Revenge

            A sword on the brink of plunging into a murderer is beautiful and chilling. In a story I was so consumed by a couple years back, a man sought to avenge his father's murder. I was so deeply immersed in the story that I went through a mini withdrawal period. Yes, I'm drawn to justice fighters, and I know I'm not the only one.

            Our society is constantly being fed with real and ficticious acts of justice. I hear stories of life sentences for mass murderers and death penalties for terrorists. When judges declare punishments, I feel comforted because there’s one less criminal to worry about and victorious because those criminals are getting the punishment I feel they deserve. The Avengers and other super hero movies all focus on giving villains the punishment they deserve, and people (including me) just soak them up.

            Even going back to older classics, it’s clear that people have always been attracted to revenge. Mass murder was suddenly acceptable and supported when it was in the form of revenge against Penelope’s suitors. The Count of Monte Cristo’s plot for revenge is eagerly digested years and years after it was published. An act of injustice leads to a total shift in character and focus. Revenge becomes everything. Deception and manipulation are crafts to be admired, not frowned upon.

            It’s hard to see the evil in revenge when the cause is noble. In my head, I can still imagine the man’s father being stabbed for a crime he didn’t commit (going back to the story that I was obsessed with before). When the son was ready to murder the killer, I felt slightly unsettled. Death can’t fix death (human death, to be specific). Well, it might fix it temporarily, but not in the long run. That’s where God factors in. Vengeance is His, but it’s so hard to accept. If I replaced the father in the murder scene with someone I love, it would be a lot harder to declare that “death can’t fix death.”  I would hope that I would be able to forgive, but I’ve never had a friend or relative brutally murdered, so it’s hard to know what I’d do. I think my first desire would be justice on the human level—not God’s, but that’s part of what makes God so amazing—He can make the impossible happen.