A couple movie trailers I recently saw drew my attention to an ever popular trend in cinema: The “revenge movie.”
Two movies in particular have caught my attention — the above-advertised “Escape Plan” and Spike Lee’s “Oldboy,” a “Count of Monte Cristo” type thriller about a man (Josh Brolin) who embarks upon a quest of vengeance against the people who imprisoned him for 20 years.
On television, we have the ongoing and very popular series with the very name “Revenge.” So I think we can say that this is by no means a fringe trend.
Our fascination with revenge comes from our primordial sense of justice — that is, of right order, of the setting-right of what has gone wrong. That sense of justice is God-given and good.
But like much that is God-given, our sense of justice has become corrupted. Revenge is a perversion of justice born of our fallen nature, which is the result of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin.
The essence of Original Sin (and all sin, in the final analysis) is that man has turned away from God, and as a result humankind’s relationship not only with God, but also with one another and with all creation is adversely affected. Man turned in on himself,* becoming ego-centered, defensive, self-seeking, and hostile to any perceived intrusions on his own interests.
And so when he is legitimately wronged, it will be like a light punch on a badly bruised arm. He will amplify it manifold. If someone breaks his arm, he will want to break both of his opponent’s arms. If his opponent steals his car and crashes it, he will want to steal his opponent’s car and crash it into the latter’s house. If his opponent punches him, he will want to kill his opponent.
You get where I’m going with this. When the fallen ego has found itself dominated by another, it will not only want to “even the score,” but then also go further to assert its dominance over the other.
By the way, this is what the Old Testament is getting at when it calls for “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Many of the nations surrounding Biblical Israel were in the habit of punishing offenders excessively. The purpose of the aforementioned law was to curb these draconian practices, limiting punishments so that they were proportionate to the offenses, and no more.
Of course, this was but preparation for the coming of Christ, who has given us a much more radical law:
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44)
True justice is restored through humble witness to the truth and through mercy. As for vengeance…well, Gandhi said it well: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Christians should always remember the words of St. Paul:
…you have approached…Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel (Hebrews 12: 22-24)
For the blood of Abel cries out for vengeance, but the Blood of Christ cries out for mercy. Only in that Blood does mankind have hope.
*As I’ve noted before, here the term “mankind” and the accompanying male pronouns are used in the generic, unisex sense.
Image from Wikipedia
Leave a Reply