‘The Best Revenge is to Not Be Like Your Enemy ‘

The following is excerpted from Conor MacCormack’s latest book Take Away the Stone: Resurrecting the God Within

BY CONOR MACCORMICK

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7: 1 – 2

This is one of the most widely quoted of Jesus’s teachings, yet as we know all too well it’s also one of the most difficult to put into practice. Our conscious minds – in an effort to organize the avalanche of sense data inundating us at any given moment – are wired to collect, categorize, and assess things quickly. This is amplified significantly in the high paced technology driven world of today, where it’s easy to get pulled in by all manner of scandalous headlines and social media stories from which we form rash opinions on the state of the world, our families, friends, etc.

But the reports of our senses, when weighed in the balances of reality, are often found wanting. If, for example, we were to take at face value the findings the senses furnish us with in regards to the physical world we would still believe that the Earth is flat and stationary, with the Sun revolving around it. Another instance is a stick or branch half submerged in water – at first sight it appears to be broken, but closer inspection reveals that it is intact, the play of the water affecting our eyes. As Obi – Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, “Your eyes can deceive you: don’t trust them.”

When filtered through the lens of our engrained biases and experiences our senses can lead us to paint incredibly distorted portraits of what we witness and the people we interact with. We may be driving through a shopping center parking lot to see a non-placard bearing car in a handicapped spot. Immediately we’ll begin to curse out the rotten scumbag who’d do such a selfish thing; perhaps we’ll even stop to take a photo to post to Facebook and “shame” the offender, only to see the wheel chair symbol etched on the license plate designating it as the vehicle of a handicapped driver or passenger.

Or we could be in line at the coffee shop placing our order, to have the barista reply in a surly tone. Naturally we take this as a personal affront, prompting us to either be snarky in return or make internal judgment calls on their character, painting them with a broad brush based on that one interaction. Such presumptions are incredibly subjective, based on misinterpreting the evidence of our senses and the behavior of others. In the case of the barista we could be totally off in our judgment of them. Perhaps they simply said a certain word or phrase that, in relation to an earlier negative experience of ours, triggered the feeling that we’re being belittled by them when we really weren’t.

If in fact they were rude, we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that they’re simply a mean person. They could be in a bad mood for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe their car broke down on the way to work; maybe they had an argument with their partner, a family member, or coworker or any number of stress inducing possibilities. Just as we wouldn’t want someone to make that kind of snap judgment of us without knowing anything about our situation, we should extend the same courtesy to others. It is in essence practicing the Golden Rule or Law of Reciprocity, which has been reiterated in some form in all major religious and ethical systems.

The question may arise, “But what if the person is a certified a-hole? Shouldn’t we give them a dose of their own medicine?” While it is tempting to want to dish back their nastiness to them it would serve no positive purpose to do so. Any satisfaction we glean from our retort will be short lived and we’ll have only succeeded in sinking down to a level of petty immaturity. And though we can’t control the other’s actions, we can remain in control of ours by not reacting to their attitude in a negative way.

The pain inflicted by the words of another is commensurate with the power we grant them to affect us. There is more truth than we realize in the old rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Rather than continue the cycle of rudeness the best course of action is to, as the saying goes, kill them with kindness by brushing off their barbs and giving love for hate. As Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations, “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”

Our inclination to take a negative view of things and people’s actions can also be symptomatic of psychological projection, wherein we attribute to others our own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. This tendency to condemn others for perceived evil is personified throughout the Gospels in the form of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the Mosaic Law, the Jewish priestly caste whom Jesus constantly rebuked for their smug self – righteousness and hypocrisy:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matthew 23:27 – 28)

“Woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” (Luke 11:46)

In prematurely judging others – whether from faulty sense evidence, emotional triggers, or assigning our own faults to them – do we not load them down with an unfair burden, under which we keep them pinned with continued criticism? By viewing another in such a confining state of consciousness we are robbing them of the ability to unfold their divine potential as a fellow child of the All. And with the knowledge that each of us are inlets and outlets to the One Universal Mind, comes the realization that what we think and feel about others will come back to us through the medium of the subconscious mind, as a boomerang does to the hand of the one who throws it. Hence we are told “Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against your neighbor” (Zechariah 8:17).

This entails, as Jesus put it in striking metaphor, taking the plank out of our own eyes to salute the divinity in the other. Seeing them as brethren to be respected rather than opposition to be criticized, we are no longer “judging by mere appearances” according to our senses and prejudices, but rather stirring up the gift of the Father within them. Doing this in the spirit of love, we fulfill each of the two great commandments:

“The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:29 – 31)

Conor MacCormack is a writer, editor and leading millennial voice on New Thought issues. He is preparing to purse Religious Science ministerial studies.