by M. A. Hook

Created on: October 13, 2010

According to the ancient teachings, when a person is born into this world the spirit given to that person is struck with forgetting. Anything that was known before being born is erased from the mind, making it necessary to start all over learning all the lessons of life. One of the strongest is the control of emotions, and the temptation to take revenge is one of the strongest emotions of all.

Children are born with an innate knowledge of when they are being taken advantage of, and the flesh-and-blood system responds with a surge of adrenaline that would make a competitive sportsman blush with shame. The perceived emotion is the desire to "get even" or "even evener than even." The obligation of parents and the community is to train the child to become the master of those strong emotions before the emotions become the master of the child. This is not easy, as there are four basic personality types, and each of them gains control through a different mechanism. One of the mechanisms common to all four types is logic delivered through the use of words.

If logic is to be used as the mechanism by which the training is delivered, then the words used need to carry more power than the emotions that are pumping freely from the adrenals. One of the most effective is the concept of ownership. Here is the logic that has that power.

We are all made in the image of God. When someone does something evil to any living thing, it gets immediately transferred through that living thing to the God who gave it life. All life comes from God because God made life and he owns every thing has has life in it. That means that the evil was done against God and not against the living being that we see here on earth. That means that we don't own the hurt. God owns the hurt that the evil caused. Since God owns the hurt, only he can make the decision as to whether to retaliate, when to retaliate, where to retaliate, and in what measure to retaliate. We are told that God says, "I will repay." We are also given knowledge of when he will repay.

There are three choices on the "when." Now, later, and in the final judgment after the person's human body dies.

Let's use a boy as an example to avoid the he/she thing. God is no respecter of persons, gender, or anything else except love and how we treat each other.

If God chooses to repay now, there will be immediate consequences, like a bank robber being caught before he leaves the bank who gets caught and put in prison.

If God chooses to repay later,

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