Defeating Evil: A To-Do List

It’s hard to believe that the horrors in Charlottesville were just three weeks ago. So much has happened since then – North Korea tested a missile-ready bomb, a once-in-a-thousand-years weather event unleashed apocalyptic-style disaster in Texas, a group of semi-famous evangelical leaders released a statement condemning the LGBTQ community and all who support them. And that is all just a sliver of what has happened in less than a month.

A lot of bad can happen in just a little bit of time. Daily outrages exhaust us. Wave after wave crashes over us, drowning us in a sea of bad news. We are overwhelmed. We feel powerless. What can any of us do when heads of state rattle their sabers, and natural disasters wreak unfathomable havoc, and people who claim to speak for God say things that cause unimaginable harm, and the systemic sins of racism and sexism and ableism and homophobia and xenophobia all fester and boil until the whole nation feels like it is ripping apart?

“Do not be overcome by evil,” Paul writes in his letter to the Romans. And it’s an easy thing to say in the abstract – don’t let the powers of evil overpower you; don’t let the darkness of this world overwhelm you; don’t let other people’s bad actions cause you to act badly. It’s easy to say. But what are people like us supposed to do when the hate all around us becomes so ferocious that we begin to feel it surging up in our own hearts, too?

“Do not be overcome with evil,” Paul says. And his message, in fact, is not abstract. His ethics are not theoretical but tangible, grounded in the divine love made visible in Jesus. Paul does not just give broad, general platitudes about resisting evil. He gives us a to-do list.

I don’t know about you, but I love a list. I love making them, and I love checking things off of them, and, if you ask my sons, you will learn that I love assigning them to others, too. A to-do list makes a seemingly unmanageable thing become doable.

In the face of unmanageable bad news, Paul’s to-do list breaks things down for us. He tells us in thirty different ways what to do. And the heading of his list is this: “Let love be genuine.” His list is about love that comes from the center[1] of who God created us to be. Love as an action. Love as a “moral orientation.”[2] Love as an identity. Love that makes the choice, every single day, to bend all our other choices towards good.

Paul tells us what that good looks like, in concrete terms. He moves from big love to particular love. When he says, “Let love be genuine,” the word he uses for “love” is agape – that big, unconditional God love. But now he turns it more specific. “Love one another with mutual love,” he says. And the word he uses here for “love” is phileo– a family kind of love, a brotherly, sisterly love. The kind of love you share with an equal. The kind of love you share with someone who loves you back. If we’re going to hold onto God’s good in the world, here is where we start – we show love to the people in our Christian community. If we’re going to go out into the world to resist evil, we’re going to need a base. We need to find our people. And when we find them – here, in the Christ community – we need to give ourselves to each other.

Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. It has become almost cliché lately to talk about the breakdown of civil discourse in our society, but it’s true. We’re becoming a culture where showing respect is rare. But here, in the community of Christ, we commit ourselves to what is now becoming a countercultural practice: honor each other, outdo one another in showing respect. It’s like an internal bow to each other, recognizing in each other the beautiful imprint of God. Like the song says, “The Spirit in me loves the Spirit in you.” Outdo one another in this, Paul says.

And from there, strong instructions tumble forward, one after another. Be passionate. Be committed. Be eager to serve. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering. Persevere in prayer.

And one thing you can’t tell in the English – every single one of these is written in the plural. Paul is not saying, “You, be ardent in spirit.” “You, rejoice in hope.” He’s saying, “Y’all.” “Y’all, together, be patient in suffering.” “Y’all, together, persevere in prayer.” “Y’all” means you don’t do it alone. We’re in it together. This is where the resistance to evil begins: cultivating a deep, mutual affection for each other as brothers and sisters in the family of faith, honoring each other, hoping together, practicing patience together, devoting ourselves to prayer together.

From this circle of mutual care, Paul’s list expands to include those in need beyond our own little community. “Share with God’s people in need. Practice hospitality.” And the truth is, even in the midst of so many jarring headlines and heartbreaking images over these last days and weeks (and months), we’ve seen this happening, too. So many stories this past week, after the storms and the floods, of people sharing what they have, of people practicing hospitality, across typical boundary lines – black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, old, young, red voter, blue voter – in a crisis, the walls fall down; in a crisis, nobody asks your political affiliation.

But human nature is such that we only tend to operate at that level temporarily – we are good at acute care, not so much at chronic compassion. Paul reminds us that this is what genuine love looks like, and this is what genuine love does – we share with people in need, and we keep doing it. We practice hospitality – love that is inclusive, welcoming, affirming, embracing, and we keep doing it. Let love be genuine. Let it be so genuine that it draws other people in. Let it be without limits. Let it be relentless.

