1 Peter 3:8-12: The Echo Chamber of Recrimination

Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."  - 1 Peter 3:8-12

Sometimes we think that we learn the proper response by watching what is done to us. For example, when I want to know what my wife considers loving in conversation, I watch what she says to me and then try to echo that tone back to her, both for encouragement and censure. Except that this doesn't work. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it may be that if we try this approach with each other we end up with the amplification of an echo chamber and both our ears hurt.

Peter says the same here: don't repay evil with evil and insult with insult. That is: the way we learn to respond should not be learned from the way that we are spoken or or acted toward? Why? Because it an echo chamber which rapidly spirals down into the anti-fruit of the spirit: hate, anger, malice, rage and slander. The way that you cancel out a certain sound is by introducing another sound the is exactly out of phase with it. I think that the same is true of response to the bad: a response of blessing is 180 degrees out of phase from the original evil and cancels out and leaves peace. If we repay good for evil, it changes the conversation from one that escalates to one that de-escalates. When Jesus said "Blessed are the peacemakers..." (Matt. 5:9) I think this is what he had in mind and why Peter says that we "may inherit a blessing." What is the blessing that Jesus mentions? That we might be called children of God. That's a blessing I want.