Grievances, grievances, grievances, all over the place! We are a people put out with this person, that group, that agency, this government entity, those people…. People are angry with everybody, and are lashing out! Our feelings seem to have peaked and are ready to blow at the LEAST provocation. Watch out, you may be the one who gets the fallout next!
Today I am choosing not to exercise my grievances. We all experience injustices. Life, it seems is not fair; we rarely get what we deserve. Nobody deserves cancer. Nobody deserves depression. Nobody deserves discrimination. Nobody deserves poverty. Nobody deserves to lose a child. No child deserves to lose a parent.
Apparently, justice is not about merit or we would all have what we deserve. Justice seems to be, rather, about authority, with our God ultimately at the helm, and elected officials under Him in its distribution among us mortals. Our role is to trust, hope, and exercise faith in the “system,” both divine and human.
What is justice? It appears to be in the eye of the beholder, just as is beauty. I despise that feeling of being ripped off, don’t you? It makes you want to fight back. Ever heard of retribution, retaliation, revenge, blame, and reparation? Do these things really make you feel any better, heal you, or resolve injustice?
It seems like many of the television dramas I watch, which include a smattering of European and Australian television, depict corrupt justice officials. If “justice is blind” – these corrupt justice ministers depict “the blind leading the blind” – two different metaphors entirely. In fact, a justice minister (emerging to be corrupt, by the way), in the Acorn TV Swedish series, The Truth Will Out, said, “Indignation and sentiment are given priority over objectivity and actual proof.” Seems a true statement, if only justice were blind.
What is life if not drama, if the old adage is true, “art imitates life?” In another show, I don’t remember which one, a woman accusingly said to someone who had ripped her off, “you’re very economical with the truth.” I think I cheered out loud, not just in my head. This is one of those sayings I collect, it so resonated with my own sense of “economical or miserly justice.”
Personally, I air my indignation with my mouth, often using a certain favorite four-letter word, either in my home with my husband-confessor, as sounding board, or in the woods between me and my God. It is always a private exercise; not a public one. This is neither the right way or wrong way to air one’s grievances. It works for me because the therapeutic airing is always followed by sincere repentance in the age-old tradition of Confession. In this way I get to spew my injured feelings and receive absolution, and all is forgiven and forgotten, until next time. None of my dirty laundry stays that way for eternity.
I wonder if this is the airing-confession-process that God meant when He said through the biblical Word, “Vengeance (Justice?) is mine says the Lord. I will repay” (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:17-19)? After I have aired my grievance privately and repented for the “bad” feelings, it is blessedly out of my hands and my soul. I’ve let it go, and placed it firmly into the capable hands of God.