By: Rosemary Dewar
Many like to believe they are justified in their anger, and dream of being the instrument of justice. People don’t realize the responsibility and weighted grief that comes with wrath. You may have been wronged, but does that give you every agency to execute what you see fit as justice? It absolutely does not. Attempting to do “God’s work” will cost you a measure of innocence you will eventually feel you cannot afford. Human vengeance is a drug, and kicking that addiction will bring you to the brink no differently than kicking any other substance.
Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of a young man that is unlawfully convicted, and is left to die in his ignorance. Instead, God brings him back from the precipice over and over again. His emotional state swings from gratitude to rage several times. Each time, he puts the finger on the scale that enhances his enemies’ frailties. He doesn’t have a care for the bystanders that manage to get caught between his guiles and his execution of cosmic justice. That is, until a young child and a friend’s fiancé are fallen prey to his enemies’ fates. The Count’s numb heart is awakened when having to sacrifice his vengeance in order to deter it from dispatching someone who is purely innocent. The one thing the Count commanded his friend to do was to hope. Upon his farewell, the Count stated, “…Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: wait and hope.”
Glenn Beck’s latest publication, Addicted to Outrage, is a picture of the current of state of the loudest people in our contemporary culture. Each firebrand and their acolytes are at-the-ready to execute judgement on the opposition. Glenn explores and avails his journey by substituting one addiction with another. Glenn sees how we may be contributing to the very anguish we are walking through. There are many important matters we should be discussing in order to keep us together instead of aiming to eliminate the people or person we have been made to believe is the source of all our misfortune. With that type of fury, one act is not enough. The obsession will find something new to annihilate. Either you seek meaning in everything and everyone, or you will “discover” every reason to excuse their value. Eventually, you will end up looking at yourself in all that guilt, and no hope.
Whether the prison be crafted by the mind or an actual enemy, you solely have possession of your freedom. The instant you see yourself equal to God, it will be the instant you believe there is no one great enough to redeem you.
Glenn explains that he did not know that rules could free him until he apprehended his addiction. You also won’t be free until you recognize that there is someone greater ruling over you that has the jurisdiction to pardon you and your frailties.
Like the Count of Monte Cristo, if I could sum up the wisdom of God, it would be to trust and live.
By: Rosemary Dewar
