The Healing that Revenge Provides.
By Gemini and Rakesh Sanghvi
I sometimes feel like I should write everything in reverse. Not simply backwards from the bottom up but in meaning. And then let people read it and decide for themselves what the essay means to them. Each of us are interpreters of our own dream. If our lives here on earth were a long dream that might explain Evil. That’s the best answer to the question of theodicy that I’ve been able to come up with. Imagine you’re a being on another planet. And you are about to be sent somewhere, yet you need to learn a few lessons about your behaviors, then you’re put to a long hibernation of about 100 years of earth time. And during that time you have an incredibly vivid dream. You just lost pal. Yeah that’s okay. I like explanations. Theodicy bothered me a lot. It’s the question at the very heart and soul of all religions. We pray to this perfect Creator who also happened to create Evil.
Anger and revenge are cousins. Both of them are all consuming. Yet fire never quenches thirst. The best description of Anger that I ever heard was on Facebook. Someone had posted: Anger is like holding on to a hot coal and hoping it burns the other person. The inability to forgive is the clearest indication of an atheist. Forgiveness is the idea that you truly have faith. That you truly believe in a higher authority. That your faith is so unshakable that you have absolutely no doubt that Evil gets it due whether in this lifetime or next. Humans don’t have much faith. They see an atrocity and if they have the power to dispense Justice then they will. Even if Justice means they have to become like Evil.
But he tortured a child! (News almost everyday some sheriff is accused of battery or something else). He deserves full recompense!
He was a cannibal! And he enjoyed it!
He burned his meat before eating it!
And on and on. Evil has no limit. It simply becomes more.
The true question of faith is this: can we forgive even the worst, quickly dispense Justice and move on? If we don’t then essentially what we’re expressing is a lack of faith that there will be a life after death.
Revenge doesn’t provide the healing that we hope for. There is a certain anger that we hold on to inside in the face of Evil. Sometimes that anger is vital, it’s important so we ourselves don’t slide into Evil. Sometimes it may the only thing that allows us to feel our real selves. And yet, if we let anger become a full revenge that we have lost. It’s a sharp edge to walk, the person who can hold on to anger as a way to sanity yet not express it, instead chooses to forgive. Not many people can walk that line. Therefore it’s probably true that this world of full of atheists.
