Retaliation

Retaliation

Retaliation - Audio/Visual

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody. Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.” Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good. (Romans 12:14-21)

The most sacred symbol in Oklahoma City is a tree: a sprawling, shade-bearing, 80-year-old American Elm. Tourists drive from miles around to see it. People pose for pictures beneath it. Arborists carefully nurture and protect it. The tree adorns posters and letterhead, alike. Other trees in the area grow larger, fuller and even greener. But not one of them is as cherished. The city treasures the tree – not for its appearance, but for its endurance. The tree endured the Oklahoma City bombing.

Timothy McVeigh parked his death-laden truck only yards from that tree. His malice killed 168 people, wounded 850, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and buried the tree in tons of rubble. No one expected the tree to survive. Fact is no one even gave any thought to the dusty, branch-stripped tree. But then it began to bud. Sprouts pressed through damaged bark; green leaves pushed away gray soot. Life was resurrected from an acre of death. And people noticed. The tree modeled the resilience that the victims desired. So they gave the elm a name: the Survivor Tree.

Truth is the Timothy McVeigh’s of this world still rock us. They inexcusably and inexplicably maim and scar us. And we want to imitate the tree — survive the evil, and rise above the ruin. But how? David can give us some ideas.

When Saul “McVeighed” his way into David’s world, David dashed into the desert, where he found refuge among the caves near the Dead Sea. Several hundred loyalists followed him. So did Saul. And in two dramatic desert scenes, David models how to give grace to the person who gives grief.

Scene One. Saul signals for his men to stop. They do. Three thousand soldiers cease their marching as their king dismounts and walks up the mountainside. The region of Ein Gedi simmers in the brick-oven heat. Sunrays strike like daggers on the soldiers’ necks. Lizards lie behind rocks. Scorpions linger in the dirt. And snakes, like Saul, seek rest in caves. So, Saul enters the cave “to relieve himself. Now David and his men were hiding far back in the cave.” (1 Sam. 24:3) With eyes likely dulled from the desert sun, the king fails to notice the silent figures who are lining the walls. But they see him.

As Saul heeds nature’s call, dozens of eyes widen. Their minds race, and hands reach for daggers. One thrust of a blade would bring Saul’s tyranny and their running to an end. But David signals for his men to hold back. He edges along the wall, unsheathes his knife, and cuts not the flesh but the robe of the king. David then creeps back into the recesses of the cave.

David’s men can’t believe what their leader has done. Neither can David. But his feelings are just the opposite of his men. They think he’s done too little; he thinks he’s done too much. Rather than gloat, he regrets. Later, David felt guilty because he’d cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. He said to his men, “May the Lord keep me from doing such a thing to my master! Saul is the Lord’s appointed king. I should not do anything against him, because he is the Lord’s appointed king!” (1 Sam. 24:5–6) Soon, Saul exits the cave, and David follows not long thereafter. He lifts the cut-off garment corner and, in so many words, shouts, “I could have killed you, but I didn’t.” Saul looks up, stunned, and wonders aloud, “If a man finds his enemy, will he let him get away safely?” (24:19) David will. More than once.

Scene Two. Just a couple of chapters later, Saul, once again, is hunting David. David, once again, outwits Saul. While the camp of the king sleeps, daredevil David and a soldier stealth their way through the ranks until they stand directly over the snoring body of the king. The soldier begs, “This is the moment! God has put your enemy in your grasp. Let me nail him to the ground with his spear. One hit will do it, believe me; I won’t need a second!” (26:8)

But David won’t have it. Rather than take Saul’s life, he takes Saul’s spear and water jug and sneaks out of the camp. And then, from a safe distance, he awakens Saul and the soldiers with an announcement: “God put your life in my hands today, but I wasn’t willing to lift a finger against God’s anointed.” (26:23) Once again, David spares Saul’s life. Once again, David displays a God-saturated mind. Who dominates David’s thoughts? “May the Lord . . . the Lord delivered . . . the Lord’s anointed . . . in the eyes of the Lord.” (26:23–24; emphasis added) God does; four (4) times in two (2) verses.

We think about the purveyors of pain in our own lives. It’s one thing to give grace to friends, but give grace to those who give us grief? Can you? Given a few uninterrupted moments with the Darth Vaders of your life, could you imitate David? Maybe. Some people just seem graced with mercy glands. They seem to secrete forgiveness, never harboring grudges or reciting their hurts. Others of us, likely most of us, find it hard to forgive our Saul’s. We forgive the one-time offenders, mind you. We dismiss the parking-place takers, the date-breakers, and even the purse snatchers. We can move past the misdemeanors, but the felonies? The repeat offenders? The Saul’s who take our youth, our retirement, or our health? Were that scoundrel to seek shade in your cave, or lie sleeping at your feet would you do what David did? Could you forgive that scum who hurt you? The problem is that failure to forgive could be fatal: “Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.”
( Job 5:2)

Vengeance fixes your attention on life’s ugliest moments. Score-settling freezes your stare at the cruel events of your past. But is that where you want to look? Will rehearsing and reliving your hurts make you a better person? No. It will destroy you. Don’t think so? Well, do you remember that old comedy routine where Joe complains to Jerry about the irritating habit of a mutual friend – the guy pokes his finger in Joe’s chest as he talks. It drives Joe crazy. So he resolves to get even. He shows Jerry a small bottle of highly explosive nitroglycerin tied to a string. He explains, “I’m going to wear this around my neck, letting the bottle hang over the exact spot where I keep getting poked. Next time he sticks his finger in my chest, he’ll pay for it.” Not nearly as much as Joe will.

