Vengeance
Where in your own life have you witnessed or experienced the natural consequences of wrongful (or even just misguided) actions?
Psalm 37:14-15
The wicked draw their swords and bend their bows
to bring down the weak and the needy,
to slaughter those whose way is right.
But the sword of the wicked will enter their own hearts!
Many biblical passages describe the destruction of evildoers, but Psalm 37 stands out to me: While many such passages portray God actively punishing the wicked, this psalm does not.
Here, God’s action is reserved for protecting the oppressed. Meanwhile, the psalmist foresees a day when oppressors will be gone from the land of Palestine — but their downfall comes neither by God’s hand nor an act of human revenge. Instead, they die by their own swords, their own violence and hate.
James Baldwin foresees such a reckoning in the last paragraph of The Fire Next Time (1963), where he worries that the white world’s refusal to listen to and be changed by Black voices may make “vengeance” ultimately inevitable.
This vengeance, he emphasizes, doesn’t need to be “executed by any person or organization”; instead, it will be “based on the law that we recognize when we say, ‘Whatever goes up must come down.’ ”
There is only so long we — on individual or communal levels — can sow bigotry and willful ignorance before our violence falls back on our own heads.
Where in your own life have you witnessed or experienced the natural consequences of wrongful (or even just misguided) actions? What would it take to uproot evil before its poison fruits must be reaped?