Unorthodox Victory

Stories often tell of the battles between good and evil. Whether these stories come in the form of novels, movies, songs, plays, comics and so on, they often depict intense battles in which evil triumphs over good, only for good to win in the end. Most of these battles between light and dark, good and evil manifest themselves into ballads of epic struggles. These are what make the stories gripping, and interesting.

But while the world declares that struggles between good and evil should be nothing less than a battle, Christ points us in a different direction. Instead of being told to fight our enemies, we are told to pray for them. When our enemy curses us, we are told to bless them. These go against everything that we would naturally like to do. It is our natural instinct to either lash out at attackers, or to flee from them.

Consider Christ when He was on the cross, on His way to defeat victory. Vincent Donovan states, "In His case, He could not have overcome death by violently struggling against it, or by disputing with Pilate or Caiaphas over the injustice of it all, and thus avoiding it altogether."

It was necessary for Christ to triumph over death, but that required Him to in fact die and be at the mercy of death. God commands us to be strong. That is why we do not act when we are attacked, because there is no need to. We are meant to be strong due to God's strength, and love, and mercy, and grace. It is through Him and His gifts that we conquer the world, never by anything we say or do.

Living Life