Enemy destroyers need two graves. “It is foolish to harbor a grudge.” (Eccles. 7:9) An eye for an eye becomes a neck for a neck, or a job for a job, or a reputation for a reputation. When does it stop? It stops when one person imitates David’s God-dominated mind. He faced Saul the way he faced Goliath — by facing God even more. When the soldiers in the cave urged David to kill Saul, look who occupied David’s thoughts: “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.” (1 Sam. 24:6)

When David called out to Saul from the mouth of the cave, “David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed down.” (24:8) Then he reiterated his conviction: “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed.” (24:10) And in the second scene, during the nighttime campsite attack, David maintained his belief: “Who can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?” (26:9) In these two scenes there’s six separate times when David called Saul “the Lord’s anointed.” Can you think of another term David might have used? Me, too. But not David. He saw, not Saul the enemy, but Saul the anointed. He refused to see his grief-giver as anything less than a child of God. David didn’t applaud Saul’s behavior; he just acknowledged Saul’s proprietor — God. David filtered his view of Saul through the grid of heaven. The king still belonged to God, and that gave David reason for hope.

Many years ago a German shepherd/wolf mix, named Cujo, attacked my youngest son on his way to elementary school. The worthless animal, completely unprovoked, climbed out of its run and onto the sidewalk and nearly killed William. The dog left my son with dozens of cuts and gashes, all of which required stitches whose number I can’t remember. My feelings toward that cur were less than Davidic. Leave the two of us in a cave, and only one would have exited – and it wouldn’t have been that dog. In fact, I told the humane society to put the dog down, because this wasn’t the first bite. But I was asked to reconsider. “What that dog did was horrible, but the owner’s still training him. They’re not finished with him yet.” Well, I was.

God would say the same about that shepherd/wolf mix that attacked you. “What he did was unthinkable, unacceptable, inexcusable, but I’m not finished yet.” Your enemies still figure into God’s plan. The proof is their pulse; God hasn’t given up on them. They may be out of God’s will, but not out of his reach. You honor God when you see them, not as his failures, but as his projects. Besides, who assigned us the task of getting retribution? David understood that. From the mouth of the cave, he declared, “May the Lord decide between you and me. May the Lord take revenge on you for what you did to me. However, I will not lay a hand on you. . . . the Lord must be the judge. He will decide.” (24:12, 15) And, God did.

God occupies the only seat on the supreme court of heaven. He wears the robe and refuses to share the gavel. For this reason Paul wrote, “Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. ‘I’ll do the judging,’ says God. ‘I’ll take care of it’.” (Rom. 12:19) Revenge removes God from the equation. Vigilantes displace and replace God. “I’m not sure you can handle this one, Lord. You may punish too little or too slowly. I’ll take this matter into my hands, thank you.” Is that what you want to say? Jesus didn’t.

No one had a clearer sense of right and wrong than the perfect Son of God. Yet, “when he suffered, he didn’t make any threats but left everything to the one who judges fairly.” (1 Pet. 2:23) Only God assesses accurate judgments. We impose punishments too slight or too severe. God dispenses perfect justice. Vengeance, or retribution is his job. Leave your enemies in God’s hands. You’re not endorsing their misbehavior when you do. You can hate what someone did without letting hatred consume you. Forgiveness is not excusing, and forgiveness is not pretending. David didn’t gloss over or sidestep Saul’s sin. He addressed it directly. He didn’t avoid the issue, but he did avoid Saul. “Saul returned home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold.” (1 Sam. 24:22)

Do the same. Give grace, but, if need be, keep your distance. You can forgive the abusive husband without living with him. Be quick to give mercy to the immoral politician, but be slow to give him another term. Society can dispense grace and prison terms at the same time. Offer the drunk driver a second chance, but keep his license. Forgiveness is not foolishness. Forgiveness is, at its core, choosing to see your offender with different eyes.

When some Moravian missionaries took the message of God to the Eskimos, the missionaries struggled to find a word in the native language for forgiveness. They finally landed on this cumbersome twenty-four-letter choice: issumagijoujungnainermik. This formidable assembly of letters is literally translated, “not being able to think about it anymore.” To forgive is to move on, not to think about the offense anymore. You don’t excuse him, endorse her, or embrace them. You just route thoughts about them through heaven. You see your enemy as God’s child, and revenge as God’s job.

And, frankly, how can we grace-recipients do anything less? Dare we ask God for grace when we refuse to give it? This is a huge issue in the Scripture. Jesus was tough on sinners who refused to forgive other sinners. Remember his story about the servant freshly forgiven a debt of millions who refused to forgive a debt equal to a few hundred dollars? He stirred the wrath of God: “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt – Shouldn’t’ you have mercy – just as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18:32–33)

In the final analysis, we give grace because we’ve been given grace. We survive because we imitate the Survivor Tree. We reach our roots beyond the bomb zone. We tap into moisture beyond the explosion. We dig deeper and deeper until we draw moisture from the mercy of God. We, like Saul, have been given grace. And we, like David, can choose to give it.

Grace,

Randy