"Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
Romans 12:20-21
The verse before this asks us to not avenge ourselves, but allow God to repay. The "coals of fire" seems like vengeance, but I think that Paul is telling us here that if we want vengeance, that we need to be super nice. In practive, that won't necessarily get us vengeance... thankfully, we all have a chance to repent and hopefully avoid those coals of fire, but if not, God will make things right, whether it is exactly what we wanted or not... that's part of the deal. He died for us, and we accept his grace *and* his judgement.
I really, really love the overall idea of not letting ourselve be overcome by evil (or recompensing evil for evil as it says in verse 17, prior to this), but that the way to beat evil is by doing good. That is what will work. Not because of some crazy math where we measure the good and the bad and more people are doing good. I don't what that actual ratio is, but it doesn't matter, because God is doing the balancing and pruning his vineyard. He will prune away the bad as the good grows (Jacob 5:66)... so today, let's do good and grow that good as much as we can. That's the way to help God and the world to be filled with good rather than contributing to the evil. :)
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