The Most Satisfying Revenge

I try to limit my social media use.

I’m a dinosaur when it comes to Facebook, Instagram, and all the other sites my peers are into. For the most part, I only use them to promote projects I’m working on or to connect with like-minded people.

But anyway, I scrolled down one of my feeds the other day when I saw a reposted quote from one of those advice accounts. You know, the ones that are 90% trash advice and are supposed to motivate you?

Well the quote went something like this:

“Your success is the best revenge.”

Of course the quote was attached to a picture of some hot shot with a Ferrari. Oh, and how could I forget that his trophy wife was all over him too?

I chuckled.

At least we’ve gotten away from taking revenge directly, but no one’s satisfied with that. We have to make people jealous now. We have to be the envy of everyone who hates us—and maybe even our friends too.

Leave it to our narcissistic culture to turn something like revenge into an even bigger outlet for our selfishness.

But no matter how you decide to express it, the problem with revenge is that it never satisfies.

You can resort to violence. You can try name calling. You can buy shiny things and hope people get jealous. But getting back at others for the wrongs they caused us never has the effect we dreamed it would.

So how do you get the satisfaction of revenge without acting on it yourself? I mean you can’t just ignore your feelings and expect them to go away, right?

Well guess what?

The Bible has the answer to yet another one of your problems:

One of the best verses about dealing with your enemies comes from Christ Himself:

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who spitefully use you. (Luke 6:27-28)

And this is just one of the many verses that expresses the need to love those who stand against you. (Prov. 24:17, Prov. 25:21, Rom. 12:17-18, Eph. 4:32, 1 Pet. 3:9)

It’s funny how the best response to problems is usually the opposite of what our emotions are screaming at us to do. And in this case, it’s showing love to your enemies—even if you’re still pulling their knife out of your back.

It’s easy to show love to the people you like or the ones you agree with. But people with true strength of character love those who clearly don’t feel the same way.

If you can show genuine love to the people who do you wrong, you’ll have a hard time keeping enemies—the confusion you cause will overcome their hate at that point.

It’s an unnatural response to being hurt, and that’s one reason why it’s the best decision to make.

Drew’s Revenge

Now I know this stuff sounds nice and all, but in reality, it’s hard to do.

I wouldn’t encourage you to do something if I couldn’t do it myself. And that’s why I’m writing this today—I have plenty of experience being hated:

Just a few years back while I was in college, I made a huge mistake out of my anger. I guess “mental breakdown” would be the most accurate description of it.

To this day I still can’t believe it happened, but it did. I don’t want to talk about it why it happened here, but to make a long story short, I made an auditorium of over 100 students hate me.

Yeah…it was bad.

I’d say the next few months after that made for the second loneliest period of my life. I had a long running battle with depression before then, and this was nothing compared to that, but it was still rough.

A lot of people misunderstood me because of that mistake, and I got some pretty bad labels attached to me because of it. But what made matters worse was that all the people I thought were so nice before turned ruthless.

I’ve never seen that many piercing gazes in my direction. And I’ve never had that many doors slammed in my face.

Look, I knew I messed up, but I didn’t think I deserved all the hate I got then. Every day was a new fight to get through. And being ostracized like that takes its toll on you—even when you’re used to being alone.

I remember being so empty then and I knew something had to change.

I thought about seeking revenge for a long time. Maybe I could plot some grand scheme where I’d eventually come out on top.

But I didn’t do that. Instead, I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I ran.

I ran to the only One who had the power to change things for me. Because I knew I had no chance of handling that on my own.

That was when I locked myself in my room and prayed for my classmates. And as hard as it was at the time, I prayed that they’d receive forgiveness (after asking for my own of course).

But I didn’t just stop at forgiveness.

I prayed for their success. I prayed that they would get the jobs they interviewed for and that they would live the amazing lives they wanted.

And after I was done, I chose to show kindness to everyone, regardless of who they were or what they thought of me.

The truth was that none of those people really knew me or what I had been through. And if I had seen someone explode like that, I probably would have treated them the same way.

So I let it all go. I understood then that revenge wasn’t for me to take.

And after I formed that attitude, I was free.

But what happened next was even more interesting.

I’m being serious when I say the whole situation turned around through a series of semi-miraculous events.

The enemies I made became my friends. And what began as the lowest point of my college career became one of the most enjoyable times of my life.

Everything changed for me.

But none of that would have happened had I tried to change it myself.