Tying in with the previous post, isn’t it interesting how much misery arises when we instinctually entertain vengeance? A wrong done to us might turn into anger, and then to grief; but if we don’t then “get over it,” so to speak, that is, to forgive, it becomes a grudge. It’s perfectly natural not to forgive. You have people that will tell you that a civilized individual knows well enough to forgive and that it’s only an impulse of the abased to hold a grudge; but in reality what civilization will tell you to do is merely to sublimate your pain, not to genuinely move past it in forgiveness, which is a uniquely Christian concept based on the forgiveness we have in and through Christ Himself.
Whence this kind of thing springs, too, is interesting; rage and retaliation are driven at base by honor, a sense of one’s own reputation and value in and of oneself over and above another person, or above their (negative) actions done to you. What makes Christ so radical is that He tells us to submit to His power and (only thereby) lay down that sense of selfish pride, the honor in oneself that makes us hold grudges and seek vengeance and nurse ill will and make the ones who did us wrong come groveling back to kiss our feet before they’re in our good graces once again. This is a huge part of the reason that to the Gentiles (Greeks especially), Jesus and His whole message were “foolishness,” that is to say, a laughingstock—because the thymos by which the Greeks governed themselves and their sense of self-seeking pride was the very foundation of personal dignity and warlike sensibilities. The Greeks were appalled to hear anyone known as “wise” to be telling them that they had to lay down their pride and vengeance voluntarily—since the only ones who did that were the ones who were too weak to fight in the first place.
