Today our world is besieged with a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence. Unfortunately, this cycle of "payback time" appears alive and well wherever humans draw breath and are willing to use their last ounce of energy to exercise their own perceived right to exact revenge. Be it in the lanes of Belfast, the barrios of Bogotá, the streets of Jerusalem or the back alleys of Karachi—the threat is ever present.

And yes, sometimes all we have to do is look over the top of what we are reading this very minute and recognize it might be in our very own homes. The normal line of thought behind the plague of revenge goes something like this: "You poked me, so I am going to poke you back twice as hard. And we're going to keep up this routine till one person doesn't return the counterstrike."

In other words, I am going to exact my rightful pound of flesh from your hide, because the rules of survival dictate "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

But let's consider the ultimate ramifications of this age-old adage. Carrying that thought to its logical conclusion would mean that our world would wind up both blind and toothless. But thankfully, occasionally the mold is broken; and when it is, we need to take a good hard look and understand a little more deeply the power of the moment.

More than 140 years ago, one man offered a tremendous vision after an incredibly tense time in the affairs of his country. He willingly offered terms to a vanquished foe that were very different from those any victor had previously offered. Such thoughtful words were offered after four intense years of war between the states of a young American republic.

It was a time of brother against brother, cousin against cousin and neighbor against neighbor. It was a war in which the technology of weaponry had decimated the antiquated methodology of regimental troop movements. So many times, the slaughter was intense and immediate. In one such battle almost the entire male citizenry of one county lay dead within minutes.

Ultimately 600,000 people would die in this conflict. We can only imagine the desire for total revenge. As the war was painfully drawing to a sure conclusion, the big question was: How would the North behave toward the once proud South? What "pound of flesh" would the wartime president, Abraham Lincoln, exact from a now prostrate South?

Just over a month before the war's end, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address to a spiritually and physically exhausted country. On March 4, 1865, the 703 simple words that he would offer would not sound the trumpet of victory over a crushed foe; nor would they outline a series of policies to bolster his own political standing. It simply spoke to the heart of a scattered national family that had problems.

You see, there was something deeply embedded within the national body that had to be dealt with—a cancer of the national soul. Lincoln rightfully understood that we can't really expect to deal with others until we have squarely faced ourselves in the mirror and dealt with ourselves.

"And the war came"

He began by reminding his audience how four years earlier at his first inaugural address "all thoughts were directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came." Lincoln understood that men of ability had finally exhausted their imagination and in that moment of fatigue that besets nation builders, those baser passions rose to the surface.

But in an epic moment of full disclosure of what ailed all America, Lincoln was now willing to confront the ongoing enigma sewn into the fabric of the American experiment of liberty. It had been there from the beginning. It had been encapsulated in the American Constitution when a part of the nation's populace was accorded only three-fifths status in being counted as human beings for state-by-state census counts.

With all their genius expended, the early forefathers had chosen to postpone any thought of how to deal with the issue of slavery. They would mortgage their great-grandchildren's peace for a temporary solution to procure tenuous union among 13 sovereign states.

As Lincoln would say as he moved into his message, "These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war."

He then reminded the nation that war never leaves a nation where it found it. He echoed the sentiments of his own foe, Robert E. Lee, who said, "It is well that war is so horrible lest we should grow fond of it." Lincoln stated, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained...Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding." No one, simply no one, could have imagined the death and destruction that lay ahead. And slavery? To completely repeal slavery throughout the United States had not been the first thought, but simply to control its spread. Now came a new and daring reality—slaves becoming citizens of the United States.

"The judgments of the Lord are true"

He then thoughtfully chided both sides by lamenting, "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other." Further into the speech Lincoln reaches a startling conclusion, "The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."

Lincoln said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds...”

The next lines clearly show us that religion was not marginal to Lincoln's thoughts, but was the core of his understanding of the national dilemma. Please remember, he wrote this speech himself. Presidential speechwriters would not appear on the scene till after World War I. Therefore his next thoughts were not a prepared script, but the inner substance of the man.

