Revenge

Revenge.

 

A taboo topic that's been running around in my mind recently.

There's this very human nature in us that longs for justice:

eye for eye,

tooth for tooth,

tit for tat,

reaction for action.

I guess it's natural because deep down inside us, we all know there are consequences to face for any action we choose to do.

Most of the time, if it was something bad, like the time a careless truck driver took the lives of 2 young boys, we wish that something bad would happen back to the driver so that he 'pays' for the mistake he made.

Even God talks about revenge: 

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay"

And that, get most of us riled up in hot blood whenever something unjust happens to us.  We think that God will avenge us.  That somehow, something bad will happen to the person who was unfair to us or took advantage of us.

But sometimes it's not like that.

Sometimes, the ending for the wrongdoer is not what we'd typically hope or think it would be.

Take for example the apostle Paul.

Betrayer, Instrumental to most of the cold-blooded murder of innocent believers in the past.

In the end, did he die?  Was he sentenced to death or zapped to death by God for all the heartbreak he caused the families of the innocent?

Zapped by God, he was.  But not to death.  

In fact, he was transformed into one of the most effective instruments of revival, to spread the very cause he so zealously tried to stem in the beginning.

Was that revenge?

Maybe to the hurting family members of those put to death as a result of his betrayal, not really.

But yet if you look at it from another angle, 

It is revenge. And one more severe than death.

It's a life sentence, where you're made to eat your words in public for the rest of your life.

It's a life sentence that brings about eternal transformation in the lives of millions of people whom you'd never have otherwise reached if you'd just simply been given a death sentence.

So for people who are suffering injustice, will God avenge?

I believe so, though now I realize that it might sometimes be "exacted" in a way most people didn't expect.

A higher way, that is far better than just tit-for-tat.