Revenge

Revenge is a dish best served cold. After being wrongfully accused and imprisoned as a thriving, honest young man, Edmond Dantes slowly evolves and transforms into his titular ego---and he's a man with a plan for action against those who took so much away from him.

The key word to the plot of Monte Cristo: revenge. The Count is driven to enact and deliver vengeance to those who wronged him so terribly, and as a reader I empathize sincerely. There is something inherently satisfactory about seeing the Count execute well-formulated plans to bring those who wronged him so terribly to justice. And that is, I think, what the Count views his revenge as---an enaction of justice, to give those who chose to cause chaos in an innocent's life a taste of their own bitter medicine. After all, "But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (Exodus 21:23-25)." And as citizens of a good justice system and of an inherent sense of right and wrong, we nod our heads vigorously in agreement with Dantes' plans and actions to make those who caused harm answer for what they'd done.

(Plus, we also just like the action and seeing the enemy crushed.)

But then that brings up a rather large question: who are we to execute justice on behalf of divine morality? After all, if the world was really fair and God actually gave every man and woman what he/she deserved, we would literally all go to hell. And if every man really sought to redeem the "eye for an eye" voucher for himself, the world would be in chaos.

If you think about it, we have been given so much grace. Grace is us getting out of bed this morning when we deserve death. Grace is us having families and knowing love when we deserve death. Grace is us being redeemed eternally when we deserve death. Grace has been poured into the very air of our existence and, especially as Christians, woven into the hidden corners of our souls. And I think that fact alone should cause us to sincerely evaluate our approach to vengeance.

If I were ever wrongfully imprisoned and told that I could escape and choose between two lives once I got out; 1) a life spent in careful planning and enacting of satisfying vengeance on those who had wronged me, or 2) a life spent finding another to fall in love with and start a family with and pursue art and music and warm summers with; I think I would chose the second. Because I think that revenge, while instantaneously gratifying, eventually leaves you empty and unfulfilled; whereas investing in finding and treasuring things that make life worth living and enjoying will give you the peace to move forward with your life.

I am a huge fan of ABC's Revenge, a show based on The Count of Monte Cristo that tells that story of a young woman under an alias seeking to avenge her father's wrongful framing by the wealthy in the Hamptons. And while I will absolutely not deny that it is so cool to watch her plans unfold and the people who hurt her father get their due one by one, the most powerful moments on the show are the ones where I see her glimpsing what she could have had if she gave up her revenge (in her case, a childhood love) and remembering what she lost (moments of unmarred joy with her father). My heart always aches the most at those moments, and I think that those who set out on the path of epic revenge like her's and the Count's are some of the loneliest people to walk the earth.

In this past Sunday's episode, one character asked another (in reference to her recent achievement of revenge), "Was it worth it?"

For me, I know that a lifetime of it---and honestly, even a moment of failing to extend the incredible grace I've been given---will never be in the end.