I have loved watching the Olympics since I was a child. I enjoyed everything from boxing to kayaking in the Summer and slalom to figure skating in the Winter Games. Every participant is among the cream of the crop in their sport. Over 10,000 athletes participated in 2012 at London, proudly representing 204 nations.
The desire to excel pushes many of them beyond normal human limits. They dedicate hours to conditioning, many giving up a social life during their training. Ice skaters repeat the same moves over and over, committing them to muscle memory. Gymnasts stretch to find the next level of strength. Runners develop greater and greater endurance. Boxers not only build up muscle mass, but also must learn hone down their reaction times to fractions of seconds. With their eyes on a goal, rise early and spend the greatest part of their day devoted to success.
Paul wrote to a highly competitive world. Rome was proud of its elite army and had inherited the Greek love for gladiatorial games. With those pictures in mind, Paul uses a word that would be very familiar to his readers. He urges them to overcome evil with good. The word translate “overcome” is derived from the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. She was the favorite of athletes who wanted to win in competitive sports. The Romans added her to their pantheon of gods, naming her “Victoria”.
Paul tells those who live in this highly competitive world that there is a way to win the fight with evil. In fact, earlier he has called them “Super-Victors” Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37). To succeed in overcoming evil, we must not take their tactics or weapons for ourselves. Instead, Paul says we should “conquer evil with good.”
In the last 50 years the Evangelical church has become known more for what we are against than either for who we love, or the good we try to accomplish. I suppose we can blame a modicum of that on bad press, but I don’t think we can entirely pass the buck off to a perceived liberal media bias. We have often shouted so angrily against the evils we see, emphasizing certain sins and behaviors over others, that we may actually deserve some of the perceptions of the outside world.
What if we shifted our focus? What if, without giving ground in regards to good and evil, we began to simply to the next good thing in society? What if we were “caught” serving soup downtown? What if we showed up on committees to work on our damaged ecology? What would happen, if like Jesus, we made it our object and ambition to befriend the most outcast in society?
When we write letters to the editor, do we come across as angry people putting down the morals and intelligence of those who oppose us? Or do we, with great graciousness, share our opinion without demeaning others? Do we truly “overcome evil with good”?
I actually believe most followers of Jesus want to live this way. In private conversation I often hear words of compassion that want to help those in need. Sometimes, though, we do it in a way that almost apologizes. “I am buying groceries for this poor person…and maybe I’ll lead them to Jesus.” Or, “Wow, I got on the City Council, maybe the Mayor will become a Christian.”
Don’t get me wrong, we need always be witnesses of the good news of Jesus. But what if we simply began doing good for the sake of doing good. Of Jesus it was written, “He went about doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil.” We can do both. It is not an either/or proposition.
I think Father God loves it when His children have been so filled with His love and are so grateful for the forgiveness Christ offers that they can’t wait to simply do the next good thing. Having been blessed so deeply by God’s great love, we become sources of good that overflow into the world. And, just like fresh water flowing into a brackish pond, we begin to displace the evil by the very presence of the good we do.
Love this!
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