I am ashamed to tell you how much of my life has been spent fantasizing about getting even. From my earliest days, I can remember well the wounds and scars inflicted by others and the accompanying time spent plotting my response.
To the person who embarrassed me on the playground, I would imagine the perfect response that would hurt my classmate and boost my social standing.
To the friends who abandoned and ghosted me, I would dream about ways I could make them sorry for leaving me behind.
To the girl who broke my heart, I would devise a plan to ensure she would hurt as much as I had.
To the boss who made my life miserable, I daydreamed of sabotage.
To the person who cut me off in traffic, I would pass the miles thinking about what I could have done to respond to their aggressiveness.
To the person who slandered me, I would craft the perfect response and rehearse the message I would share with others.
To the person who punished me despite my best intentions, I would daydream of clever, passive-aggressive responses to convey how unfairly they had treated me.
I’m not proud of my imagination. But to tell you otherwise would be a lie. I have wasted much of my mind’s work trying to manage my pain.
So no, I wasn’t surprised to learn that revenge is sweet.
According to social scientists David Chester from Virginia Commonwealth University and Nathan DeWall at the University of Kentucky, who study revenge, persons who are hurt, insulted, or socially rejected feel emotional pain in an area of the brain associated with aggression. No surprise, there. We are wired to strike back when we are struck.
But in a follow-up study, the scientists discovered that although people initially feel emotional pain when they are hurt, the memory of the pain activates the brain’s reward circuit. In other words, people who are hurt “behave aggressively precisely because it can be a rewarding experience (Melissa Hogenboom, “The Hidden Upsides of Revenge, BBC.com on 4-3-2017).”
I knew it. Revenge is sweet. Nursing an old wound is pleasurable. Pressing an old bruise feels good.
The problem, of course, is that isn’t the Way of Jesus.
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps…When Jesus was abused, he did not return abuse; when Jesus suffered, he did not threaten; but Jesus entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by Jesus’s wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:21 & 23
We know that hurting people hurt people. The way that we break the cycle of hurt and pain is to be Christ-like. When Jesus was hurt, he did not hurt others in response. When Jesus suffered, he did not strike out so that other people would feel like he did. Instead, Jesus trusted that vengeance was not his but God’s. Jesus chose to place himself in the redeeming hands of the Father.
I am glad that, by and large, I have not acted on my fantasies and daydreams of revenge. But is that any less a sin? More tragic is the amount of time and energy that I gave to something that poisoned my soul and kept me from being Christ-like. Indeed, nurturing yesterday’s grievances poisons our souls and kills our bodies.
The Way of Jesus is the way of trusting God. By choosing a response to others that may not come naturally to us, we are choosing to trust that God is working to redeem the hurt, the pain, and the heartache in our lives. Simon Peter speaks the truth about our Lord and Savior. If Jesus can endure the cross and all its horrors without calling down fire upon his enemies, I suppose we can, too.