On Trading Our Future for Vengeance
“The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.” Mark 6:27
In one of the more gruesome episodes in the life and times of Jesus, John the Baptist is unjustly executed. Beheaded to be exact. The details of his summary execution must have enraged and discouraged not just his disciples but anyone not in league with the Roman empire and its cronies.
You might be familiar with the story, the details are just as salacious today as they would have been then. So entertained is Herod by the dancing of his step daughter, that he offers her this incredible oath, “Ask me for anything you want and I’ll give it to you… up to half my kingdom.”
Conferring with her mother in private, she wonders, “What shall I ask for?” This is where the story turns dark. And dark in a way that feels too familiar today.
Having been publicly exposed by the preaching of John the Baptist, it is no secret that her mother (called Herodias) wishes him ill and so she seizes the moment. Having been offered so great a treasure, the mother of this poor girl responds with hatred, calculation and vitriol.
“The head of John the Baptist.”
And so it is that one innocent, righteous, one of a kind life comes to an end. Jesus himself would eulogize his cousin by saying, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist…” Even Herod is distressed by the request. No one, it seems, is happy about the outcome of this story. Except for Herodias. And one has to wonder, was this trade worth it, even to her.
Buried behind all of these sordid details there is a young woman, possibly a child, who is complicit in this frivolous crime and possibly a victim herself. It is the daughter I keep thinking about. Well, the daughter and the extraordinary selfishness of a mother who not only implicates her in something so diabolical, but also simultaneously steals from her the greatest gift she will likely ever be offered.
Think about the story before she consults her mother. An artist, obviously gifted, has just dazzled her audience. Won for herself a wealthy benefactor. She finds herself having been offered this extraordinary, possibly one time offer, of “anything you want.” She has just been offered wealth, land, title, access, up to half of this Roman client king’s kingdom.
Imagine the scope of that. Imagine what that could have meant for her, for her children, for her place in the world. For that matter, imagine what she could have done with such an offer if she had consulted someone good and selfless, like John. The poor could have been relieved, housing built, jobs created, education offered. It boggles the mind, the gift she squanders. Or more to the point the gift that her mother urges her to squander. In her myopic bitterness, Herodias asks her daughter to trade her future to satiate her mother’s bitterness. Her leadership deprives John of his life, but it also deprives her daughter of a once in a lifetime treasure.
Because you can not have both vengeance and joy.
In a way, we are faced with the same scenario almost every day. In a time marked and marred by vitriol and bitter debate, we are too often offered the same choice. Almost daily I witness otherwise sensible people demanding the heads of their adversaries. And it is not just our own enemies we are supposed to despise, but the enemies of our friends. We are inundated with pressure to denounce, reject and otherwise repudiate in the name of friendship. I can only imagine the pressure this young girl would have felt, coupled with such great disappointment, when her mother asks for her to spend the favor she has earned on payback for a slight she did not receive. But such is the power of her mother over her, and she complies.
And so it is that there is a great responsibility for those of us who wield that kind of influence. If we carry these kinds of grudges, they will not just seep out into our speech and conduct, they will not just poison our own hearts and minds, but they will also infect those who look to us for advice and direction. Of course, we all probably need to dial back the anger and outrage, but even if we don’t, must we draw others into it?
This kind of pressure is an insidious sort of evil, that one step removed from the actual crime. Herod could have said no. Her daughter could have said no. And should have, but the sin of influence here seems to me even more problematic, maybe because it is insulated from blame.
Pulling other people into our ideological battles is a dangerous game. Not just for us but for them. We ought to really think twice about recruiting other people into such things since our potential error (which surely has to be considered a possibility) is multiplied by the amount of people we bring into it. Asking for heads to be delivered on platters is never going to produce joy, even when we are right. But on the outside chance you are wrong (or more likely you are wrong in some way), the trade becomes especially tragic.
I know we have serious ideological and even moral differences with each other. I am not minimizing the magnitude of the debates we need to have. And I am not saying the people whose heads you want to roll are as upright and innocent as John. I am just saying that there is a cost to vengeance. When we seek it, and when we urge our friends to seek it in our name, we are deprived, they are deprived of something precious.
There is no joy for us or them in vengeance by proxy.
But there often is, in humility and self restraint.
