revenge

89:5.5Some can­ni­bal­ism re­sulted from the de­gen­er­a­tion of once su­pe­rior stocks, but it was mostly preva­lent among the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Man-eat­ing came on at a time when men ex­pe­ri­enced in­tense and bit­ter emo­tions re­gard­ing their en­e­mies. Eat­ing hu­man flesh be­came part of a solemn cer­e­mony of re­venge; it was be­lieved that an en­emy’s ghost could, in this way, be de­stroyed or fused with that of the eater. It was once a wide­spread be­lief that wiz­ards at­tained their pow­ers by eat­ing hu­man flesh.

89:5.6Cer­tain groups of man-eaters would con­sume only mem­bers of their own tribes, a pseu­dospir­i­tual in­breed­ing which was sup­posed to ac­cen­tu­ate tribal sol­i­dar­ity. But they also ate en­e­mies for re­venge with the idea of ap­pro­pri­at­ing their strength. It was con­sid­ered an honor to the soul of a friend or fel­low tribesman if his body were eaten, while it was no more than just pun­ish­ment to an en­emy thus to de­vour him. The sav­age mind made no pre­ten­sions to be­ing con­sis­tent.

140:8.5He never ceased to warn his dis­ci­ples against the evil prac­tice of re­tal­i­a­tion; he made no al­low­ance for re­venge, the idea of get­ting even. He de­plored the hold­ing of grudges. He dis­al­lowed the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He dis­coun­te­nanced the whole con­cept of pri­vate and per­sonal re­venge, as­sign­ing these mat­ters to civil gov­ern­ment, on the one hand, and to the judg­ment of God, on the other. He made it clear to the three that his teach­ings ap­plied to the in­di­vid­ual, not the state. He sum­ma­rized his in­struc­tions up to that time re­gard­ing these mat­ters, as:

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.

111:4.9Since this in­ner life of man is truly cre­ative, there rests upon each per­son the re­spon­si­bil­ity of choos­ing as to whether this cre­ativ­ity shall be spon­ta­neous and wholly hap­haz­ard or con­trolled, di­rected, and con­struc­tive. How can a cre­ative imag­i­na­tion pro­duce wor­thy chil­dren when the stage whereon it func­tions is al­ready pre­oc­cu­pied by prej­u­dice, hate, fears, re­sent­ments, re­venge, and big­otries?

70:1.125. Re­venge was the mo­tive for war when one tribe be­lieved that a neigh­bor­ing tribe had caused the death of a fel­low tribesman. Mourn­ing was con­tin­ued un­til a head was brought home. The war for vengeance was in good stand­ing right on down to com­par­a­tively mod­ern times.

159:1.6Thus did Je­sus teach the dan­gers and il­lus­trate the un­fair­ness of sit­ting in per­sonal judg­ment upon one’s fel­lows. Dis­ci­pline must be main­tained, jus­tice must be ad­min­is­tered, but in all these mat­ters the wis­dom of the broth­er­hood should pre­vail. Je­sus in­vested leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial au­thor­ity in the group, not in the in­di­vid­ual. Even this in­vest­ment of au­thor­ity in the group must not be ex­er­cised as per­sonal au­thor­ity. There is al­ways dan­ger that the ver­dict of an in­di­vid­ual may be warped by prej­u­dice or dis­torted by pas­sion. Group judg­ment is more likely to re­move the dan­gers and elim­i­nate the un­fair­ness of per­sonal bias. Je­sus sought al­ways to min­i­mize the el­e­ments of un­fair­ness, re­tal­i­a­tion, and vengeance.

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

162:0.2Af­ter Philip and Mat­thew had re­turned to their fel­lows and re­ported how they had been driven out of the vil­lage, James and John stepped up to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, we pray you to give us per­mis­sion to bid fire come down from heaven to de­vour these in­so­lent and im­pen­i­tent Samar­i­tans.” But when Je­sus heard these words of vengeance, he turned upon the sons of Zeb­e­dee and severely re­buked them: “You know not what man­ner of at­ti­tude you man­i­fest. Vengeance sa­vors not of the out­look of the king­dom of heaven. Rather than dis­pute, let us jour­ney over to the lit­tle vil­lage by the Jor­dan ford.” Thus be­cause of sec­tar­ian prej­u­dice these Samar­i­tans de­nied them­selves the honor of show­ing hos­pi­tal­ity to the Cre­ator Son of a uni­verse.

