Paul says something that has always made me feel a little funny as a Christian in the 12th chapter of his letter to the Romans. In it he says in the power of the Holy Spirit that “If your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
The first part of the verse is great, it sounds so much like what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. But then Paul adds, “for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head,” and the air in the room seems to get sort of weird. “Excuse me, Mister Paul,” we might want to say, “we should have better motivations that THAT.” Paul is also quoting from Proverbs here (25:21-22), so it’s really not Paul’s wording anyway.
But even so, shouldn’t our hearts be in a pure place? Shouldn’t we be doing all of that feeding and giving of drink from a noble place in our souls? Perhaps, but perhaps Paul also knows his Roman audience. Perhaps he knows us. Perhaps he even knows himself well enough to know that the idea of “heaping burning coals” on the head of our enemy by doing good stuff is going to appeal to us.
After all, when we have an enemy, we are normally going to be wanting them to change. We just celebrated the story of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement this past Monday. God wouldn’t have told us that we should love our enemies if He didn’t expect that we would have a few, and the Civil Rights leaders had plenty. But they dealt with their enemies according to Paul and Proverbs. They heaped burning coals.
Perhaps this is something that we should consider with our enemies. Whether that is the person whose political ideology doesn’t match yours, or the rival at work or school, or that person that hurt you way back when. Consider what Paul and Proverbs have to say to you today. Then get out your shovel and your coals, the good deeds you can do for that enemies, their needs that you can meet – and get to work shoveling. And as Paul ends that line of Scripture, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”