Sisters and brothers,

In light of the events on September 11, I offer this article by Dr. Gerald May of the Shalem Institute. Many words have been spoken, but I have found his to be very helpful in seeking to discern God’s will and desire in our response. I welcome any discussions and conversations.

Shalom!

Pr. Dick

The Vengeance Reflex

Gerald May

Shalem Institute

Twenty years ago I wrote in Will and Spirit that vengeance is the paradigm of human evil. My reasoning was that other forms of destructive willfulness can be traced to some motive of self-preservation or defense, but vengeance seemed to serve no such purpose. Revenge certainly does not prevent recurrence of injury; it only increases violence. Nor could I find any other way, no matter how depraved, in which revenge might be seen as self-serving. It exists, I concluded, for no other reason than to get even.

Yet revenge is an almost universal human reaction. Its role is obvious in all levels of human conflict, from ugly divorces through feuds within and between families, to the great ethnic atrocities that have so scarred our world. I had seen it first-hand in Vietnam and in Bosnia, and I had to admit I'd felt its ugly movement within myself in my reactions to affronts by others.

The dynamics are obvious. One person injures another, who in turn tries to get even, and the conflict escalates. The destruction can become extreme and complex, but the vengeance that drives it is an utterly simple reflex. From the time we first develop self-identity as little children, our capacity for revenge is in place. It is horrifyingly natural.

Then I learned about some psychological studies of children from Bosnia and from American inner cities who had been terribly traumatized by violence. The findings haunt me to this day. In short, they showed that the children who functioned the best, those who were least paralyzed by depression, were the ones who had adopted a mentality of revenge.

As much as I hated to face that observation, it began to show me that vengeance does indeed have a function. It is a way of avoiding the reality of one’s own injury. When one has been so terribly wronged that the depths of devastation are too much to bear, vengeance stands ready to occupy one’s mind and heart, consuming attention with rage. When one has been beaten so low as to feel utterly degraded, vengeance offers the energy to strike out in the hope of regaining a sense of power and control.

In the absence of revenge, we are left with the bare pain of our loss, the sheer awful fact of it. Without revenge, we must try to bear what may seem unbearable: bottomless grief and despair. And if we do not retaliate, we are left with self-images that seem ruined. We are weak, humiliated, degraded victims.

Can this really be what God asks of us? Does turning the other cheek mean we must fully experience our own devastation and humiliation? As terrible as it may seem, I think it is true. I think God wants us to bear the truth of every situation, to be immersed in the reality of our woundedness to the full extent of our being. Only in this way can we discover and discern how we are called to respond. If instead we let revenge take us away from our pain and into retaliation, we act on reflex alone. There is no space for Wisdom to light a path towards real justice and lasting peace. Getting even is all that counts.

If we are to respond effectively to cruelty, I think we must go without anesthesia as much as we can. We need to feel our pain and grief and humiliation—and our rage—before taking action. As unbearable as it may seem, there is immense possibility in that precious time between the shock of injury and the reflex of retaliation. Wisdom can come in that moment, guiding an accurate response to what really is. Compassion may rise then too, and even a realization of communion. That moment is precious, but it is also very delicate. To even glimpse it, we cannot give in to the vengeance reflex. I believe that at the very time we feel most wounded, we are called to remain vulnerable.

The word vulnerable means "able to be wounded." It is hard—sometimes seemingly impossible—to even consider remaining vulnerable when everything in us wants to strike out. Yet the moment is always offering itself, in every breath, in the slightest pause of self-defense. I think God calls us in each of those moments, inviting us to feel. The call is to feel our own woundedness, the woundedness of others, the woundedness of God. If God is ultimately loving, then God must also be ultimately vulnerable—a Divine Heart embracing both the joy and the suffering of all creation. I think God desires, needs us to share that vulnerability. Sometimes, in that precious moment between injury and retaliation when we most feel our own vulnerability, we realize communion. The tears we shed and the emptiness we feel flow with the suffering of others into God's own broken heart.