P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

A PATH AWAY FROM ANGER

It's one of the most wrenching stories I've ever heard, and even though it's a 22-year-old saga, it's still not over. In the marvelous bestseller, They're All Dead, Aren't They?, a young novice writer and mother named Joy Swift describes the nightmarish evening when two assailants broke into her little lakeside house and shot and murdered her four kids. She and George had been playing bingo at a nearby American Legion hall when someone summoned them outside. They drove home to find the hillside bathed in the flashing red strobe lights of police cars and the yellow tape marking out the quadruple homicide.

What just destroyed this simple country couple was the subsequent discovery that the main killer had been the neighbor boy, a 14-year-old kid named Billy Dyer. For some crazy reason, he'd just gone nuts, employing a slow-witted 22-year-old friend named Ray to help him as he slipped over to the Swift home and mowed down the two boys, and two infant baby daughters, Stacy and Tonya.

Well, friend, this is something I can't relate to, and I hope you can't either. But here's the point. This "crime of the century," as they called it there in Missouri, happened back in 1977. But the ongoing rage this young mom felt toward these two guilty murderers was a huge demon inside of her. She wrote this bestseller, They're All Dead, Aren't They?, for Christian audiences, and then rewrote the story in a second book entitled A Cry For Justice. And in these pages, she writes openly about her hatred, her thirst for revenge.

"As much as I wanted justice," she writes, "I really didn't want the killer and his accomplice to get the death penalty. My reasoning behind this confused even me, since at the police station I would have gladly killed them, given a chance. Now I wasn't so sure . . .

This Joy Swift went through a kind of religious experience during this time, so concepts of God and forgiveness began to get thrown at her, but she couldn't cope with it very well.

"Someday they would stand before God," she continues, "but for now I wanted them to suffer and feel pain. I wanted them to experience a living hell on earth. I wanted them to know fear in prison, fear without escape, like my kids had felt. I wanted no mercy, for they had shown none. I lay in bed at night wondering what they were doing in their jail cells. I dreamed up ways to get in to see them. ‘Give me five minutes alone,' I would say. ‘I just want to talk to them.'

And this fantasy, this almost bloodthirsting dream, was one she played with over and over. Daytime and nighttime. She kept this picture of getting even in her mind 24 hours a day.

"When the guard was out of sight," she writes, continuing the fantasy, "I'd pull a long heavy chain out from under my shirt. I'd whip them mercilessly as they cowered against the bunks. I'd make them beg the way Tonya begged, but I wouldn't stop. I envisioned gangs of prisoners surrounding them and no one hearing their cries. I wanted them thrown into a dark, windowless cell. I never wanted them to see the sun shine again. But I didn't want them dead. Not yet. . . ."

And you know, this pattern was in her life for years. In fact, it was more than in her life; it WAS her life. It was her identifying trait. Joy Swift was the avenging angel — and there wasn't much else she WAS. She and her husband George were hell-bent on getting even with Billy Dyer and Ray Richardson.

We did a program last December, God's Christmas Card to Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, those two young Arkansas boys who killed their classmates. And I can't have any clue whatsoever about what the parents of Natalie Brooks, Britthney Varner, Stephanie Johnson, and Paige Ann Herring are still going through today. What kind of anger do they feel? How bitter is the taste for revenge? The relatives of Shannon Wright, that heroic 32-year-old teacher who jumped into the path of a speeding .30-06 bullet and gave her life for a student . . . what must they still feel every time they visit the grave site of their fallen loved one there in Jonesboro?

Well, friend, this is the topic of the week. HATRED. But really, let me bring it closer to home by adding a second emotion to our title: WHAT TO DO ABOUT LOVING HATRED? Isn't it true that often we ENJOY hating others? We revel in and wallow in our feelings of anger. We almost TREAT OURSELVES to our wounded sentiments, our hurt.

I think Joy Swift would be the first one to confess that she quickly got to the point where she enjoyed playing out that vision in her mind: that chain and the endless whipping of a screaming Billy Dyer. Over and over — the screams. The getting even. That bitter image became a sweet dream for her.

