Chapter 13 - The High Cost Of Getting Even

One night, years ago, as I was travelling through Yellowstone Park, I sat with other
tourists on bleachers facing a dense growth of pine and spruce. Presently the animal
which we had been waiting to see, the terror of the forests, the grizzly bear, strode out
into the glare of the lights and began devouring the garbage that had been dumped
there from the kitchen of one of the park hotels. A forest ranger, Major Martindale, sat
on a horse and talked to the excited tourists about bears. He told us that the grizzly
bear can whip any other animal in the Western world, with the possible exception of the
buffalo and the Kadiak bear; yet I noticed that night that there was one animal, and
only one, that the grizzly permitted to come out of the forest and eat with him under
the glare of the lights: a skunk. The grizzly knew that he could liquidate a skunk with
one swipe of his mighty paw. Why didn't he do it? Because he had found from experience
that it didn't pay.
I found that out, too. As a farm boy, I trapped four-legged skunks along the hedgerows
in Missouri; and, as a man, I encountered a few two-legged skunks on the sidewalks of
New York. I have found from sad experience that it doesn't pay to stir up either variety.
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep,
our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would
dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us and getting
even with us! Our hate is not hurting them, but our hate is turning our own days and
nights into a hellish turmoil.
Who do you suppose said this: "If selfish people try to take advantage of you, cross them
off your list, but don't try to get even. When you try to get even, you hurt yourself more
than you hurt the other fellow"? ... Those words sound as if they might have been
uttered by some starry-eyed idealist. But they weren't. Those words appeared in a
bulletin issued by the Police Department of Milwaukee.
How will trying to get even hurt you? In many ways. According to Life magazine, it may
even wreck your health. "The chief personality characteristic of persons with
hypertension [high blood pressure] is resentment," said Life. "When resentment is
chronic, chronic hypertension and heart trouble follow."
So you see that when Jesus said: "Love your enemies", He was not only preaching sound
ethics. He was also preaching twentieth-century medicine. When He said: "Forgive
seventy time seven", Jesus was telling you and me how to keep from having high blood
pressure, heart trouble, stomach ulcers, and many other ailments.
A friend of mine recently had a serious heart attack. Her physician put her to bed and
ordered her to refuse to get angry about anything, no matter what happened. Physicians
know that if you have a weak heart, a fit of anger can kill you. Did I say can kill you? A
fit of anger did kill a restaurant owner in Spokane, Washington, a few years ago. I have
in front of me now a letter from Jerry Swartout, chief of the Police Department,
Spokane, Washington, saying: "A few years ago, William Falkaber, a man of sixty-eight
who owned a caf6 here in Spokane, killed himself by flying into a rage because his cook
insisted on drinking coffee out of his saucer. The cafe owner was so indignant that he
grabbed a revolver and started to chase the cook and fell dead from heart failure-with
his hand still gripping the gun. The coroner's report declared that anger had caused the
heart failure."
When Jesus said: "Love your enemies", He was also telling us how to improve our looks. I
know women-and so do you-whose faces have been wrinkled and hardened by hate and
disfigured by resentment. All the beauty treatments in Christendom won't improve their
looks half so much as would a heart full of forgiveness, tenderness, and love.
Hatred destroys our ability to enjoy even our food. The Bible puts it this way "Better is a
dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."
Wouldn't our enemies rub their hands with glee if they knew that our hate for them was
exhausting us, making us tired and nervous, ruining our looks, giving us heart trouble,
and probably shortening our lives?
Even if we can't love our enemies, let's at least love ourselves. Let's love ourselves so
much that we won't permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health and our
looks. As Shakespeare put it:
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself.
When Jesus said that we should forgive our enemies "seventy times seven", He was also
preaching sound business. For example, I have before me as I write a letter I received
from George Rona, Fradegata'n 24, Uppsala, Sweden. For years, George Rona was an
attorney in Vienna; but during the Second World War, he fled to Sweden. He had no
money, needed work badly. Since he could speak and write several languages, he hoped
to get a position as correspondent for some firm engaged in importing or exporting.
Most of the firms replied that they had no need of such services because of the war, but
they would keep his name on file ... and so on. One man, however, wrote George Rona
a letter saying: "What you imagine about my business is not true. You are both wrong
and foolish. I do not need any correspondent. Even if I did need one, I wouldn't hire you
because you can't even write good Swedish. Your letter is full of mistakes."
