by Rich DuBose
For a pacifist, I can have very vengeful thoughts, especially when I see bullies inflict injustices and hostilities upon innocent people. There are days when I want to settle the scores and make every perpetrator pay for his or her sins. But then I remember that I too am a perpetrator and that my view of what’s causing the world’s problems is very limited.
Imagine if we all went off half-cocked with our partial understandings of other people’s failures and tried to solve it all with what little we know. This is actually what’s happening in the world today, which explains why there’s so much misery.
Hell is a world full of people giving each other hell. No one survives this kind of scenario.
Paul said, “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19, ESV).
God owns vengeance—which is to say we don’t. If we steal it and try to use it against others we will absolutely suffer the fallout. It’s like when robbers steal money from a bank without realizing that hidden in the middle of the money pouch is a “dye-pack” that’s programmed to explode as soon as they leave the bank. When it happens, all the bills in the money pouch are tainted with a bright colored dye that makes them unusable. When we wield vengeance our characters become tainted with acrimony and hate, which make us unfit to occupy the space of eternal safety.
This is why Leviticus 19:18 says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (ESV).
“Do not say, ‘I will repay evil,’ wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you” (Proverbs 20:22, ESV).
“Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17-21, ESV).
Hell is reserved for those who refuse to be reconciled with themselves and the universal order of good. If God were to have his way, no one would be lost or destroyed. But this doesn’t mean God will indefinitely allow evil to continue.
When I hear about the back-stabbing, corruption and greed that goes on today—especially among politicians and the wealthy high-rollers, I long for God to step in and make things right. As I think about a particular billionaire (who will remain anonymous) who’s been married five or six times, and who own a number of companies whose sole purpose it to create division and mean-spirited communication among people, I have to wonder about his intelligence. How can a person in the last years of their life not be thinking about their mortality and of one day having to give an account for how they’ve lived?
How do liars and thieves sleep? What goes through their heads as they drift off into la la land? Does it ever occur to them that people are suffering because of their actions or inactions?
Such heavy questions can be easy to apply to others, but what about our own lives?
Jesus said, “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye’” (Matthew 7:3-7, NLT).
God alone knows what motivates people’s thinking, which is why we are to leave the judging to him.
Let us affirm what we’ve been taught. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18, ESV).
Rich DuBose writes from Northern California | Photo by Andrea Piacquadio of Pexels.com
On the web at: richdubose.com. All Rights Reserved © 2025. Join me on Blue Sky @spiritrenew.bsky.social.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.