“Don’t say, “I will avenge this evil! ” Wait on the Lord, and He will rescue you.” Proverbs 20:22
Yes, I will admit it. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson and all those manly
actors I grew up with were popular with me for many reasons, but one of the main reasons was that they usually gave the bad guy what he deserved. No evil man with an eye patch and bad teeth would terrorize the farm family as long as those guys were around. Their revenge wasn’t immediate (usually about 2 1/2 hours for a movie and an hour for TV), but eventually the bad guys got their just rewards. Occasionally, they even took ’em alive!
There is a side of me, probably of all us, that likes to sip on the tall drink of revenge once in awhile. But these movies are scripted and the good and bad guys are just following the lead of the pen that created them. In real life revenge is not nearly so sweet. That is why God warns against it in Proverbs and many other places in the Word. There are several reason for that, but to name just a few: God knows exactly what is going on and will handle it correctly, we don’t know exactly what is going on and will usually handle it poorly, and “revenge” seldom gives us the satisfaction we expect it will.
Let’s take the first two together. No matter how close we are to the situation (I am getting bullied in the school yard, ouch, memories) and I can’t stand it. I plot a nerdy revenge that humiliates the bully so much that he drops out of school and joins the job corps where he soon is kicked out for bullying. Seems like a good plan carried out well. But I cannot see inside of the bully; I cannot see the future for this bully; I cannot see the ramifications for my actions; I can’t see anything beyond my own desire to “get even.” All I know is that it feels good for awhile… for a while. That brings us to the third point. Anything that is contrary to God’s Word will never work. It just won’t. Jesus said to love those who hate you (by the way, that is not the doormat argument that we should lie down and let others wipe their feet on us), and (to creatively combine two different verses) it will heap hot coals upon their heads. What doesn’t seem to work is when we really heap hot coals upon their heads. Because we know The Lord we just can’t stay excited about seeing anyone charred and pathetic- it somehow loses it thrill very quickly.
God says He sees what is going on and will rescue us. It may not seem like it and we are so prone to jump ahead of God and to deal with things like our western heroes did (a flurry of bullets and a half-sneering smile), and if we had script writers all might turn out well. But we don’t. Our story is life and we should put it in the hands of the author of life. That temporary satisfaction we get by getting a few licks in on some deserving villain will subside quickly and surprisingly our good feelings will give way to other ones. Revenge is a temporary fix because we are not quite the fixers God is. So the next time we feel inclined to say, “Do you feel lucky, Punk. Well, do ya?” We might be better to say, “You got this one, God. Let me know how it goes. I’ll be in wardrobe changing my attitude.”
Have a super blessed Wednesday (already!)
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