Overcome Evil with Good

We live in a risk averse culture. So much so, that even Christians in their faith tend towards risk averse decisions, which potentially could curtail what would otherwise be good outreach.

The risk calculation is a complex one with many inputs and variables. A good question to ask is 'are we doing something that is basically good, simply blessing people'? If the answer is 'yes', with no strings attached, that ought to be good enough to trump a number of other factors.

The problem is that there is alot of bad out there. People and the general cultural perception may have been stung in the past by bad people doing bad things. This leads to restriction going forward: it can both make people averse to receiving that which is good, and also make us averse to trying to offer that which is good. The restrictions (explicit or implicit) factor into the soup of our risk calculation ... but sadly it means we might calculate and come to the wrong conclusion on a proposed activity.

The reaction to evil is to not be overcome by it, nor to simply bound it by living with restriction upon restriction. The answer is to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:2). Dispensing that good will mean taking a risk ... a risk in the face of both past evil and present evil. But if you are basically dispensing good, it will be a risk ultimately worth taking.