Revenge Never Leads to Redemption
"In my mind, I have shot you and stabbed you through the heart,
I just didn't understand the ricochet is the second part...
and the more I try to hurt you, the more it hurts me...
the more it backfires."
Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, Revenge
Somehow we humans mistakenly link revenge with a sense of redemption. Someone has hurt us, and immediately we want to rescue ourselves from what has happened. We want to quickly redeem ourselves, meaning we want our power back; the personal power that we think we have lost to our perpetrator. We want the easy way out of our humiliation and pain, and that easy way is too often revenge.
Revenge is the easy way out because our other choice would be to face our feelings of betrayal, hurt and loss; but we don't like to do that. It's too difficult and it takes too long. Besides, we might have to face the fact that we were in someways an accomplice to what happened to us. We might have to own up to our role in this great tragedy, and our ego usually keeps us from facing such a terrible reality. So, we'd rather just jump right into being angry, brooding, and resentful. We'd rather plot our revenge as a means of redeeming ourselves.
Revenge never gives us our personal power back. It cannot redeem us. Truth is that when someone does something hurtful to us, we don't loose our power at all. No one has the ability to take our personal power away from us. We can only give our power away, and we give it away by lowering ourselves to the standards of our perpetrators; by allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed with resentment and to plot revenge. When we choose to say something ugly to or about our perpetrator, when we choose to do something that will hurt them as much as they have hurt us, when we react negatively in any way, we give away our personal power. And in doing so, we give our perpetrators a complete victory over us. Revenge always backfires. As Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse say in their wonderful song lyric, the more we try to hurt someone, the more we hurt ourselves; the more it backfires.
The greatest single example I can think of to illustrate this point is Jesus Christ. While hanging on the cross, he was taunted and vilified, but he never gave away his personal power. Instead of cursing and condemning his persecutors, he blessed them. He told the good thief that he would see him again in paradise, and he asked God to forgive all of those who had perpetrated this evil against him because he, himself, had already forgiven them. By doing so, his persecutors were actually left totally powerless over him. They may have had power over his human body, but they had no power over his soul. He kept his personal power. He kept his dignity. And in doing so, he provided the fruits of redemption for all of us to experience.
It takes a heart filled with great love to accomplish true redemption. Jesus understood this. We humans don't. Great love never takes anything personally. Great love looks past behavior to the brokenness underneath the behavior. Great love understands what has happened. It's open to reality; to the role that both persons played in what transpired. It's also open to all of the many God given feelings we are called to experience. Great love processes the betrayal, the hurt, the sense of loss, the sadness and the deepest of personal pain. Then great love releases all of it, and we gradually experience the blessings of spiritual rebirth. This rebirth enables us to be merciful and forgiving, of ourselves and of the other. Love triumphs and we blissfully find ourselves back in right-relationship. This is personal redemption, and it has nothing to do with revenge.
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