What's In A Sucker Punch?

Anger, especially against human beings:  Anger is such an awful feeling.  It quite literally saps your mind, your physical self and colors everything we do to make even a day filled with the brightest sunshine seem cloudy and dull.  But when you have to be angry at human beings, then you know your day isn’t going to go well – unless you say little or nothing to others and keep all your thoughts about what they say and do to yourself.  In which case, you might be harboring an ulcer in your stomach.  What to do.  Breathe through your diaphragm and take the pressure off your stomach. 

Consider a “sucker punch”:  The thing is when someone hits you in the diaphragm, gut, breadbasket, etc., you suddenly find yourself expelling air very fast and hard through your mouth.  And because someone is looking for trouble, you respond in kind:  your breathing comes from your lungs, your head takes over, and almost without thinking, you return the punch.  The next thing you know the police are there breaking the fight up and the “sucker punch” has turned into a major mess.  For you, possible criminal charges may apply, possible medical consequences since the diaphragm protects vital body organs, and so on.

Consider the word “nice” especially as it relates to human beings:  Human beings often think of someone nice as being “a woos,” a pansy, namby-pamby, or any other words along these lines.  But someone who is nice isn’t necessarily these things.  Sometimes a nice person will see a sucker punch coming and will stand aside and watch the other person go sprawling in the dirt.  And then the nice person will help the person who threw the punch up from the ground, sometimes while others who are watching this whole thing are jeering, laughing, etc.  Understand the nice person:  He did the right thing by not trying to get into a fight, trying to talk with the other person and straighten the problem out with words and ending the problem right then and there.  The nice guy certainly would not like the sucker punch guy to go back to his friends and plan revenge against the nice guy – possibly for making the sucker punch guy look like a loser, etc. in front of others.

Consider:  The Stations of the Cross which begins with Jesus being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate.  They omit His Agony in the Garden, the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, Jesus being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus being taken to the High Priest Annas’ house, then to the High Priest Caiphas’ house, being tortured and beaten by Caiphas’ torturers, taken to Pontius Pilate’s palace, sent to King Herod’s palace, and thence back to Pontius Pilate’s palace where He was scourged, crowned with thorns, rejected by the people in favor of Barabbas and then sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, all the while being physically, verbally and emotionally abused.  And never once did Jesus defend Himself by either physically or verbally hitting someone back.

Why was Jesus scourged beyond the 30 lashes (I believe that is the correct number) which were prescribed by Roman law?  Possibly because He never complained, never shouted or begged for mercy from those who were scourging Him.  The less He complained, the greater the effort of those who were scourging Him to make Him “sing” or to beg them to stop their scourging.

The thing is it’s the “rightness” of Mr. Nice Guy’s actions and Jesus’ actions that drive other people to bigger and better fights.  By not fighting back, by being nice, we can drive others to all the worst things that human beings can do.  This is one thing that has never changed in human beings since Adam and Eve.  Human beings still work the same.

Copyright Bernardette Grant 2014 All Rights Reserved