Beyond Justice
A question on Ask Metafilter (beware of some “language,” if that sort of thing offends you) today brings up school “bullies” and how, if at all, to approach them later on in life.
Having been one of the easy targets for antagonists back in the day, I can totally relate. It brings me back to the situation I wrote about a few years back:
One of the gifts I got after graduating high school was a trip back to our hometown in upstate New York to visit my old friends. While hanging out with them one night at a Friendly’s, I met up with one of the neighborhood girls who used to antagonize me. She immediately knew who I was, and said “Wow…I used to be so mean to you…I was such a jerk!” and apologized for the way she used to act.
I don’t know that I’d have sought her out if I hadn’t run into her that night, though. To my mind, the whole thread on AskMe just points out the difference between our natural human desire for “revenge” and the healing forgiveness that Christ calls us to. It’s hard, seemingly impossible at times, to move beyond justice to mercy (to quote a Susan Ashton lyric), but everything in the gospels seems to indicate this is exactly what we are to do.
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