We’ve all heard the term practice what you preach. One of the blessings of being a preacher is having that adage point blank in front of you, regularly.
One of those times for me happened while I was still in Louisville. It was in regards to a bathroom renovation project that I hired a contractor to do.
Let’s start with the litany of transgressions, shall we?
This job was bid to take two weeks, but it had taken 10.
Floor tiles were laid sloppily, had to be pulled up and done again.
Hardwood floors have been scratched from equipment.
Tiny decorative pieces of ancient fireplace marble are missing from being vacuumed up during shoddy end-of-the-day clean up.
Lumber cutting had unnecessarily been done indoors, creating a huge mess.
But what pushed me over the edge was when I discovered a puddle of water on the hardwood floor inmy main floor hallway, caused by a leak from a new, highly-awaited but improperly installed toilet.
This was compounded by a hissing sound, which we discovered was coming from the chandelier hanging over the puddle, where steaming water was boiling in an empty bulb socket.
The line had been crossed with this last blunder… Icalled my contractor and told him we were done, thatthere clearly wasn’t a fit for him doing this job.
Afterward I congratulated myself that I had not beengratuitously confrontational in my delivery, just to the point, with no room for discussion. I was clear, I was done. He came, collected his tools and left.
I felt vindicated.
Then I turned my attention to my message for that Sunday’s worship service, and serendipitously I came upon a study done by psychologist Ian McKee, who had done a series of experiments studying revenge.
For the experiments Dr. McKee set up a group investment game where, if all group participants cooperated, everyone would benefit from the financial investment equally.
However, if anyone in the group refused to invest money, that person would disproportionately benefit at the group’s expense.
A secret experimenter was planted in each group who convinced everyone to invest equally, but when it came time to actually invest, the planted person didn’t, and thus earned more than twice what the other players earned.
Then some of the groups were offered a way to get back at the free rider by spending some of their earnings to financially punish the free rider.
It might not surprise you to learn that everyone given the opportunity to get back at the planted defector took it. Some groups were not given that opportunity.
Afterward all participants took a survey to measure their feelings.
The groups who’d been allowed to punish the free rider had been asked to predict how they’d feel if they hadn’t been allowed to penalize, and the non-punishing groups were asked how they thought they’d feel if they had penalized.
The punishers reported actually feeling worse than the non-punishers, but predicted they would have felt even worse had they not been given the opportunity to admonish the offender.
The non-punishers said they thought they would feel better if they’d had that opportunity for revenge—even though the survey identified them as ending up to, in fact, be the happier group.
In the end everybody, regardless of group, thought revenge would be sweet, but their own reported feelings didn’t align with our “eye for an eye’ Old Testament reading.
The results suggest that, despite what many of usthink about the potential satisfaction of revenge, most of those predictions are wrong.
When we’re on the revenge track we may tell ourselves that justice is being done.
There’s a fallacy to this model…this “Us and Them” mentality.
When vengeance comes into play, a perceived wrong by you has been committed against me. So, the playing field quickly becomes set that you’re the bad guy, and I’m the victimized innocent good guy.
This is the problem with the good/bad approach. It’s not so much that badness exists – the perceived ‘bad’ parts are just facts of life. The problem lies in us perceiving that there is a good/bad line that disconnects us.
Reprisal is disconnection on steroids…at its core it’s the opposite of the shared kinship we regularly talk about on Sunday mornings.
We are inherently connected to one another, there is a holy and delicate bond that exists between every single one of us, often not fully lived into because of division born of hurt and betrayals.
Even when we’re hurt or betrayed, the inherent bond between us still exists.
It just gets passed over for fear, which can take the form of evening the score.
‘Evening the score’ reminds me of a quote I once heard by Dick Armey. He said, “You cannot get ahead while you’re getting even.”
There are lots of ‘getting ahead’ models to embrace. One can get ahead financially, you can get ahead physically by being mindful of your health.
And one can get ahead internally /emotionally /spiritually (which we people of faith do).
We don’t say, “It’s OK if I think and feel the same after a church service. I don’t care if there’s inspiration or transformation. Status quo is what I’m shooting for.”
