May 10, 2012 - Issue 471 |
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Vengeance is Mine,
Says …
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I do not know about you but my greatest disappointment with President Barack Obama is really disappointment over a collective failing of all of us. The failing is our collective blindness to the barbarity and moral corruptness of justified state vengeance, as the worm deep in our cultural gut that poisons our thoughts and our actions. The most recent display of this failing was shown by the first anniversary celebration of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. I should say triumphal celebration. Republicans praised the action and attempted to limit Obama’s credit for making the decision. Democrats fought hard to give the President much credit. I was appalled that any moral, civil human being would want to claim credit. My disappointment or sadness is that the substance of this issue is not even
being raised to visibility by hardly any one! This assassination and many
other such actions in the We can learn from Biblical scripture and the ancient writings and practices from many cultures around the world that humans have been struggling with this question of justified vengeance for a long, long time. Overwhelmingly, the conclusion from these thousands of years of consideration is that vengeance – particularly individual vengeance – is morally wrong. In Romans 12:17-19 one translation is as follows: 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. This basic wisdom concept of leaving consequences to God, to Nature, to the Tao, to Karma reappears frequently in diverse cultures. And it has been ignored for thousands of years in almost all of those cultures, despite the fact that there are alternative approaches to achieve justice and peace. And vengeance is totally ineffective at achieving either peace or justice and is very, very costly. The People of the Book (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) seem to have finessed this wise prohibition against vengeance by declaring that the humans who are in authority and their agents are divinely chosen and therefore their acts of vengeance are as if The Lord is the architect. Romans 13:4 says as follows: 4 For he is the minister of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil. There is good historical evidence that Roman Emperor Constantine influenced
which of many hundred year old (at the time) writings were included and
which were left out of (what we now call) The Gospels. A careful reading of this compilation of ancient wisdom would reveal that Jewish prophets from the Old Testament (the Torah) and Jesus (in the New Testament) frequently challenged authority. This rejection of the unjust actions of leaders cannot be denied and the authorities are not justified in their persecution of the prophets or their use of capital punishment. The finesse by deification or by giving special dispensation to the conquerors and usurpers took a thousand years to break down when kings and presidents were found to be no longer divinely ordained. Why then (another thousand years later) do so many of us still think that vengeance is justified when it is meted out by the state!? More than 200 years ago, Quakers in the Unfortunately these reformers did not take into account the mentally debilitating nature of forced solitude or the unyielding nature of the wish for vengeance that led to the undoing of Quaker reformers’ good intentions. It was our primitive clinging to vengeance that turned the original concept of a penitentiary into another place for punishment and vengeance no different than a jail. Currently, Quaker and other reformers are strongly advocating an end to the death penalty and the substitution of restorative justice for retributive justice – with little help from Obama or very many of us. In a recent episode of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, while discussing the assassination
of Osama Bin Laden, Tavis Smiley reminded viewers
that President Barack Obama has a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the
Oval Office. Tavis stated, without response
or comment by any other panel member, how hypocritical it was to consider
MLK a personal hero while helping to exact violent state vengeance. This
reminded me of the hypocrisy of Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
just before he sent a surge of troops into The best that I can say for our President is that he is a capable politician – better than most. But, he lacks the wisdom of the ages. He is not the prophetic leader that would challenge the moral corruptions, like justified vengeance, which eat at the gut and heart of US society. He is not MLK and he never will be. We cannot look to Obama for moral leadership; after nearly four years it is obvious that type of leadership cannot be found in the White House. We are all – each and every one of us – called to become leaders in our own right anywhere and any how you can stand up for human dignity and human wisdom. That is the only way that the abomination of vengeance both personal and state will be curbed. BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Wilson Riles, is a former |
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