God’s True Power: Overcome Evil with Good

I like a lot of movies, but movies that make me earnestly think about life are among my favorites. There’s a recent film that can teach us something about today’s passage and lesson. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (minor spoilers in this post), set in a small fictional town in Missouri, sets up a story of a brave hero dealing with injustice and a hateful villain who wants to stop her. But halfway through the movie, we see the hero make a terrible decision that hurts others, and then we see the villain act selflessly to save the people and things that the hero hurt. I had to pause the movie and question what had just happened. Why would the hero do that? Why am I cheering for the villain?

The rest of the movie is chaos from a moral standpoint. Heroes aren’t so heroic, and villains are extremely sympathetic. By the end, you’re not sure how to classify these characters. But that’s the point the film is making: people cannot be categorized neatly into boxes like hero and villain. Seemingly evil people can make good choices, and the heroes in our lives can make harmful choices. Previous actions or patterns don’t change the impact of the choices people make in the present. I won’t spoil the ending, but the film doesn’t answer whether these characters are good or bad; it tells us that each choice matters and has its own consequences.

In the book The Gulag Archipelago, author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” It’s much easier for us to believe that the people who agree with us are basically good, and those who disagree with us are basically bad. But, as Solzhenitsyn said and as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri illustrates, everyone has both good and evil in them, and it’s impossible to categorize groups of people so simply.

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to write this. Whenever the topic of forgiveness comes up, I find myself saying, “Well, that’s a good point, but clearly that doesn’t apply to this group of people.” Those people could be people who have done things I don’t agree with, or people who have voted for things I don’t agree with, or people who have actively harmed my friends or family. I have to challenge myself and remember that “those people” are not the exception to this call for forgiveness; they’re exactly why the verses were written.

I’ve noticed something funny about meeting new people in politically polarizing times. When people get to know me as a helpful, caring, and cheerful person, they tend to think I’m on “their side,” politically. This tells me most people are motivated by these positive qualities and seek to align themselves with others like that. It’s easy to think that groups of people are motivated by the opposite: to be challenging, hateful, and angry. But there’s good and evil in every heart, and the people we paint as heroes or villains can just as easily be the exact opposite. I don’t have an answer to the political division we see running through friendships and familial relationships but remembering that everyone is doing what they think is right goes a long way in dealing with it.