Overcoming Evil with Good
The human heart is
desperately evil. Evil is all around us, murder, rape, slavery, corruption, war,
Islamic terrorism, poverty, adultery, sex outside of marriage, stealing, lying
and cheating. Evil is in nature. We have earthquakes, tornadoes, floods,
hurricanes, and disease. Death is all around us. If we listen to the news
broadcasts or read the newspaper, you see nothing but evil and tragedy. The
commercials are the only good news, and who pays any attention to them?
Where is God? If God is good
and all-powerful, why hasn’t he stopped evil? It is man who chooses evil, not
God. But God has a plan of redemption through the death of his son Jesus to
cover all of our wrongdoing.
Because people are so
preoccupied with evil, we overlook the tremendous amount of good that takes
place every day. People are productive; they produce homes, furniture, food,
cars and books - a never-ending variety of useful things. People are
productive; they provide services like educating and caring for our children,
health care, security, repairs and more helpful activities than you can think
of. People give away hundreds of millions of dollars and services to support
our schools, churches, libraries, and social service agencies. People provide
for the hungry, sick, homeless, and those in poverty. So don’t underestimate
the amount of good that happens around us each and every day.
For a Christian, doing good should
be a normal part of life. It is expected. But everyone, including
non-Christians, still has a seed of goodness in their soul; it is called “Common
Grace.” It is a question of how much the seed is cultivated.
How do we overcome evil with
good? We do our part by being productive and pursuing excellence in our work.
We do our part by performing acts of kindness and giving of ourselves and our
money to help those around us. We do our part by loving and forgiving people,
even when they do evil things. We do our part by demanding justice. Tough love
is frequently the best.
We live in an evil world, but
things are not hopeless. Jesus
prayed “deliver us from evil”. There may be as much good in the world as there
is bad, so overcome evil with good.
