Revenge?

June 20th, 2026| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

National Public Radio (NPR) revently conducted an interview with attorney, James Kimmel, Jr., lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and author of The Science of Revenge.

Maybe a car cuts you off in traffic. Hey, let’s do the same thing to him at the next light. Apparently, we are rewarded by our brains for such revenge!

Kimmel:

Neuroscience has shown that revenge activates the same area of the brain that activates for substance use disorders, for, you know, drug addiction. But it took 20 years to get from that first study to today, I think, for us to be able to conclude now that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs, and that’s exactly what the brain scans show.”

So he became an attorney!

Yeah. I kind of went into the professional revenge business, where the lawyers or the people that have the rare license in society to prescribe, manufacture and distribute revenge in society—like, I couldn’t get away from it. It always called me back—those great, soaring highs that I was getting from getting justice in the form of revenge.”

And not just rewarded by our brains, we may be hardwired for revenge:

Kimmel:

It’s a human issue, a deeply human issue that’s hardwired. But what has happened now, and what happens all too frequently, is that that natural desire for revenge that we all have becomes a compulsive desire for people. And it can be activated not just for attacks but even for or perceived attacks, real or imagined, that target our egos, our identities, our self-image.

The NPR interviewer asked Kimmel:

Do you think that there’s hope for this? Because as you pointed out, there are deep cultural warrants for revenge seeking. It’s part of our literature. It’s part of our culture. It’s part of our sacred texts for some of us.”

We’ll I don’t know about other “sacred texts,” but the Bible is clear that revenge is not our prerogative. The psalms, though they utter imprecations, are careful to leave it to God to act upon (or not), in his sovereignty.

God of vengeance, Yahweh—God of vengeance, shine forth.
Lift yourself up, judge of the earth, return recompense upon the proud.
Psalm 94:1–2

Behold, God is a helper to me; the Lord is the very sustainer of my soul.
May evil be returned to my spying foes; in Your faithfulness annihilate them.
Psalm 54:4–5

Yahweh …, the God who executes vengeance for me, and subjugates peoples under me—
the One who saves me from my enemies.
Psalm 18:46–47

And, of course, the notion of getting evildoers to repent and turn to God is deeply embedded therein:

Consume [them] in wrath, consume [them] so they are no more;
and that they may know that God rules in Jacob, to the ends of the earth.
Psalm 59:13

Quite a remarkable juxtaposition, that!

And …

May they be ashamed and terrified until always, and may they be humiliated and destroyed,
that they may know that You alone—Your name [is] Yahweh—[are] the Most High over all the earth.
Psalm 83:17–18

Kimmel agrees:

In all of those sacred texts, we also have a deep philosophical and spiritual warrant for forgiveness. Philosophy preaches forgiveness, and now neuroscience shows that forgiveness has direct, pain-relieving brain biological benefits. It’s all in our best interest. If we want healing from trauma and pain and the wrongs of the past, there it is. It’s available for you right now.”

Indeed!

SOURCE (of ideas, numbers, words, images …): National Public Radio