When George Rona read that letter, he was as mad as Donald Duck. What did this Swede
mean by telling him he couldn't write the language! Why, the letter that this Swede
himself had written was full of mistakes! So George Rona wrote a letter that was
calculated to burn this man up. Then he paused. He said to himself: "Wait a minute,
now. How do I know this man isn't right? I have studied Swedish, but it's not my native
language, so maybe I do make mistakes I don't know anything about. If I do, then I
certainly have to study harder if I ever hope to get a job. This man has possibly done me
a favour, even though he didn't mean to. The mere fact that he expressed himself in
disagreeable terms doesn't alter my debt to him. Therefore, I am going to write him and
thank him for what he has done."
So George Rona tore up the scorching letter he had already written, and wrote another
that said: "It was kind of you to go to the trouble of writing to me, especially when you
do not need a correspondent. I am sorry I was mistaken about your firm. The reason
that I wrote you was that I made inquiry and your name was given me as a leader in your
field. I did not know I had made grammatical errors in my letter. I am sorry and
ashamed of myself. I will now apply myself more diligently to the study of the Swedish
language and try to correct my mistakes. I want to thank you for helping me get started
on the road to self-improvement."
Within a few days, George Rona got a letter from this man, asking Rona to come to see
him. Rona went-and got a job. George Rona discovered for himself that "a soft answer
turneth away wrath".
We may not be saintly enough to love our enemies, but, for the sake of our own health
and happiness, let's at least forgive them and forget them. That is the smart thing to
do. "To be wronged or robbed," said Confucius, "is nothing unless you continue to
remember it." I once asked General Eisenhower's son, John, if his father ever nourished
resentments. "No," he replied, "Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he
doesn't like."
There is an old saying that a man is a fool who can't be angry, but a man is wise who
won't be angry.
That was the policy of William J. Gaynor, former Mayor of New York. Bitterly denounced
by the yellow press, he was shot by a maniac and almost killed. As he lay in the
hospital, fighting for his life, he said: "Every night, I forgive everything and everybody."
Is that too idealistic? Too much sweetness and light? If so, let's turn for counsel to the
great German philosopher, Schopenhauer, author of Studies in Pessimism.
He regarded life as a futile and painful adventure. Gloom dripped from him as he
walked; yet out of the depths of his despair, Schopenhauer cried: "If possible, no
animosity should be felt for anyone."
I once asked Bernard Baruch-the man who was the trusted adviser to six Presidents:
Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman-whether he was ever
disturbed by the attacks of his enemies. "No man can humiliate me or disturb me," he
replied. "I won't let him."
No one can humiliate or disturb you and me, either-unless we let him.
But words can never hurt me.
"Throughout the ages mankind has burned its candles before those Christlike individuals
who bore no malice against their enemies. I have often stood in the Jasper National
Park, in Canada, and gazed upon one of the most beautiful mountains in the Western
world-a mountain named in honour of Edith Cavell, the British nurse who went to her
death like a saint before a German firing squad on October 12, 1915. Her crime? She had
hidden and fed and nursed wounded French and English soldiers in her Belgian home,
and had helped them escape into Holland. As the English chaplain entered her cell in
the military prison in Brussels that October morning, to prepare her for death, Edith
Cavell uttered two sentences that have been preserved in bronze and granite: "I realise
that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone." Four
years later, her body was removed to England and memorial services were held in
Westminster Abbey. Today, a granite statue stands opposite the National Portrait
Gallery in London-a statue of one of England's immortals. "I realise that patriotism is not
enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone."
One sure way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause
infinitely bigger than ourselves. Then the insults and the enmities we encounter won't
matter because we will be oblivious of everything but our cause. As an example, let's
take an intensely dramatic event that was about to take place in the pine woods of
Mississippi back in 1918. A lynching! Laurence Jones, a coloured teacher and preacher,
was about to be lynched. A few years ago, I visited the school that Laurence Jones
founded-the Piney Woods Country School-and I spoke before the student body. That
school is nationally known today, but the incident I am going to relate occurred long
before that. It occurred back in the highly emotional days of the First World War. A
rumour had spread through central Mississippi that the Germans were arousing the
Negroes and inciting them to rebellion. Laurence Jones, the man who was about to be
lynched, was, as I have already said, a Negro himself and was accused of helping to
arouse his race to insurrection. A group of white men-pausing outside the church-had
heard Laurence Jones shouting to his congregation: "Life is a battle in which every Negro
must gird on his armour and fight to survive and succeed."
