The Metaphysics of Revenge: Bad Karma, Payback, and Justice Served
A Year of Bloodshed Ends with the Death of a Dictator
Tonight, as I write this, Saddam Hussein was just executed. The former Iraqi dictator was hanged...but you already know this, because we're in an electronic information age. AOL currently features an AP wire service article which says, in part, "The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982."
The same report carries a prayer about Sadam offered by an Iraqi leader, Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq:
"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam."
AP further reports: "Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution 'God's gift to Iraqis.' "
All this celebratory response to the end of a life strangely reminds me of an early childhood memory from March 1953.
Josef Stalin (left, above; Saddam, on right) was dying. The doctors gave him a few hours or days to live. I was five years old, a kindergartner, but I remember my Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother and grandfather talking gravely about the approaching death of "Stallion", as they called him. (I'm not remembering this wrong; they really did call the Russian dictator that.) I asked who was this Stallion guy, and they said he was "our enemy." So, I said that I hoped he would die soon. Made perfect sense to me--your enemy was expendable. But my gracious grandmom--who lived through the Great Depression and two World Wars, and more recently the anti-communist Korean War and Berlin Airlift--corrected me and said that we should not pray for anyone's death, even an enemy as rotten and nasty as Stallion.
And Josef Stalin was nasty, really nasty. Don't let the grandfatherly smile deceive you; Saddam was an amateur cutthroat compared to him. Stalin is said to have boasted to Churchill at Yalta that he had to kill about 10 million people to get Russia under proper control. Naturally, Stalin was Saddam's hero...
And yet, despite their worthiness to receive the hate-prayers of millions, I must agree with the teachings of my German Reformed Church upbringing, personified by my grandmom, and not fall prey to a consciousness of revenge. Furthermore, as a New Thought Christian, I need to remind myself that even Stalin and Saddam--even these two worthless, no-good &^$#@#*-ers--had the Divine Spirit within them.
I also need to be conscious that, for a lot of people, this is extremely difficult. How hard it would be to let go of revenge-thoughts if someone I loved were a victim of Stalin or Saddam. And yet, releasing the need for reprisal does not mean forgetting the offense or pardoning the offender. Justice is better served coolly, without the heat of passion. Saddam received his due for crimes committed, and even those who oppose the death penalty can admit that he deserved some kind of maximum punishment.
Karma is over-rated as a balance mechanism by some. I'm not certain there is such a thing as "bad karma," because it supposes some kind of actual power abides in negatives. If evil is the lack of good, the most we can say about "bad karma" is that it provides another opportunity to learn a missed lesson. And although, metaphysically speaking, the decision is way above my pay grade, I suspect Saddam has some serious remedial work to do.
Stalin, even more.
But I stand with Origen on this issue. That second century Alexandrian Christian teacher said God is so gracious that everyone will be "saved" in the end, even the Devil. (Mentally delete "Devil" and insert you-know-who.) Saved...the Greek word also means healed. Made whole. Transformed by the renewing of your mind.
So, may I be so bold as to suggest that we conspire in a world-wide effort to pray for all the Saddams and Stalins of humanity...to see their rapacious anger and venomous greed replaced by faith, hope and love as they release their Christ-nature (divine nature/Allah-within, any name will do).
And may I also suggest that we hold in our loving thoughts the people of that war-beaten land, Iraq, the Bible land of Mesopotamia, the fountainhead of civilization which produced Sumer and Babylon, where writing first began, and from which the myths of Creation and Flood, Abraham and the patriarchs, flowed into human consciousness. Let the ancient cry of "Shalom!" and "Salaam!" bring a renewed dedication to the cause of peace. And let the good future awaiting humanity be the image which draws us forward as we release all thoughts of revenge and live instead by the binding power of justice and steadfast love.
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