Do Not Be Overcome By Evil

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:9-21, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

Paul’s advice in Romans 12 could well serve as a Quaker checklist.

If we are living in the time of Antichrist’s reign, as the seventeenth-century Friend Isaac Penington once suggested of his own era, Paul gives us a tactical blueprint for fighting the Lamb’s War. When our governments refuse to contribute to the needs of the saints (and, in the process, slash much of the funding they did once give), when they choose to greet strangers and sojourners with hostility rather than hospitality, it falls upon Friends—and individuals and as meetings—to pick up the slack.

(Perhaps some of you scoff at the notion that Antichrist could exist, let alone hold dominion over the world in which we live. I confess to no small amount of skepticism in the matter myself, but I’ve found this provocative query helpful: If Antichrist did exist, and our leaders had given themselves over to the worship of worldly power and might, would they conduct themselves any differently from the way they do now?)

Paul calls on us to maintain a “genuine” love—the Friends of Penington’s time would have read, in either the Geneva or King James Bible, that they should “let love be without dissimulation.” Sincere, unfeigned, free of hypocrisy or hidden agenda. We don’t do the loving deeds because they burnish our reputations, we don’t do them to reinforce our own sense of superiority. We do them because we actually love God. We see that of God in our neighbors—and, honoring that, we love them, and strive to live in harmony with them.

That kind of love doesn’t always come easy.

The Religious Society of Friends has never managed to shake off the ways of this world entirely. Quakers participated in the slave trade for many decades before becoming convinced of its evil—and, even after embracing abolition, many Friends have clung to social and cultural notions of racial hierarchy which persist to the present day. Speaking of social and cultural hierarchies, many meetings fail to accept their queer and trans neighbors as neighbors, forgetting that Christ, as Paul tells us elsewhere, makes no distinction between male and female, welcoming all who approach the blessed community unlagging in zeal and ardent in spirit. Even among “straight” men and women, many deep rifts remain unhealed. 

(Heck, some Friends will get upset that I mentioned Christ just then.) 

I don’t mean to suggest these conflicts have gone unnoticed; I mention them precisely because Friends are struggling with them at every level, from our monthly meetings to our multi-state conferences. We do our best to discern these matters patiently, and in the meantime, we persevere in our prayers and hold on to our hope, confident that they will see us through to a peaceful resolution. We may not, as I said, have shaken off the ways of this world entirely, but we continue to try to get better at it from one day to the next.

The part where we have to bless our persecutors instead of cursing them, though, that can take a lot of work sometimes. It can get especially difficult when those persecutors appear to have gained the upper hand, as many Friends in the United States have observed over the last decade. (Not that Friends in other nations haven’t had their own share of problems!)

And yet we refuse to allow evil to overcome us.

I’m thinking of the Quakers in Britain who, when the order came down to forbid “biological males” entry into “women’s” bathrooms, refused to segregate the trans members of their community, or decided to make all their lavatories gender-neutral. And the Quakers in the United States who have filed lawsuits against the federal government, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security’s declared intent to raid our meetinghouses looking for “illegal aliens” impinges on our religious liberties. And the Friends in Minneapolis who, as armed federal agents took over their streets and began seizing and killing their neighbors, refused to remain silent or complacent.

Penington and the other early Quakers refused to accept the conceit that Antichrist might reign over this world forever. Following Paul’s advice, they held fast to the good that Spirit had revealed to them, laying the foundation for the blessed community’s ultimate triumph. Whether or not we believe in the holy nature of that good, we continue to build on that foundation. By refusing to participate in Empire’s power games, we can snuff out evil’s flames and make space for a new society to spring forth.