Resist Not Evil

Fri­day. [Rom. 2:14–29; Matt. 5:33–41] But I say un­to you, That ye re­sist not evil (Matt. 5:39); in oth­er words, al­low your­self to be a vic­tim of hu­man self­ish­ness and mal­ice. But how can one live like that? Do not wor­ry. He who gave this com­mand­ment is our Pro­vid­er and Guard­ian. When you de­sire to live like this with com­plete faith from your whole soul, to not re­sist any evil, the Lord Him­self will ar­range a life for you which is not on­ly bear­able, but joy­ful. Fur­ther­more, re­sis­tance in fact can ir­ri­tate an ag­gres­sor even more and mo­ti­vate him to in­vent new trou­bles, where­as a yield­ing de­mean­our dis­arms him and hum­bles him. Thus, if you would just suf­fer the first on­slaught of mal­ice, peo­ple will take pit­y on you and leave you alone, while re­sis­tance and re­venge kin­dle mal­ice, which is pass­ed on from the in­di­vid­u­al to his fam­i­ly, and then from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.