivity may get labeled as “peacekeeping,” but it’s a contribution to the problem. The more intense the conflict around us, the more tempting it is to disengage and hide. But peacemaking requires us to break off our apathy and address the things that are most difficult for us head-on. We’re not contributing to anyone’s peace by avoiding conflict. Peacemakers go to the front lines of war and bring a drink to their enemies instead of a gun.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”[12] Why is it that Jesus chooses to mention the specific categories of people He mentions in the Beatitudes? Why do you think peacemakers will have the extraordinary honor of being called His sons and daughters? Maybe He’s not only saying we will earn the title “child of God” by being peacemakers. Maybe He’s saying the world should be able to identify us as “children of God” by how we make peace. When those around us see us making peace as Jesus did, we shall be called “children of God” because that behavior comes from our Father. The world will come to identify those with this power as followers of The Way.
Jesus made peace by the blood of the cross.[13] His way is so antithetical to the methods we imagine on our own, so inverse of our carnal expectations. I’ve heard mention of an “upside down kingdom” to say that God’s way is opposite of ours. But I think we see things upside down, and His way is right-side-up. Right now, we do see upside down—literally. The curvature of our eyes bends light to create an upside down image on our retinas, that our brains then have to flip right-side-up in order for us to be able to see the true image in front of us. Naturally, in our flesh, we see everything upside down. We need Him to be able to see anything clearly. He flips everything so we can see straight, see rightly, and catch vision for how He operates. He is able and eager to give us new eyes, creative strategy, and heavenly wisdom. When we become like Him, we are cool water to a world going up in flames.
Autumn Crew is the Managing Editor of FAI Publishing. She lives in the Middle East and serves a number of disciple-making initiatives. She can be reached at autumncrew@faimission.org.
[1] Romans 12:17-21
[2] Matthew 28:19-20
[3] Mathew 25:36-40
[4] James 1:27
[5] Isaiah 1:17
[6] Jeremiah 22:3
[7] Titus 3:14
[8] Proverbs 24:11
[9] Isaiah 58:10
[10] John 17:14,16
[11] Romans 12:21
[12] Matthew 5:9
[13] Colossians 1:20