And let such love put you in solidarity with people. Paul says: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Don’t be superior. Don’t be smug. Don’t be self-righteous. Be willing to associate with people you might be inclined to think are beneath you. So the list is getting a little tougher. We aren’t just talking about actions now, but also attitudes. We are getting to the heart of things – the things we believe about ourselves and others. The secret pride and secret resentments we tend to. If we want to resist evil, then here’s another place to get to work – our own hearts.

So we moved from a circle of mutual care, to a circle of compassion for those in need, to a circle of solidarity. Now Paul tells us to draw the circle wider still. And this time, it gets really hard.

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” Oh, mercy. This one may feel like more than can be reasonably done. But it is at the very core of who we say we are as Christ followers. It is exactly who Jesus was and what he did. In the face of violence, he gave love. In the face of brutality, he gave blessing. In the face of death, he gave his life, which became the ground of true life and true goodness.

Everything we do now, flows from that subversive reality. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil,” Paul reminds us. “No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’” To treat with kindness those who treat us badly is a difficult calling. It means trusting that God’s goodness and justice will work through us and beyond us in ways we can’t predict. To meet evil with love does not mean we accept or condone abuse or that we accept or condone the status quo or that we practice apathetic non-engagement with the powers-that-be. To meet evil with love means that we refuse to perpetuate, escalate, or accelerate the hate. Rather than retribution, we lean into the creative, disruptive power of actual goodness to work the deep, healing reconciliation of God.

A little town in Germany made news a couple of years ago with their innovative way of putting this teaching into action[3]. When a group of neo-Nazis were coming to town, instead of protesting them, the residents hung signs welcoming them to the “Nazis against Nazis” walkathon. Sponsors agreed to donate money for each step the neo-Nazis marched, with the contributions going to programs that fight Nazis. They handed out water to the neo-Nazis and put out a table of bananas to help them keep their energy up so they cold keep walking – and keep raising money to fight Nazism.  Bless those who curse you. Give food to your foe, water to your enemy, and pray for them.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Love that is genuine is persistent, relentless, practical, and shows up in creative, concrete, daily ways to do whatever good it can. Here is the real truth of Paul’s to-do list: we have the power. We. Have. The. Power. We have the power to defeat evil. That power doesn’t look like what we may hope or expect or dream or demand. In most cases, we can’t even yet see how good will triumph and evil will be undone. But our faith is that love has already won. So we can rejoice in hope, and persevere in prayer, and bless those who curse.

Three weeks ago, when evil and hate were on full display in Charlottesville, a story unfolded that didn’t get as much press as the white supremacists carrying torches and spewing hate. Over 1000 religious leaders converged in Charlottesville to offer their peaceful, prayerful witness against the evil of racism. On Saturday morning, a group of those clergy went to Emancipation Park, for a rally. A group of militia men were lined up there, wearing military gear and carrying semi-automatic weapons. The clergy linked arms and knelt together in front of them. As white nationalists lined up behind the row of armed men and began to sing white nationalist songs, the clergy began singing, “Love has, love has, love has already won…” They sang this song towards the men with their guns.

The hours dragged on. The clergy spoke towards and at the milita men, but the men just stood there with their guns. They’d been instructed not to speak to press or protestors. So there they all stood – silent men with their weapons, white supremacists chanting hate behind them. And all the religious leaders had was love and words and prayer. So they kept singing and kept praying and kept loving. The militia men stood there, unmoved.

At the end of the day, as the religious leaders began to leave, one of them, an African-American evangelical author names Lisa Sharon Harper, addressed the man in front of her. “I just want you to know, we love you,” she said.

After a moment, the man broke his silence and said, “I love you, too.”[4]

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This blessing will not be stopped. It will rise from the mouths of those who hope. It will rise from the hands of those who persevere. It will rise from the hearts of those who choose love[5] and love and love. It will rise, and it will overcome.

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[1] See The Message interpretation of Romans 12:9.

[2] Mark Reasoner, Working Preacher – Commentary on Romans 12:9-21, September 2008. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=128

[3] Ed Maza, “How a German City Found an Absolutely Genius Way of Handling Neo-Nazis,” Huffington Post, August 17, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neo-nazi-walkathon_us_59952cfbe4b0acc593e51ae5

[4] Jack Jenkins, “Meet the clergy who stared down white supremacists in Charlottesville,” ThinkProgress, August 16, 2017. https://thinkprogress.org/clergy-in-charlottesville-e95752415c3e/

[5] Inspired by Jan Richardson, “Blessing in a Time of Violence,” The Painted Prayerbook, November 16, 2015. http://paintedprayerbook.com/2015/11/16/blessing-in-a-time-of-violence/