Some years ago, I decided to experiment with fiction by writing a novel. I was unsure of many things. Which themes would the story revolve around? Which turns would the plot take? But there was one scene I had rehearsed countlessly in my mind, and which would, as sure as death, have to feature in the novel. An exquisitely and irresistibly dressed gentleman at whom all eyes can’t resist casting furtive glances bumps into a lady in some random store in the US. Looking cursorily at each other to apologize, these strangers realize they know each other. But from where? A second lady (far prettier than the first) joins the scene—the gentleman’s wife. A motley of feelings—bitterness, remorse, pain—overflow the banks of the first lady’s soul as icy realization registers: is this not the boyfriend she jilted in Ghana when she left Ghana to live in the States, although she had promised to be with him till the sun dried up the sea? The gentleman, a glimmer on his face, is extremely careful to say nothing beyond apologizing for the bump, but self-satisfactorily reaches out to take his wife’s hand in the most affectionate (and affected) manner, while deliberately maintaining eye contact with the first lady, who suddenly looks asphyxiated. When later he looks back (as he walks to his car with his wife), he’s pleased to notice that all the first lady (with wistful and almost teary
eyes) can manage is to bite her lips in silent agony. In this brief and nearly wordless encounter, in that infinitesimal moment, the gentleman knows it. He has had his revenge!

But all fiction, we are told, is largely autobiographical. The gentleman in the story, as you might have guessed, is me; the first lady was my girlfriend of yesteryears. Our relationship came to an abrupt halt when she left Ghana to live in the States. How shall I describe it? “Traumatic” doesn’t even begin to do justice to how I felt. The nights were too agonizingly long. The days brought no relief. It was as though the Deuteronomy 28:67 curse had caught up with me: “In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening, you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’” Why, oh why, I asked myself, did she leave me? And every time I asked, the answer felt simple enough: it was a matter of class. What would a young girl, who had spread her wings and was soaring in the US, want to do with me in Ghana? In the helplessness that followed, I decided I wasn’t going to waste the hurt. I, too, would spread my wings. I would learn how to fly, too. And when we would meet again, as I imagined it in the novel I would write, I would have my revenge! I would make her see the utter folly of jettisoning me.

I prayed and schemed, then schemed and prayed. My desire for revenge became fuel. I began a ferocious search into the requirements for an American visa. Deciding that it would be easier to get to the US once I had completed my undergraduate education, I announced a family meeting and presented my life proposal: I would complete my undergraduate education in Ghana, then I would go to the US to study for a Masters. Like God in Gen. 1:31, I examined all that I had planned and saw that it was good! Many a night, I imagined and re-imagined the scene in my head, testing different settings and different scenarios. Which would bring the point home most poignantly, I would ask myself, turning on my bed? And, oh, what a foretaste of joy it brought to me! 

What I was doing was following the wisdom in the saying that “success is the best (form of) revenge” (although I’m not sure that I had heard the saying at the time). The reasoning here is that if someone hurts you, jilts you, makes you feel less than you deserve, etc., it is not worth arguing/ fighting with them. Rather than insult, poison or hurt them in the same way, channel the desire for revenge into work. Work hard, passionately, intensely. Become successful—or rather, more successful than the person who hurt you. Then when one day you meet this person again, you won’t need to waste words. Your success would do the talking. Then you would have had your revenge!

I can think of so many stories/ films that are inspired in some measure by this school of thought. Many Kumawood films, for example, are premised on a disturbingly linear theme. Man A, whose wife leaves him for Man B, becomes crazily rich while Man B loses his job (or something tragic like that). Later, the woman comes back to Man A to ask for forgiveness and to be re-accepted. Man A, unfortunately for the runaway woman, already has a wife. It is too late. I can understand the wisdom in pursuing success as a way of revenge. After all, isn’t it nobler than paying people back in their own coin? Rather than do something to someone who hurt you, you do something for yourself. This is all the wiser considering that we may not always even be in a position to immediately pay people back. A father may punish his child corporally, but the child may not. The company boss can fire the employee; the employee cannot do that.

