• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on Youth. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Rebecca DeRoos
Science of Mind Practitioner
I like what Jesse Jennings has to say: “We say that all people are expressions of God, not that all are necessarily God-like. There is a difference: awareness.”
When raising our children if we teach and express love, they learn and choose love of both self and others. Without self-acceptance and love of self one chooses other ways to be loved — vengeance is one of them. Without self-love there becomes a need to feel powerful and accepted, fear becomes anger and vengeance takes over. One feels he has to prove himself, no matter what it takes. This same person doesn’t know he has a choice to be any other way.
Rather than judging this same person who lives by vengeance, why not simply love him by drawing boundaries and giving him your example of love. It may take several lessons, but eventually it does sink in.
God is not a vengeful God. One of the best guides in the Bible is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” God loves us so much that we’re given choice to do what we deem as best — right or not.
It has been said that whatever you give out, you get back tenfold. To be truly loved, why not give love.
The Baha’is of Kaua‘i
Two wrongs do not make a right, and vengeance is the response to a wrong with another wrong. God teaches us to love but vengeance is hate. As individuals we must show mercy and forgiveness just as God shows us mercy, love and forgiveness.
It is the function of the government to enforce the laws and to practice justice in order to restrain the law breakers and protect the law abiding. However, the greatest protection against those who would harm others is not the fear of punishment but the enlightened conscience of the individual.
The Baha’i writings state: “There is thus a great difference between the prevention of crime through measures that are violent and retaliatory, and so training the people, and enlightening them, and spiritualizing them, that without any fear of punishment or vengeance to come, they will shun all criminal acts. They will, indeed, look upon the very commission of a crime as a great disgrace and in itself the harshest of punishments.”
Kahu Dr. James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
When someone we love has been hurt, especially when they’ve been hurt intentionally by someone, it can arouse intense feelings of outrage that can lead to our wanting to get back at that person.
Vengeance is an all too familiar feeling. There is something in human nature that leads us to feel that our love and loyalty to those we love means we need to “get back” at those who have done wrong to someone close to us. There is for some, supported by the values of their culture, a moral duty to even the scales of injustice by retaliating by exerting that imperative for revenge.
Vengeance can have a long life span. Feelings of hatred and latent hostilities can erupt into violent confrontations among people because of remembered injustices that had happened decades ago involving family members now deceased.
In response to the powerful urgings of vengeance as a means to right wrongs, the Christian faith speaks profound truths that hold the promise to end what can be an endless dance of emotional turmoil. Jesus speaks frequently of forgiveness which is the culminating stage of healing when a person has been hurt deeply.
To forgive, fully requires a lot of psychological work, maturity of character and spiritual strength.
There is a way of looking at the death of Jesus on the cross that speaks to this: Jesus was like the sacrificial lamb without blemish, who had done no wrong, who represented all that was good and right, living in the world as perfectly as one could imagine anyone living.
In his final words on the executioner’s cross with softness of compassion in his eyes were, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”
He pleaded to God for mercy not vengeance.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on
trees?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com
• Deadline each week is
Tuesday, by 5 p.m.