Peacemakers - 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 - The Book of 1st Thessalonians

"Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else." - from 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

Those who get payback or those who are peacemakers. We have a choice on which we will be.

In a lecture on forgiveness and its limits, Elizabeth Bruenig described her two children fighting. They knew hitting each other was against the rules, punishable by the docking of allowance. But they also knew there was an exception: if you did not instigate or start the fight, that is, if you were acting in self-defense, you were not considered the aggressor. Your allowance would remain. After all, you had the right to defend yourself.

But this led to a situation where, after every fight, both children claimed the other started it. Being unfairly attacked became a sought-after status. Elizabeth Bruenig began to wonder if adults behaved the same way:

Consider the state of social media, where people frequently go in order to find something to be angry about, so that they can express their anger in ways that would typically be forbidden but are permissible in cases only of having been wronged. Had the social media user not sought out an example of someone doing something offensive or outrageous, they wouldn’t have anger to discharge, but it seems to me that acquiring anger and the right to discharge it is precisely the point. [emphasis mine]

Sometimes, we want to be wronged, so we can do what we otherwise couldn't: pay back. It is this that the Apostle Paul tells us explicitly not to do.

Continuing reading at https://www.fbcmuncie.org/blog

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Audio-Only Podcast Bumper Music is an arrangement of “Be Thou My Vision” by Dr. Clifton Davis, FBCM’s Worship Arts Pastor.

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