1 Kings 18 / Acts 11 / Psalm 135 / Proverbs 17:12-13
Have you ever worked hard to be nice to someone who is mean? I’m sure you’d much rather be mean back – I’ll be honest in saying my first thoughts are sometimes to lash out or get them back at them for what they did. We’ve talked a lot about forgiveness this year, and that’s because I’ve needed to do a lot of forgiving.
When we’re kind to people, we expect they will be kind in return. When people are unkind, we may try at first to be kind, thinking that maybe they’ve had a bad day, or they are going through a rough time. I think that’s the case most of them time when someone is being unkind. We don’t know the things that are happening in people’s lives that cause them to be rude, hateful, or just plain mean.
Proverbs 17:13 is scary when thinking about the concept of good verses evil. “If you repay good with evil, evil will never leave your house.”
Let’s look at the word “good” and the word “evil” to get a better understanding of what we’re dealing with because this seems like a powerful curse upon a person and his family!
The word good in Hebrew is Tob, which means prosperity, happiness, good things, moral good, bounty. Basically, anything we have that would be a blessing when given to another person. That could be our time, love, belongings, anything.
The word evil in Hebrew is Ra, which means giving pain, unhappiness or misery, vicious in disposition, ethically wicked. We’ve talked before that I believe most people are good at heart, so it’s rare to find someone who is truly evil and determined to harm us.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had anyone respond with evil when you were good to them. It’s likely that at least some of us have experienced this. How did you respond? Even more, how should we respond?
First and always, we must forgive them. Second, we must determine if that person is allowed to remain in our close circle – even if they are family – or if we need to create distance for our own safety and good. Sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to remove ourselves from someone evil. That’s a harder scenario. The only solution there is to pray that God would deliver you from the situation, and that He would protect you until deliverance comes.
My next question – does it seem “fair” that someone would have evil “never leave his house”? NEVER leave… In these cases, I’m glad I’m not God and not responsible for making the decisions on the law of reaping what we’ve sown. That is God’s job. I can pray for the evil person, hoping they repent and find Jesus. Beyond that, I need to mind my own heart and be sure I’m not repaying anyone evil for the good they have done for me.
The bottom line is, as always, we must forgive all those who wrong us. And I do mean all, because remember that forgiveness is for your sake, whether they ever change or not. If someone is being mean or evil to you, make your best attempt to appeal to them first – maybe they are not aware. If they won’t hear you, take another person along (Matthew 18:15) and make another attempt. Depending on the situation, you may want to distance yourself until they see what they are doing to you. Sometimes the distance is enough to alert the mean person about their inappropriate behavior.
I pray you can work through the relationship issues you are facing. Breaches in relationships are tougher than many other things we must deal with.
