Fight fire with fire is a phrase I often hear people say, but I don't think they understand what it means. You see, in fire prone areas sometimes to prevent a devastating wildfire people use controlled burns to keep flammable brush under tabs so that if wildfire does break out it won't be able to spread since it won't have the fuel necessary. I personally have never seen a firefighter out at a house fire with a flame thrower trying to tame the flames. But that's how we use the phrase often. If you don't believe me just take a look at the body image debate currently occurring. It saddens me to hear body shaming going on both ways, overweight and underweight, too much make-up and too plain. Inasmuch as it is true that no matter what your body type you are beautiful, I think that this is still missing the point. The point is that we cannot defeat body shaming through focus on the body, fighting flesh with flesh. The only way to defeat it is to look beyond the flesh to the true nature of each person, the God-given, intricately woven beauty in the depths, once you catch sight of that beauty you cannot help but see beauty in every body you see, skin and bones or extra curvy, pimpled, short, tall, mediocre, short hair, frizzy hair, no hair, each one will exude beauty to you and when you catch this beauty you transmit it to others through your words and actions. Another contemporary example is the ISIS crisis, people who spread fear, anger, and hate so vehemently that it cannot help but touch the depths of our souls. The response I have seen has sadly often been fighting fire with fire. Articles posted left and right about the danger of Muslims in America, hate spewed forth against these men and women, fear about how this is the end of time and we will be destroyed gruesomely by them if we do not first destroy them. Fear, anger, hate. But we are never told to take an eye for an eye, we are told to forgive as our Father forgave. We are told to love. We will never defeat hate by hate, we will only replace it, we will never defeat fear with fear, we only strengthen it, we will never defeat anger with anger, we will only multiply it. But we can love. Love is the antithesis of hate and fear. We can forgive, anger cannot occupy a space that forgiveness inhabits. We can listen to the words of our Teacher, who prayed "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" even as he died at the hands of evil men, and we can pray for our enemies. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, principalities and powers of this dark world, so why do we continue to try to fight with fleshly weapons? Today I challenge you, and I challenge myself, to ask what is the spiritual response to the fleshly circumstances that are rising against you today. And I challenge you to fight fire with water, with a fire extinguisher, by smothering, by kicking dirt, by whatever means necessary, but for goodness sake, stop trying to fight fire with fire.
