NO VENGEANCE

 NO VENGEANCE

 

Around the Year with Emmet Fox

 

May 4

 

"Hatred ceases not with hatred,"

said the Light of Asia,

enunciating this great cosmic truth

many centuries earlier,

and the Light of the World

put it in the forefront of his teaching

because it is the cornerstone of man's salvation.

 

This doctrine of "resist not evil"

is the great metaphysical secret.

To the world it sounds like moral suicide,

the feeblest surrender to aggression;

but in the light of the Jesus Christ revelation

it is seen to be superb spiritual strategy.

Antagonize any situation,

and you give it power against yourself;

offer mental nonresistance,

and it crumbles away in front of you.

 

Jesus gives no instructions

 for details of external conduct,

and so, the references here to suing at law,

to coat and cloak, to lending and borrowing,

to turning the other cheek,

are illustrative and symbolical of mental states,

and are not to be taken in the narrow literal sense.

We cannot too often remind ourselves

that if the thought is right, the deed cannot be wrong.

No teacher could ever say that a given act

must necessarily be right at any time,

because the play of circumstances in human life

is too hopelessly complicated for any such prediction.

If, when someone is behaving badly,

you will immediately switch your attention

from the human to the Divine,

and concentrate upon God,

or upon the real spiritual self

of the person in question,

you will find that

 his conduct will immediately change.

This is the true revenge.

 

“Dearly beloved,

avenge not yourselves . . .

for it is written,

Vengeance is mine;

I will repay, with the Lord”

 Romans 12:19