Vachon Imagined

The justice Jesus talked was not vindictive retribution.

It was transformation.

Pride will often tell us that hardening is good because it gives us power.

Don’t let anyone do that to you again. Get tougher. Make them respect you. Don’t be weak.

And for a while, it feels like strength.

But it doesn’t last.

You’re constantly having to manufacture it, sustain it, pump it up, and validate it.

The tough guy eventually becomes weak, not because he wasn’t strong, but because the strength he built depended on pride and resistance. He has to keep fighting, defending, proving, hardening. Eventually, he becomes exhausted by the very thing he called power.

And underneath vindictive retribution is often the same weakness.

I hurt, so I must hurt you.

I abandoned myself, so I must abandon you.

I mistrust myself, so I mistrust you.

I was stolen from, so I must steal from you.

It feels like justice because someone is finally paying, when that someone is you as you are still allowing what happened to you to determine what comes out of you, which is slavery.

Jesus offered something entirely different.

Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you.

That’s not weakness.

That’s a power that lasts. 

Because when something happens to us, something enters our awareness and we release awareness.

And then comes the question:

What am I going to do with it?

I can send it back exactly as it came.

Or I can transform it.

Anger becomes kindness.

Cruelty becomes compassion.

Hurt becomes understanding.

Hatred becomes love. 

You do this long enough, the person who was a slave to his own life is over.

Life is always moving through us.

We receive something, and then we send something back.

The world may call retribution strength because it looks powerful.

But real strength is having the freedom to meet what life gives you without becoming it.

The world gives you something, and you choose to send something different back.

That is the justice and the everlasting power Jesus talked about.