Revenge and Forgiveness
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said. ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you asked me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailors to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”
Matthew 18:32-34
In this parable of Jesus, the master has forgiven a large debt owed him but when he learns that the forgiven man has not forgiven a small debt owed him by one of his peers, the master changes his mind and punishes the servant. Revenge and forgiveness live side by side in every human being. We tend to separate these two human emotions into good and bad, with revenge being of the devil, and forgiveness being of God, but both are equally a part of human nature.
There are people who study these things, and what they have found is that, evolutionarily speaking, both revenge and forgiveness are necessary for the survival of the ‘tribe.’ If one member of the tribe is endangering the well-being of the other members, and risking the cohesiveness necessary to survival, then revenge (or punishment by confinement) makes sense. On the other hand, it is necessary for us to forgive numerous insidious mistakes made by one another in order to live together in harmony. Both instincts evolved for the purpose of survival.
When we say that it is human to want to seek revenge, everyone feels uneasy. I always think of Ghandi’s response: “If everyone took an eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind.” This particular code of ethics, which we think of as harsh, is in reality a statement of equality. In other words, when you are wronged, you may seek a judgment of equal severity, but not of more. It is responsible to seek repayment from someone who has stolen from you, but not to cut off their hands as punishment. The payment should be equal to the crime.
Forgiveness is something we do as a matter of course everyday. If we didn’t forgive a multitude of small indignities from children, spouses, partners, friends and co-workers, all would be chaos. In the last week, I have heard some of the families of 9/11 victims saying that they forgive the men who flew those planes into the towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania meadow. Forgiveness is a necessary step in the healing process. It is necessary to forgive in order to remove the strain of hatred from our own hearts and to make ourselves whole. It is human to seek revenge, and it is equally human to forgive.
Have mercy,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment