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On stage and in movies, revenge stories often end in bloodshed. To avenge herself on her ex-husband Jason for taking another wife, Medea kills her own children. Orestes kills his mother because she murdered his father and her husband, and Hamlet’s attack on his uncle-father Claudius engulfs the entire royal family of Denmark. In Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, a female assassin takes spectacular revenge against her ex-lover.
Theatrical vengeance can be breathtaking, but in life revenge is more often petty and banal. A child angry at his parents grows up vowing to get even. A co-worker beats you to a promotion you think you deserve, and you take secret delight in his every misstep. A wife
responds to years of neglect from her husband by withholding sex and telling everyone in earshot about his faults. You are humiliated in love, and you begin to spread slanders about your lover and his family. Revenge may not end in mass murder; it might produce nothing more interesting than cold-heartedness, envy, harsh words, sullen silence around the dinner table.
Revenge is so pervasive and so powerful and so destructive that we may consider it an inherent evil. But it is not. After all, God Himself is an Avenger. We don’t refrain from revenge because vengeance is wrong but because we do it badly.
You will be mistreated. Things are unfair. You will suffer injustices of one sort or another. God’s commands are clear: Do good to those who mistreat you; bless them and pray for them. But do not tolerate injustices. Do good to those who mistreat you in hope for the perfect vengeance that only comes from the Perfect Avenger.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, July 31, 2005 at 08:11 AM
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