Fueling Evil…
April 9, 2010 10:34 amThe only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last once of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom

A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters, Writings, and Sermons
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The first image this quote conjured in my mind was actually the phrase “I’m not touching you” followed by an out of focus finger hovering just beyond my eyelashes and face. It is childish teasing, and actually motivated I think out of a lovely interest in the other vs a malicious intent to do evil… but regardless I think it is a great case study of the triumph of passivism.
Eventually the taunter will get bored and sluff back in their seat with a sulking dissatisfaction at the lack of your playfulness.
But what if that taunter really is evil, and they are poking you in the eyes until you bleed… or worse yet, they are doing it to your little brother or little sister… well it is only a matter of time before there will be hell to pay?!
So my question for Bonhoeffer is, “Does this advice work when pressed to the extreme and put along side your love for your fellow man?”
Well, he did answer my question, and he did so with his life. As history recounts the story, it is one that I am tempted to throw in the bin of irony… but the closer I look, the more it appears as an aftershock of Christ.
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.
Eventually Bonhoeffer joined a secret conspiracy to kill Hitler at the end of WWII, he sacrificed his convictions (under great personal stress) in order to bring an end to the horror that was the systematic antisemitic atrocities of the Nazis.
Before Bonhoeffer was able to even assist in the assassination plot, he was captured and hanged in 1945… the same year the war ended.
Categories: Passivism, Evil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Books
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