Revenge
“Getting even” really never actually means that. We never just even things out. We always add a bit of icing on top of it. You poke me, so I hit you. I hit you, so you punch me. You punch me so I kick you. Until eventually someone switches off the Xbox in the middle of a game and world war 3 breaks out. I have three boys, welcome to my world.
We never want to get even. We want revenge. And that requires things to escalate. You hurt me so I want to hurt you even more.
In Judges 15 we have a great example of this total stupidity, brought to us by one of the great caricatures of the Bible, Samson. I am not going to quote the whole thing, so you go and read it yourself, but here is the gist.
Samson goes to visit his wife (whom he has evidently not seen for a while). Upon arrival, his father-in-law tells him that he was so sure that Samson didn’t like her that he’d given her to Samson’s best friend as a wife instead. Samson, who is normally a model of self-control and thought-through behaviour, is somewhat unhappy about this.
He does what anyone else in that situation would do and goes and catches 300 foxes, ties their tails together and sets fire to them. The foxes, being somewhat predisposed to not being tied together and set alight, go running off into the cornfields destroying all the crops, food and economy of his father-in-law’s village.
The villagers, being rather unhappy about having their livelihood, economy and food destroyed, kill Samson’s wife and father in retaliation.
Samson, being the pillar of rationality that he is, decides that a proportional response is what is required and so he kills 1000 men. With a donkey’s jawbone. (I have no idea?!)
It is never getting even. Now we have an entire region with no food and over 1000 people dead. It just kept escalating.
A therapist asked this question of all his clients who struggled with this: “How will you know when you have got revenge? When will you know that it is enough?”
To date, not a single one has ever been able to give an answer.
When is enough? When the person who hurt you is dead? Maimed? Hurting? Unhappy? Bankrupt?
Here is something worth remembering: “Hurt people hurt people”.
If someone hurt you then they probably did it because they were already hurt. By friends; by family; by church; by parents; by society. Whoever. They are already in pain.
If you, being hurt, decide to carry that on, then where does it end? A world full of hurting people hurting one another? Oh wait! That sounds familiar!
We need to break the cycle.
That is what Jesus did on the cross. That is the cycle broken. Let us put our pain onto him and let him deal with it instead of sending it back into circulation. Imagine if we all did that!
Revenge just does not work. We will never be satisfied. We will just stoke the fire, hurt more people, cause more pain and keep drinking more and more poison and wait for the other person to die.
Forgiveness is the only way to set someone free. You will discover that the person freed is you.
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