But from a Christian point of view, this wisdom is not flawless. The Christian’s call is to become like Christ. And while this does not mean that we cannot borrow wisdom from worldly circles, it does imply subjecting these wisdoms to the teachings and lifestyle of Christ. I think that the truly wise person is the one who is able to, as it were, sample various wisdoms from various sources, acknowledge their advantages, but also recognize their deficiencies—in this case, their divergences with the wisdom of Christ. I’m thinking, for example, about feminism, social justice, Black Lives Matter—causes which are in themselves not necessarily evil, but which, if not pursued with caution, can have serious conflicts with Christlikeness and the Scriptures.

Let’s go back to that scene I imagined at the beginning, in order to punch holes in my own logic. Why, for goodness’ sake, did I imagine that all those years I was scheming (in order to get to the US, to get all the money and degrees I wanted, to get a car, to marry a beautiful wife, and finally to bump into my ex-girlfriend), this lady would be static, and would not have made as much (or more) progress with her life? Was she a statue? Stuck at the same place? Patiently waiting for me to overtake her? Why, for the life of me, did I not imagine that she would be as (or more) elegantly dressed in that chance encounter? Why did it not strike me that if this meeting had actually happened, she would have had a better car and a finer gentleman as husband? Why on earth did I impose all those feelings on her—bitterness, remorse and pain? What was the obsession really about? Who said she’d care, even, to take so much as a second glance my way? Why hadn’t I thought that I was probably so little of a priority to her that she had even forgotten me? Or even if things turned out exactly as I imagined it, for how long, really, would that feeling of satisfaction last? Why, dear younger
self, did you condemn yourself to live by such a toxic ideology? What, God gave you life and all you wanted to do with it was prove a point to someone?

We can delve into the Scriptures now. The Bible’s position on revenge is too clear: it is the Lord’s. “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong”, Paul tells us in 1 Thess. 5:15. Peter, arguing along similar lines, warns, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult for insult” (1 Peter 3:9). There is, of course, much more leeway in the Old Testament, where, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was permissible (Lev. 24:19-21). But this was most likely as a result of the hardness of the Israelites’ hearts (Matthew 19:8). As theologians explain, God has revealed himself progressively through the ages, the climax of which is in Christ (Heb. 1:1,2). God’s heart and perfect will concerning revenge, therefore, is that no human being takes on him/ herself the power to revenge. Solomon is kind enough to lend his voice as support: “Do not say, ‘I will pay you back for this wrong!’ Wait for the Lord, and he will avenge you” (Proverbs 20:22).

Revenge does not exist in a vacuum; it is necessitated by unforgiveness. Regardless of the form revenge takes (noble or not), it is an announcement that “I have neither forgiven nor forgotten what you did to me. I desire to get even.” 

What is so wrong about revenge? Revenge does not exist in a vacuum; it is necessitated by unforgiveness. Regardless of the form revenge takes (noble or not), it is an announcement that “I have neither forgiven nor forgotten what you did to me. I desire to get even.” God did not say that we should revenge in a nobler manner. He said, instead, not to revenge at all. He also told us to forgive as Christ forgave us—completely, genuinely, and without harbouring any desire to revenge in whatever way (Col. 3:13). And Scripture, not popular opinion, should guide the Christian’s conduct. I do not think I’m exaggerating when I say that the same principle that fuels paying a person back in their own coin is the one that fuels this “success is the best form of revenge” logic.

Jacob’s sons put Hamor, Shechem and the whole city to the sword because Shechem raped their sister Dinah (Gen. 34). What did they really gain from this? It was not as though their family was poor (Gen. 30:43), in which case the plunder would have enriched them. When Absalom killed Amnon (2 Sam. 13:23-28), it did not restore Tamar’s virginity. The whole point of revenge is usually  psychological. It can feel incredibly good for the revenger, many times restoring a broken ego. These same feelings are involved when we seek revenge through the pursuit of success. You realize that you’ve become better, richer, more successful, or in a position of greater power—than someone who hurt you. And that realization brings you joy and satisfaction. 