"Fight!" "Armour!" Enough! Galloping off into the night, these excited young men
recruited a mob, returned to the church, put a rope round the preacher, dragged him
for a mile up the road, stood him on a heap of faggots, lighted matches, and were ready
to hang him and burn him at the same time, when someone shouted: "Let's make the
blankety-blank-blank talk before he burns. Speech! Speech!" Laurence Jones, standing
on the faggots, spoke with a rope around his neck, spoke for his life and his cause. He
had been graduated from the University of Iowa in 1907. His sterling character, his
scholarship and his musical ability had made him popular with both the students and the
faculty. Upon graduation, he had turned down the offer of a hotel man to set him up in
business, and had turned down the offer of a wealthy man to finance his musical
education. Why? Because he was on fire with a vision. Reading the story of Booker T.
Washington's life, he had been inspired to devote his own life to educating the povertystricken, illiterate members of his race. So he went to the most backward belt he could
find in the South-a spot twenty-five miles south of Jackson, Mississippi. Pawning his
watch for $1.65, he started his school in the open woods with a stump for a desk.
Laurence Jones told these angry men who were waiting to lynch him of the struggle he
had had to educate these unschooled boys and girls and to train them to be good
farmers, mechanics, cooks, housekeepers. He told of the white men who had helped
him in his struggle to establish Piney Woods Country School-white men who had given
him land, lumber, and pigs, cows and money, to help him carry on his educational work.
When Laurence Jones was asked afterward if he didn't hate the men who had dragged
him up the road to hang him and burn him, he replied that he was too busy with his
cause to hate-too absorbed in something bigger than himself. "I have no time to
quarrel," he said, "no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to
hate him."
As Laurence Jones talked with sincere and moving eloquence as he pleaded, not for
himself but his cause, the mob began to soften. Finally, an old Confederate veteran in
the crowd said: "I believe this boy is telling the truth. I know the white men whose
names he has mentioned. He is doing a fine work. We have made a mistake. We ought
to help him instead of hang him." The Confederate veteran passed his hat through the
crowd and raised a gift of fifty-two dollars and forty cents from the very men who had
gathered there to hang the founder of Piney Woods Country School-the man who said: "I
have no time to quarrel, no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low
enough to hate him."
Epictetus pointed out nineteen centuries ago that we reap what we sow and that
somehow fate almost always makes us pay for our malefactions. "In the long run," said
Epictetus, "every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who
remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame
no one, offend no one, hate no one."
Probably no other man in American history was ever more denounced and hated and
double-crossed than Lincoln. Yet Lincoln, according to Herndon's classic biography,
"never judged men by his like or dislike for them. If any given act was to be performed,
he could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as anyone. If a man had
maligned him or been guilty of personal ill-treatment, and was the fittest man for the
place, Lincoln would give him that place, just as soon as he would give it to a friend. ...
I do not think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy or because he disliked
him."
Lincoln was denounced and insulted by some of the very men he had appointed to
positions of high power-men like McClellan, Seward, Stanton, and Chase. Yet Lincoln
believed, according to Herndon, his law partner, that "No man was to be eulogised for
what he did; or censured for what he did or did not do," because "all of us are the
children of conditions, of circumstances, of environment, of education, of acquired
habits and of heredity moulding men as they are and will for ever be."
Perhaps Lincoln was right. If you and I had inherited the same physical, mental, and
emotional characteristics that our enemies have inherited, and if life had done to us
what it has done to them, we would act exactly as they do. We couldn't possibly do
anything else. As Clarence Darrow used to say: "To know all is to understand all, and this
leaves no room for judgment and condemnation." So instead of hating our enemies, let's
pity them and thank God that life has not made us what they are. Instead of heaping
condemnation and revenge upon our enemies, let's give them our understanding, our
sympathy, our help, our forgiveness, and our prayers."
I was brought up in a family which read the Scriptures or repeated a verse from the
Bible each night and then knelt down and said "family prayers". I can still hear my
father, in a lonely Missouri farmhouse, repeating those words of Jesus- words that will
continue to be repeated as long as man cherishes his ideals: "Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you."
My father tried to live those words of Jesus; and they gave him an inner peace that the

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness, remember that
Rule 2 is:
Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far
more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a
minute thinking about people we don't like.