Fighting Fire with Fire (Friday Devotional)

 

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. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

- Romans 12:20-21

Imagine arriving home to find your house ablaze. Your family and pets are fine, but the fire is raging too fiercely to run inside and grab any valuables. All you can do is call 911 and wait for the fire department to arrive.

Now imagine that they show up, sirens blaring and lights flashing, and set to work. You’re no firefighter, so you can’t be sure, but something seems…off. Instead of working together to pull out a massive hose, they emerge one by one with silver instruments that resemble paintball guns. Instead of these tools being hooked up to a giant water tank, each of them is connected to a backpack containing who-knows-what.

In a matter of seconds, your confusion gives way to horror when the captain gives the order. They’re not holding hoses—they’re holding flamethrowers. Facing a burning house, they’re trying to fight the fire with flames of their own.

As that hypothetical illustrates, fighting fire with fire is absurd. Yet for many—including believers—it is too often the first approach taken when conflict arises. Anger is met with anger, name calling is met with name calling, manipulation is met with manipulation. Hurt by someone, the most instinctual and unimaginative reaction is to hurt them back.

Yet the gospel—as preached by Jesus, exemplified on the cross, and taught by the apostles—calls believers to respond differently. God calls His children to meet hurt with healing, contempt with kindness, and malice with magnanimity, to love even our enemies and pray even for those who persecute us. His will is not that we fight fire with fire, but that we overcome evil with good.

Make no mistake, doing so is hard work. Being a peacemaker in an age of outrage means pursuing righteousness when every fiber of your being wants to reach for self-righteousness. But if we want to see God’s redemptive power at work in our world, we have to be willing to bear witness to it ourselves. So in a world ablaze with conflicts, may God’s people remember that we are born of water and the Spirit, and may we meet grievances with grace.