I want to take the argument a step further. Is it not interesting how sometimes we attempt to recruit God into our own conceived political schemes? You see that I was praying to God to help me succeed in life in order to show this girl a thing or two. Who said God is going to help you prove a point? God is interested in making a name for himself (Nehemiah 9:10), not for you. He is interested in advancing his kingdom and in making Christ preeminent. So if you have a personal score to settle, do not imagine God at your beck and call; he is not a personal genie that you can forcibly recruit. Besides, your enemies are not God’s enemies. You may be a Pharisee, thinking Jesus your enemy but God may be saying of him, “This is my Son, in whom I’m well pleased.” If you’re a Saul and David is your enemy because you think he is a threat to your throne, don’t think that God considers David an enemy too. For God may be saying of David, “This, surely, is a man after my own heart.” 

Many times when we claim that we’re deserving of revenge, we’re simply being petty, foolish, jealous or envious.

This is important to keep in mind because as I see it, many times when we claim that we’re deserving of revenge, we’re simply being petty, foolish, jealous or envious. If you did something silly and your father punished you, he is not your enemy. If you cheated in a relationship and your partner left you, she’s not your enemy. If you thought them your enemy, and were bent on being successful to prove a point, I think the real point you’d succeed in proving would be your folly. So if you consider someone a rival, rather than automatically consider God to be on your side, ask yourself who put you in that competition, first of all; and, second, whether you are on God’s side (not the other way round). Besides, I suspect that many things which hurt us (and for which we may desire revenge)
tend to in the end impact us positively in ways that we do not readily appreciate—and if we did, we’d thank God for such hurts, rather than attempt to get even. Shall we take a lesson from Joseph? His brothers, by hurting him, inadvertently launched him into his destiny (Gen. 50: 20). A pastor was speaking the other time about missing opportunities in life. For empirical grounding, he cited a lady that Billy Graham had proposed love to. She declined. This pastor, speaking in retrospect, made a point about the woman having missed such a precious opportunity to be the wife of one of the most influential Christian leaders of the 20 the century. According to the pastor, he was sure that the woman would regret it for the rest of her life. And although he did not say it explicitly, it seemed as if this pastor was saying something along the lines that Billy’s going on to have such an influential ministry was a sort of success as the best form of revenge (against this lady).

What a simplistic way of seeing, I thought! Several wrong assumptions. First, who said Billy would still have been as effective if he had married that woman? Perhaps, the very effectiveness of his ministry was in part because of his compatibility with his wife. Second, who said the woman regretted it? Perhaps, the lady would still have said no, even if she had known Billy was going to become that influential. She might just not have wanted Billy, might just have been disinterested in ministry work. And it may have been, that instead of regret, she rather felt justified for not choosing Billy. Or that she felt great admiration for Billy, while still glad that she said no to him. There are different possibilities! 

I want to conclude by referring to the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30), albeit in a different way than is usually emphasized. There are some people we can never outdo. If you tried to, you’d be fighting God. And you won’t succeed. The God who gives some five talents gives others two, and yet others, only one. If you’re a one-talent man, and your revenge scheme involves being more successful than a five-talent woman, you will live miserably in utter frustration. For no sooner would you have succeeded at one venture than your competitor would have succeeded at four more. But if you’re a ten-talent woman and you outdo a two-talent man, you also be careful. In reality, you’re really not doing more. You have just been given more.

Wouldn’t life be more fulfilling if we kept the main thing the main thing? And wouldn’t we avoid needless errors if we just kept our focus where God wants us to? Just as there is no best form of sexual immorality, there can be no best form of revenge. If you ask me, it is more liberating to delight in success (from a Christlike perspective) for its own sake, to enjoy growth for its own sake. Peter has told us to keep adding virtue to virtue (2 Peter 1:5-7). The main thing is Christlikeness (1 Pet. 2:21); and the focus ought to be on Christ (Heb. 12:2). Nothing else is worth investing your life into, not least of all revenge, in any of its diverse forms. What does Paul say? It is to freedom that we have been called (Gal 5:13)!