In this remarkable message, he did not simply appeal to a heavenly deity for blessings, but explained the divine rationale by stating, "The Almighty has His own purposes." Instead of trumpeting the North's own righteousness, Lincoln applies the broad brush of God's wrath on both sides by humbly admitting that "He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came."

And yet Lincoln recognized that perhaps there were more lessons to learn. No one loves correction, but Lincoln squarely places the American peoples on the altar of God's judgment in proclaiming, "Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

Throwing away the box

To this point, Lincoln is a chronicler of the past and of where others' actions have led or not led. Now comes the moment of breaking with the past and even the plight of the present, and he offers his vision of the future. It is this last paragraph in which he guides a nation toward the challenge of "let us" forgive the unforgivable and offer dignity to those in the throes of defeat. It is in these lines of biblical proportion that we see the courage of one man as he throws down the gauntlet of peace to a crumbled Confederacy.

In this moment, he is not simply thinking outside the box, but he is throwing out the box to make a fresh start.

Lincoln said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

At the time, the speech was not critically acclaimed or widely admired. But Lincoln liked it. He thought it was his best. Those around us do not always immediately recognize our best before God and man. But just 42 days later Lincoln would be dead.

Are you hysterical or historical?

Forgiving others and being willing to work for a common peace are incredibly hard things to do. When nations, peoples, families or individuals allow themselves to become "prisoners of their past," they remain hostage to their emotions in the present, and any meaningful future is thrown out the door.

Such circumstances remind me of the plight of a man who was complaining to his family marriage counselor that his wife was "historical, historical!" The counselor kindly interrupted, "You mean to say hysterical, don't you?" The man came back immediately with, "No, I mean historical—she keeps bringing up the past."

Why is it easier not to forgive than to forgive? Why is it we want to go on poking at people, "eye for an eye," rather than looking them in the eye and seeking solutions?

Tim LaHaye in his book Anger Is a Choice quotes David Augsburger as stating, "The man who forgives pays a tremendous price—the price of the evil he forgives!" (pp. 111-112).

LaHaye then adds, "Forgiveness is very costly. It costs you, not the person being forgiven. Forgiveness means that justice will not always be fulfilled. Forgiveness does not rebuild the house that has been burned down by someone carelessly playing with matches. Forgiveness does not always put a broken marriage back together. Forgiveness does not restore virginity to the rape victim. Forgiveness is letting go. It is the relaxation of your 'death grip' on the pain you feel."

LaHaye seals the thought by sharing Archibald Hart's poignant conclusion, that "forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you back if you hurt me."

Cutting down the oak trees of life

Yes, easier said than done. And yet it has been done and will need to be done again and again! Perhaps even by you. If so, take the power of this story to heart. In his book Lee: The Last Years, Charles Bracelen Flood tells of a time after the Civil War when Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky woman who took him to the remains of a grand old oak tree in front of her home. There she complained bitterly that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Union artillery fire. She waited for Lee to condemn the North or at least sympathize with her loss. Lee paused, and then said, "Cut it down, my dear madam, and forget it."

In today's world many nations, families, individuals, Christians and, yes, perhaps even you, the reader, are nursing a whole forest of oak trees that we keep propped up by our unwillingness to forgive the unforgivable. Oh, how the headlines of our newspapers around the world would change if only we could look beyond the oak trees of life and see a bigger picture. Yes, a better picture! Imagine the impact on prophetic headlines and datelines if only people would take the time to see their own shortcomings and lacks as the man from Illinois did. Perhaps that's why such a man truly does "belong to the ages."

With Lincoln, his time-honored phrase, "with malice toward none, with charity for all," was not from someone else's script, but from his inner character. His was a character borne out in the understanding of a verse like Psalm 86:5 that declares, "For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You."

Someone once asked Lincoln what he would do when the South had been defeated and forcibly returned to the Union. The questioner was naturally expecting a vengeful threat and was dumbfounded by the response. It is, perhaps, that response that best echoes the millennial refrain, "this is the way, walk in it." Lincoln simply replied, "I will treat them as if they never went away."