Hester, Peter, and Doing Good

1 Peter 3:8-9:

Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

This is simple, but hard.

A person is cruel to you, a person cuts you off in traffic, steals from you, lies about you, judges you, insults you, condemns you—it is difficult to repay these actions with blessings.

A few verses later, Peter poses the rhetorical question,

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? (v. 13)

Some will try, to be certain, but who will long be the agent of evil against a man who does good? Is there any man so brazen that he would have willfully harmed Mother Teresa? A commitment to good is a shield, a protection because it changes the attitudes of those who might otherwise do us harm.

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes,

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new imitation of the original feeling of hostility. (110)

True, it takes seven years, but the hearts of the people of Boston are softened toward Hester. They begin by wanting even to kill her—"This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die" (36)—but these feelings of hatred are transformed, becoming complete acceptance:

It is our Hester,— the town's own Hester,— who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted! (111)

As Peter asks,

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?

Hester's commitment to do good softens, gradually and quietly, the hatred of her hard-hearted townspeople, turns their hatred into love.