139:12.6Ju­das was an only son of un­wise par­ents. When very young, he was pam­pered and pet­ted; he was a spoiled child. As he grew up, he had ex­ag­ger­ated ideas about his self-im­por­tance. He was a poor loser. He had loose and dis­torted ideas about fair­ness; he was given to the in­dul­gence of hate and sus­pi­cion. He was an ex­pert at mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the words and acts of his friends. All through his life Ju­das had cul­ti­vated the habit of get­ting even with those whom he fan­cied had mis­treated him. His sense of val­ues and loy­al­ties was de­fec­tive.

139:12.9Ju­das be­came in­creas­ingly a brooder over per­sonal dis­ap­point­ment, and fi­nally he be­came a vic­tim of re­sent­ment. His feel­ings had been many times hurt, and he grew ab­nor­mally sus­pi­cious of his best friends, even of the Mas­ter. Pres­ently he be­came ob­sessed with the idea of get­ting even, any­thing to avenge him­self, yes, even be­trayal of his as­so­ciates and his Mas­ter.

157:7.4Be­ing from Judea, Ju­das took per­sonal of­fense at Je­sus’ re­cent warn­ing to the apos­tles to “be­ware the leaven of the Phar­isees”; he was dis­posed to re­gard this state­ment as a veiled ref­er­ence to him­self. But the great mis­take of Ju­das was: Time and again, when Je­sus would send his apos­tles off by them­selves to pray, Ju­das, in­stead of en­gag­ing in sin­cere com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual forces of the uni­verse, in­dulged in thoughts of hu­man fear while he per­sisted in the en­ter­tain­ment of sub­tle doubts about the mis­sion of Je­sus as well as giv­ing in to his un­for­tu­nate ten­dency to har­bor feel­ings of re­venge.

177:4.10But it was ever just that way. Ju­das had long been en­gaged in this de­lib­er­ate, per­sis­tent, self­ish, and venge­ful con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sively build­ing up in his mind, and en­ter­tain­ing in his heart, these hate­ful and evil de­sires of re­venge and dis­loy­alty. Je­sus loved and trusted Ju­das even as he loved and trusted the other apos­tles, but Ju­das failed to de­velop loyal trust and to ex­pe­ri­ence whole­hearted love in re­turn. And how dan­ger­ous am­bi­tion can be­come when it is once wholly wed­ded to self-seek­ing and su­premely mo­ti­vated by sullen and long-sup­pressed vengeance! What a crush­ing thing is dis­ap­point­ment in the lives of those fool­ish per­sons who, in fas­ten­ing their gaze on the shad­owy and evanes­cent al­lure­ments of time, be­come blinded to the higher and more real achieve­ments of the ev­er­last­ing at­tain­ments of the eter­nal worlds of di­vine val­ues and true spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Ju­das craved worldly honor in his mind and grew to love this de­sire with his whole heart; the other apos­tles like­wise craved this same worldly honor in their minds, but with their hearts they loved Je­sus and were do­ing their best to learn to love the truths which he taught them.

193:4.2As we look back upon this tragedy, we con­ceive that Ju­das went wrong, pri­mar­ily, be­cause he was very markedly an iso­lated per­son­al­ity, a per­son­al­ity shut in and away from or­di­nary so­cial con­tacts. He per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in, or freely frat­er­nize with, his fel­low apos­tles. But his be­ing an iso­lated type of per­son­al­ity would not, in and of it­self, have wrought such mis­chief for Ju­das had it not been that he also failed to in­crease in love and grow in spir­i­tual grace. And then, as if to make a bad mat­ter worse, he per­sis­tently har­bored grudges and fos­tered such psy­cho­logic en­e­mies as re­venge and the gen­er­al­ized crav­ing to “get even” with some­body for all his dis­ap­point­ments.

193:4.84. He was given to hold­ing grudges; he was al­ways en­ter­tain­ing the idea of re­venge.

