Returning Good For Evil
“Being against evil doesn’t make you good. ”
Stories teach us how to live. They comfort us in times of despair. But, reading the day's headlines, I feel overwhelmed, and a despair so deep that I really do wonder what stories can possibly help us now. We're in an evolutionary emergency. We need more than a feel-good antidote to the insanity out there. We need stories that awaken the desire to live in a world shaped by love; stories that teach us how to make the leap into a viable future for all Life.
Two stories arrive in tandem, one from Kenya, one from the US. Neither is what I expected. The American story comes from Ron Kraybill, a Mennonite peacebuilder. Before he told it, Ron said, It's a small story. Quiet, perhaps, but not small.
We lived on a farm, and we kept a big tank of gasoline out by the garage for the tractors and trucks. My father discovered one spring that somebody was stealing gas, backing up to the gas tank at night time, helping themselves. So he took a mousetrap and he nailed it to a tree by the side of the lane. He took a little electrical switch, fastened it to the trap, ran some electrical chord into the house and into an alarm clock in his bedroom. Then he took a piece of string and tied it from the trigger of the mousetrap across to another tree on the other side of the lane.
After about two weeks, my father woke up one night, one o’clock in the morning and the alarm clock was buzzing. Looked out the window and he could see down by the gas tank a car was creeping in the lane. The license plate was folded over, but he saw the make and he saw the color, so he thought he could identify the car. The next evening Daddy went to the Tropical Tree. It was a place where the young guys hung out. Sure enough he saw a car exactly like the one that he’d seen in our driveway the night before. He asked around a bit; Who’s this car belong to? Oh, it’s those guys sitting in the restaurant in there. So my father went inside the restaurant and went over to this table. He sat down next to these guys he’d never met before and said, Hey, can I buy you guys a cup of coffee? Well sure, why not? So, they drank coffee and they chatted about work and weather and sports and that kind of stuff.
After they talked for a while my father said, Hey, it’s been good talking with you guys, why don’t you come home and meet my wife? Well, all right, thanks—got nothing better to do. So my father got in his car, they got in their car and followed my father to our farm. They drove in the lane past the gas tank up to the house and parked. They came into the house with my dad. My father quickly explained to my mother what was going on and she got ice cream and served these guys big bowls of ice cream and they chatted for a little while again. My parents said not a word the whole time about gas thieves. After a while the guys kind of looked at their watches and said, Well, maybe it’s time to get home. So they said goodbye and left.
After they had gone out the door my mother was clearing the table and she found a five-dollar bill under one of those plates. Five dollars isn’t a lot of money today, but back then it would’ve bought several tanks of gas.
That story was told and retold in our family when I was a boy. The message that it left in my heart was, You don’t return evil for evil, you return good for evil. Also, that it is possible to bring surprising responses out of people who look malicious; that we have it within ourselves if we will be creative, if we will use the generosity of our hearts and the intelligence of our minds, to come up with responses which are unusual and somehow break the cycle of tension and alienation. My parents expected us to deal with conflict in constructive ways.
There is so much here to harvest. Just those three points - return good for evil, be alert for surprising responses from those who appear malicious, deal with conflict in constructive ways. I don't recall my parents or teachers ever telling me those things. We can start there with our kids right now. But there's a catch: in order to be effective, those words must be lived.
And what of the horrors playing out on the global playground? In the parlance of aid and investments (a pairing that's not coincidental, but that's another conversation) how do we 'scale' the response of returning good for evil, assuming we can even achieve it? I am thinking about the Israeli settlers who blocked and destroyed aid entering Gaza, where starvation looms and the majority of victims are women and children. How much vengeance, if any, is sufficient for the heart crazed with grief? Already, Palestinian dead number roughly ten times the number of Israelis who were killed on October 7th, and an incalculable increase in the trauma, resentment and therefore potential enemies in the larger Arab world. This example is prominent for me as a Jewish woman and mother who has Orthodox family and friends in Israel, and Palestinian friends who are nonviolent peacemakers.
I am also thinking about Israel's decision to confiscate the equipment of the Associated Press because the AP streams live footage from Gaza to news agencies around the world, including Al Jazeera, which the Israeli government has banned. (Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar, a major player in ongoing ceasefire negotiations). This story reminds me of the book bans and silenced conversations about slavery, racism, and gender identity in America. How does one return good for evil in situations like these? Kenyan peacebuilder Babu Ayindo tells us that exclusion and blame mean more and more people trying to search for their identity and human worth in violence.
For Babu, forgiveness is understood as a spiritual obligation that affects the whole community. If I don’t forgive you, then I remain in some form of imbalance, not just within myself, but with other realms of existence. The emphasis isn't on punishment, blame or revenge, it's on the restoration of relationships even with the supernatural because when there’s a conflict, the balance is upset, even with nature. This means that conflict is a rare opportunity for humans to improve the world by improving earthly relationships. It's a means of restoring equilibrium that ripples through all the realms, seen and unseen.
In the African context, relationships are understood to be the true measure of wealth, and the quality of those relationships has a direct effect on the people involved. The quality of my relationship with other human beings contributes to my rising vertically to the creator, to the ancestors, toward the gods or supernatural beings. Conversely, this means that having enemies and bearing grudges impedes our spiritual development and therefore harms the community around us. The grudges of the heart limit your capacity to relate to other realms of existence.
Peacebuilding often starts small, with gestures of inclusion, appreciation for good deeds and respect for the inherent dignity of each human being, including the humanity of the leaders of Hamas and Israel and the humanity of all who do harm. It's the tallest of tall orders because it pushes our hearts, our imaginations, to choose the arduous work of repair in the face of unspeakable loss. Only by transforming ourselves can we hope to transform others. That's what is required for the evolutionary leap we're compelled to consider.