And in a thousand ways — hopefully smaller ones, but really, all hatred is poison, isn't it? — you and I have some form of this to resolve. We love to hate.

Have you ever been in a dynamic where you really did not like a certain person? For whatever reason? And maybe you had good reason not to. Your cause was just. And perhaps you soon found another person who felt the same way. NOW you were REALLY in business! The two of you could swap "stupidity" stories, exchange anecdotes, play endless rounds of "Can You Top This?" Were you enjoying your resentment, the ongoing recycle program of trading your hatred back and forth? Yes, in a wrong kind of way, you did enjoy it. But as a philosopher once observed, a good friendship cannot be based just on having a common enemy! "You hate Mr. X, and I hate Mr. X, and therein lies our friendship." That's really not going to last very long.

An old book of quotations brought this one to the surface, by the ancient writer, Juvenal:

"Revenge is sweeter than life itself."

Isn't that true? I've certainly had periods in my life when I believed it was. It's so SWEET to play with revenge, and plan it, and plot it, and hopefully, experience it. Ah, but let me read you the entire quote:

"Revenge is sweeter than life itself. SO THINK FOOLS."

And you know, that's really the truth in the end. Anger is such a delicious thing, but it's not a lasting sweetness. It turns on its eater, and destroys the person who hates. There's so much in the Bible on this topic, and we'll spread some of it out and share it throughout the series, but in both Psalms and Proverbs, the Lord gives us plain truth. In a free moment or two, glance through Proverbs chapters 24 and 25. For now, let's read together Psalm 37:8:

"Refrain from anger and turn from wrath."

That's good advice, isn't it? You know, there's nothing sinful about some kinds of anger. The Bible itself teaches us: "In your anger, do not sin." That's Ephesians 4:26. And God's Word wouldn't instruct us to be SLOW to anger unless there were times when it would be appropriate to GET to the point of anger. Any Christian who DIDN'T get angry about what happened in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, would have a problem with their spiritual thermometer. But when we have anger, it needs to be the right kind of anger, and we need to be slow getting there. Also friend, once we get there, we need to also have a spiritual way to get AWAY from anger. That's what Joy Swift needed. That Gideon Bible she was reading said: "Turn from wrath." But how? And then: "Do not fret — it leads only to evil." Now, when your four kids have all been slaughtered, "fret" isn't exactly the right word to describe your righteous anger. But this young mother needed a way out of her rage, her helpless hunger for retribution.
There's an interesting verse in Psalms 78, and this is speaking about God, not us. But I like the picture it offers:
"He prepared a path," it says, "for His anger."

And you know, that's maybe what we all need. We do hate this person! And it's enjoyable; in an admittedly sinful kind of way, we savor our hatred. But deep inside, we know we're slowly destroying ourselves. We need a path for that anger, a spiritual road away from our hatred.

Joy Swift came to know what that path was. In the Christian faith, it was called forgiveness. That was her only way out.

"I read it," she confesses. "I knew God meant what He said. But I wasn't ready to accept it. I wanted to shove forgiveness under a rock and walk away."

And this was a long, arduous process. Which is all right. I'm glad God is patient with me as I learn patience with others. But day by day — scratch that, year by year — Joy Swift grew in her faith. Later she writes this agonizing, but heroic admission:

"I had to come to grips with the fact that Billy and Ray were ALSO God's children, and He loved them as much as He loved MY children. They had done a horrible wrong against us, but if they were truly sorry and learned from their mistakes, God could and would forgive them. That was God. And it was reasonable and fair."

Then this brave young mother, now beginning a new family — and this is 10 years later — went to the prison where inmate Bill Dyer was locked up. In a motel room the night before, she read in her Bible Matthew 5:44: "Love your enemies." Pray for them. Forgive them. And she wrote in the margin: "Billy, I forgive you." The next day, face to face, she told that young killer the same thing. And coming out . . . she was free.