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Are we vindictive?

Allan Wildman

Are we vindictive? The book of Psalms, as well as our personal and community experience, would lead us to conclude that the answer to this question is “Yes!” Even in seemingly trivial circumstances such as getting cut off in traffic, many times we feel the urge to get back at the other person who we feel wronged us.

Wilma Derksen is a mother who lives with the reality that her daughter Candace was murdered. She recalls some of the steps of her inner journey as she learned to live with the emotional fallout from that traumatic event. She felt a tremendous rage toward the unidentified person responsible for the murder, and it was a struggle for her to accept that she had such feelings. She had to confront this rage, which at one point prompted her to declare that justice for her would mean the execution of 10 child murderers and that she would have to pull the trigger herself.

Part of Wilma’s healing journey led her to relate to “lifers” (people serving life sentences in prison) through various programs such as Open Circle, Family Survivors of Homicide and Pegasus Lifers Group. Given the opportunity to speak at an Open Circle New Years’ banquet for inmates of Rockwood Institution a few years ago, she was very open about sharing the story of her rage and healing.

As she was leaving the banquet, an inmate followed her and introduced himself as a lifer. Wilma quickly apologized for being so open about her rage. But the man – a convicted murderer – assured her that there was no need for her to apologize for her rage. He said that he, too, knew about rage. He had also experienced violence and pain and had felt the consuming need for vengeance – only he had not been able to control his rage.

Roger had grown up believing that “If someone slaps me, I slap them back” and that it should be “an eye for an eye”. He had been abused and beaten as a child, and these experiences had fueled his craving for revenge. Later, when Roger caught his wife with someone else, he responded with this philosophy and killed her.

Before this event, Roger had committed other offenses, been sentenced to prison, done his time and felt that he had paid his debt. But this time was different. He realized his pay-back philosophy didn’t work and had led him to what seemed like a point of no return. What he had lived and believed in was exposed as being seductive, self-indulgent and ultimately leading to a dead end. The turn-around came for Roger when he decided to choose forgiveness – asking for it and giving it – and was given the “right to begin again”.

This article is adapted, with permission, from In Touch, the newsletter of Open Circle, a Manitoba-based prison ministry, and is based on presentations made at the 1997 Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba annual meeting. Allan Wildman works with inmates at Rockwood and Stony Mountain institutions in the area of substance abuse.

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Last modified October 20, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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