Guilt, Vengeance and Justice

My last post spoke about how I was feeling guilty over my feelings of happiness over my grandmother’s condition, and how I was raised to feel differently. I feel the need to expand on that. As I’ve said before I was raised in a very religious home. I was taught to follow the words of Romans 12:17-21:

¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it^[i] to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – The Holy Bible, English Standard Version

While I have problems with a lot of my religious upbringing this is on principle that I do believe in – THAT GOD (or Karma or Fate, depending on what you believe in) WILL MEASURE OUT VENGEANCE AS HE SEES FIT AND THAT HIS WILL BE WORSE THAN ANYTHING I COULD COME UP WITH. So far that has held true – after all my grandfather spent month gasping for breath as he slowly drowned on the fluid building up around his lungs and heart; it was a slow and painful death. Now my grandmother has broken her hip which has made it so that she has to do something she doesn’t want to do – let someone else be in charge. She has months of rehab ahead of her in which she will have people telling what to do. She will be in a nursing home instead of her home. People will be controlling her sleeping, eating, medications, dressing, grooming, pretty much everything but her breathing; it will drive her crazy.

I looked up guilt, vengeance and justice in the dictionary:

GUILT – a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.

VENGEANCE – infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person; the desire for revenge.

JUSTICE – the administering of deserved punishment.

This is what I’ve learned: I can feel that justice has been administered when bad things happen to the bad people in my life without feeling a need for guilt. After all I am not the one that is inflicting the vengeance, I am just the one that gets the feelings of justification that comes with the punishment that they receive.