Rebirth of Civility

“Fighting fire with fire” is a method of battling fires. Firefighters intentionally set fires in strategic locations to deny the wildfire access to the fuel it feeds on, with hopes of containing the blaze. That approach may work in managing a wildfire, but it is not an effective means of dealing with evil. Try as you may, you can never effectively defeat evil by employing evil.

Evil, incivility, and a sense of “anything goes” seems to rule our world today. That doesn’t apply to the world and national stages alone, the same is true in our communities, homes and individual lives. The temptation is always lurking just below the surface to dig in, stand our ground, and escalate the situation. Sometimes the escalation is with words, other times it resorts to physical violence. In the end, we all lose because we don’t want to appear weak nor take the time to seek a better way of resolving issues. We want to escalate and retaliate in kind, when the answer is to respond in kindness.

Some people are vile, vulgar and brutish and there’s nothing we can do personally to change them. But we can change how they impact us and how we respond to their antics. The only effective counterbalance to the evil they present is good. Today’s passage carries some good, old-fashioned, sound advice in battling evil: Love without hypocrisy, abhor evil, cling to the good, be kind and affectionate, show brotherly love to others, honor others over ourselves, be patient in tribulations, bless those who persecute us, don’t repay evil for evil, live peaceably with others if possible, leave revenge to God, and do good to our enemies. Overcome evil with good.

Not always easy tactics to follow, but tactics that defeat evil. The solution is simultaneously simple and difficult—the rebirth of civility in society begins with each of us making the choice to be civil ourselves. At the moment of escalation, to intentionally decide to be the force of de-escalation. The alternative is to fight evil with evil, just like fighting fire with fire. The tree doesn’t care who started the fire, or why; it only knows it still got burned down. Fighting someone else’s evil with your evil may sound logical but in the end, if either evil wins, you still have the same companion on your hands—evil.