And yet that’s the outcome of the vengeance plan.
There is no getting ahead, there is no growth.
So, how can we rethink the tendency toward reprisal…
what can we do to mindfully avoid the lure of revengeand the trickery of supposedly getting balm for our wounds, similar to the folly of using food, drugs or alcohol as coping mechanisms to ease our pain?
Dr. Merideth Thompson says the right way lies not the natural presence of emotions that the desire for revenge brings– because we’re all going to have those – but in how we frame or process them.
Anger can either tether you to the past or provide potential positive outcomes from motivation, stirred up by these emotions.
Dr. Thompson co-authored “We All Seek Revenge: The Role of Honesty-Humility in Reactions to Incivility,” and asserts that somebody trying to take revenge through a more future-oriented approach can make them happier and healthier.
She encourages us to think of it this way: Take yourfeelings and examine whether or not their inclinationsunderscore what you value.
And I saw this play out with my mechanic back in Louisville. I was using this young guy, around 30. Sweet guy, but not overly concerned about his appearance. He sported a mullet look. Not Cary Grant, but who cares, I liked him, and he did good work.
It had been a bit of time since I’d seen him and noticed he looked a little different. I off-handedly asked how he was and he said, “Well, I found out my girlfriend has been cheating on me for over year.”
He went on to tell me that he decided then and there to change things up. So he’s been going to the gym and changed his diet, lost weight, cut his hair, and he looked great.
He said, “Yeah, I’ve lost 230 pounds, 30 of mine, and her.”
Needless to say, there’s a jab in there, but what a healthy way to deal with his betrayal! How easy it would’ve been to have allowed his jealousy and pain to turn to vengeance, and in these situations people often get hurt or killed.
And despite how toxic and unhealthy and past-oriented it would’ve been, he could easily have felt justified in doing it, evening the score by finishing what she started.
Instead he used those emotions to open new doors. He cared more about himself externally and internally than getting back at her.
Instead of getting-even, he invested in getting ahead.
I’m sure it wasn’t that easy to just decide to get healthy and take on a new look. He didn’t go into the soul searching that must’ve been a part of his process.
Perhaps he went through some of the steps that the experts say are helpful…
[PAUSE]
So, all of this was swirling around in my mind and heart the day I fired the contractor.
My interactions with him were weighing on me.
What it reasonable and fair to call this the end point? Yes
Had I conducted myself thoughtfully and articulately? Yes
But my thoughts kept going back to the study that showed that the non-revenge-inflictors were actually the happiest ones in the end.
And that word interconnection kept coming back to me.
And I remembered myself being a new painting contractor when I had my painting ministry and poorly doing a job for which I was fired, and how I felt so badly that I hadn’t been given the chance to fix it.
And as I sat there assessing myself, I didn’t feel happy. Justified, maybe, but not happy. Not connected, but decidedly disconnected.
I imagined how I would feel if I called him back, talked through it with him without allowing my anger to color everything.
It was clear that my happiness was in my connection with this person, and that there could be a healthy process of sharing my concerns, listening to him, and figuring out a mutually agreeable resolution.
So I called him and that’s what we did. When I hung up the phone I knew at a soulful level a bit more about the meaning interconnection.
This contractor, his name is Richard, went on to successfully do numerous projects for me. He actually became as much a friend as a contractor.
Occasionally, we still text each other just to say hi. The fact of the matter is, I would’ve struggled to finish the work on my house without him.
He turned out to be a major blessing, but I had to get ahold of my indignation to get to the other side to see it.
It was a process getting there, though. That’s often the way it is when we really mean that we’re going to take up where Jesus left off.
When we talk about living how Jesus lived, this is where the rubber hits the road. The beauty of Jesus is that he gave us a different way of looking at life, and at love.
In this case he took scripture (the Exodus reading) and changed the lens…taking off the lens of rationality and putting on the lens of love.
And he used stories to help us to see more clearly through this new lens.
We all know the stories from the Bible, but we need not look any further than the stories of our own lives. Life gives us these opportunities, and life is what awaits us….truly, fully living, when we do.
So, then, may it be for us all.
Amen.
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