145:3.4That Sab­bath was a great day in the earth life of Je­sus, yes, in the life of a uni­verse. To all lo­cal uni­verse in­tents and pur­poses the lit­tle Jew­ish city of Ca­per­naum was the real cap­i­tal of Neb­a­don. The hand­ful of Jews in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue were not the only be­ings to hear that mo­men­tous clos­ing state­ment of Je­sus’ ser­mon: “Hate is the shadow of fear; re­venge the mask of cow­ardice.” Nei­ther could his hear­ers for­get his blessed words, declar­ing, “Man is the son of God, not a child of the devil.”

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

140:6.4Then said Si­mon Pe­ter: “Mas­ter, if you have a new com­mand­ment, we would hear it. Re­veal the new way to us.” Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “You have heard it said by those who teach the law: ‘You shall not kill; that whoso­ever kills shall be sub­ject to judg­ment.’ But I look be­yond the act to un­cover the mo­tive. I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who is an­gry with his brother is in dan­ger of con­dem­na­tion. He who nurses ha­tred in his heart and plans vengeance in his mind stands in dan­ger of judg­ment. You must judge your fel­lows by their deeds; the Fa­ther in heaven judges by the in­tent.

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

174:1.5“Your in­abil­ity or un­will­ing­ness to for­give your fel­lows is the mea­sure of your im­ma­tu­rity, your fail­ure to at­tain adult sym­pa­thy, un­der­stand­ing, and love. You hold grudges and nurse venge­ful­ness in di­rect pro­por­tion to your ig­no­rance of the in­ner na­ture and true long­ings of your chil­dren and your fel­low be­ings. Love is the out­work­ing of the di­vine and in­ner urge of life. It is founded on un­der­stand­ing, nur­tured by un­selfish ser­vice, and per­fected in wis­dom.”

140:3.15“I say to you: Love your en­e­mies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who de­spite­fully use you. And what­so­ever you be­lieve that I would do to men, do you also to them.

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”

• aim of primitive life
• is mine, says the Lord

70:10.9So­ci­ety early adopted the pay­ing-back at­ti­tude of re­tal­i­a­tion: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolv­ing tribes all rec­og­nized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance be­came the aim of prim­i­tive life, but re­li­gion has since greatly mod­i­fied these early tribal prac­tices. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion have al­ways pro­claimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not al­to­gether un­like pres­ent-day mur­ders un­der the pre­tense of the un­writ­ten law.

• suicide hunger strikes were ancient modes of retaliation

70:10.10Sui­cide was a com­mon mode of re­tal­i­a­tion. If one were un­able to avenge him­self in life, he died en­ter­tain­ing the be­lief that, as a ghost, he could re­turn and visit wrath upon his en­emy. And since this be­lief was very gen­eral, the threat of sui­cide on an en­emy’s doorstep was usu­ally suf­fi­cient to bring him to terms. Prim­i­tive man did not hold life very dear; sui­cide over tri­fles was com­mon, but the teach­ings of the Dala­ma­tians greatly less­ened this cus­tom, while in more re­cent times leisure, com­forts, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy have united to make life sweeter and more de­sir­able. Hunger strikes are, how­ever, a mod­ern ana­logue of this old-time method of re­tal­i­a­tion.

• does not right wrongs

140:8.7The fu­til­ity of evil: A wrong is not righted by vengeance. Do not make the mis­take of fight­ing evil with its own weapons.

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

159:5.121. To re­turn evil for evil—the pos­i­tive but un­righ­teous method.

159:5.132. To suf­fer evil with­out com­plaint and with­out re­sis­tance—the purely neg­a­tive method.

159:5.143. To re­turn good for evil, to as­sert the will so as to be­come mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion, to over­come evil with good—the pos­i­tive and righ­teous method.

159:5.15One of the apos­tles once asked: “Mas­ter, what should I do if a stranger forced me to carry his pack for a mile?” Je­sus an­swered: “Do not sit down and sigh for re­lief while you be­rate the stranger un­der your breath. Righ­teous­ness comes not from such pas­sive at­ti­tudes. If you can think of noth­ing more ef­fec­tively pos­i­tive to do, you can at least carry the pack a sec­ond mile. That will of a cer­tainty chal­lenge the un­righ­teous and un­godly stranger.”