If you have a pulse you’ve been hurt by somebody in your life. All of us have. For some of us, the hurt happened in our homes growing up; through words or action, or even inaction. For others the hurt began in our pre-teen years with the words of bullies or people that we thought were our friends. As we’ve grown into adulthood, we’ve been hurt and betrayed in ways too numerous to count.
Hurt can linger in our hearts for
years, decades or even a lifetime.
I know that the hurt in my own life bubbles up from time to time,
resulting in anger and resentment and can leave me reeling with feelings of
self-loathing because I believe the words of the ones who have hurt me.
One of the ways that many of us have
been taught to deal with people that hurt us or offend us is to kill them with
kindness. We’ve all had that
co-worker, neighbor or acquaintance that always makes our blood pressure rise
when they walk into the room. And
we’re told to rise above it, put on a happy face and to be sickly-sweet in
their presence, as if that will change them for good. To some degree, this can work in our favor, but it’s not a
complete picture of what we’re called to do as followers of Jesus.
In today’s reading from 1 Peter 3,
God’s word says this in v.v. 8-11: “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with
one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult
with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may
inherit a blessing. For, "Whoever would love
life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from
deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do
good; he must seek peace and pursue it.”
So what does all of this mean? How is it somehow better than just
killing ‘em with kindness? I’m
glad you asked.
V.8 paints a picture of an important
reality in life. Not everybody is
going to be just like us. To live
in harmony means that we realize that we’re all different. Harmony in music is achieved when
different notes of music are played or sung at the same time and yet produce a
beautiful sound. We’ve got to
learn to harmonize our lives with the people around us that are different than
we are and realize that there can be beauty in that as we learn to live, work
or play together, and ultimately be in life-giving relationships with them.
Sympathy, love, compassion and
humility are rare characteristics in our culture today, and characteristics
that only come about in our lives when we’re rooted in the love of Jesus. This is far more than just killing ‘em
with kindness. When we kill others
with kindness, we’re doing something on a superficial level while harboring
feelings of resentment or even hatred.
Sympathy, love, compassion and humility require an all in, radical
abandonment of our desire to get even.
As we seek to live like Jesus, there’s
no room in our lives for retaliation, sarcasm and getting even – which, really,
is at the root of killing someone with kindness. These are the ways of the world and not the ways of the
Kingdom of Heaven. The relational
priorities of God’s Kingdom are magnified for us when we look at the sympathy,
love, compassion and humility of Jesus.
Imagine if instead of radically
abandoning everything to reconcile us to God, Jesus came instead to kill us
with kindness. What would
that mean for us? It would mean
that we’re still dead in our sin, because the cross goes far beyond killing us
with kindness. It would mean that
we’re still enemies of God and not reconciled to him through the blood of
Jesus. It would mean that there’s
no healing of the deep scars in our own hearts. We would still be lost people, wondering and wandering in
our sin and brokenness.
In v.11 God’s Word tells us that we “. .
. must seek peace and pursue it.” Doing
this isn’t easy. And it isn’t
fun. It wasn’t for Jesus, and it
won’t be for us. I’ll admit this:
I like to live with a chip on my shoulder and a “screw you” kind of
attitude. During my time in
Colorado last week (which I wrote about here), I was confronted with this
reality. I’ve experienced some
deep emotional and spiritual hurt and pain in my life over the last 10 years
that I didn’t realize had so deeply scarred my heart and mind. Too much of the past 5 years of my life
and ministry have been spent insulating myself from people so that they can’t
hurt me and living with a chip on my shoulder and a screw-you attitude. Because I haven’t sought and pursued
peace, I’ve pushed the hurt deeper and deeper and it’s messed me up!
Sometimes we don’t have the
opportunity – and sometimes we shouldn’t even try to create the opportunity –
to seek peace and pursue it. Being
hurt by careless words and actions is not the same as being hurt and destroyed
by intentional physical, sexual or verbal abuse. I’m not suggesting that we should pursue face-to-face peace
and reconciliation in those situations.
Sometimes our pursuit of peace has to come from a distance, and only
from the deepest reservoirs of the grace of Jesus in our hearts.
But sometimes, as followers of Jesus,
it’s good and right and healing to go back to some of those people that have
hurt us as we seek to “turn from evil and do good.” (v.11). In The Message, a paraphrase of
the Bible, it says in v.13, “If with heart and soul you're
doing good, do you think you can be stopped?”
God is honored and Jesus is glorified and magnified when we
seek to do good in our relationships by pursuing peace and reconciliation. Three of the most powerful words that a
person can hear are, “I forgive you.”
Think of what it meant in your own life when you really believed that
God, through Jesus Christ, forgives your sins and wipes away your past. How healing was that for you? How freeing was that for you? How beautiful was that for you?
Think of what that could mean for the people in your life
that have hurt or wounded you.
Killing them with kindness won’t heal them. It won’t free them.
And it won’t show them the beauty of Jesus. But pursuing peace and reconciliation with them will.
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