Revenge

Longstanding workplace issues such as mistreatment, the normalization of toxic behavior, and a lack of accountability for workplace culture have fueled a growing trend known as revenge quitting.

This phenomenon, on the rise since the 2000s, sees employees leaving their jobs not just for better opportunities, but as a form of protest and self-preservation against unfair treatment.

When employees resign as a final act of protest against toxic workplace conditions, the impact on organizations can be significant. One of the most obvious consequences is financial loss. The abrupt departure of employees also sends a powerful message to remaining staff, potentially leading to decreased morale, trust, and engagement.

High-profile cases of revenge quitting can also damage an organization’s reputation, affecting customer relationships and investor confidence.

Finally, revenge quitting can have lasting consequences on workplace culture. If the toxic behavior that caused the resignation remains unaddressed, remaining employees may become disengaged, leading to a decline in work quality.

Research has found that when employees feel a genuine sense of belonging, they are more engaged and loyal, they produce more innovative solutions, and they are more reliable and productive.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Employees – Respect; Testimony - It is certainly permissible for a Christian to quit an incompatible job and look for other work. But let us be sure to leave an employer with a good testimony after giving proper notification of quitting (Rom. 12:18; Eph. 6:5-8; 1 Tim. 6:1-2); 2) Church ministry - Does any of this sound familiar in a church setting when people quit attending? Here are several biblical principles that might apply as antidotes: Respect and Integrity in Leadership - (Matt. 23:11; 1 Tim. 3:1-13); Accountability (Matt. 18:15-17; Acts 15:1-29); Promoting a Culture of Belonging, Harmony, and Unity (Psa. 133:1; Rom. 12:16; Eph. 4:3).

A Maryland high school athletic director faces criminal charges for allegedly using artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, misleading people into believing Eiswert made racist and antisemitic comments. Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said, "We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic. It's been determined the recording was generated through the use of artificial intelligence technology.”

After an investigation by the Baltimore County Police Department, Dazhon Darien was arrested on charges of stalking, theft, disruption of school operations, and retaliation against a witness.

While celebrities have been on guard against the use of AI for unauthorized use of likeness, this particular target is notable for his ordinariness. Hany Farid is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in digital forensics and helped analyze the recording. “What's so particularly poignant here is that this is a Baltimore school principal. This is not Taylor Swift. It's not Elon Musk. It's just some guy trying to get through his day.”

According to police, Darien's alleged scheme began as retaliation against Eiswert over “work performance challenges.” Investigators reported that Eiswert began investigating for the potential mishandling of nearly $2,000 in school funds, and had reprimanded Darien for firing a coach without approval. Darien’s contract was up for renewal next semester, but Eiswert implied that the renewal might not happen.

In January 2024, detectives discovered the AI-generated voice recording, which had spread on social media. The recording caused significant disruptions, leading to Eiswert's temporary removal from the school and triggering hate-filled messages and numerous calls to the school.

Darien was eventually arrested at Baltimore/Washington International Airport while attempting to board a flight to Houston. He was stopped for packing a gun in his bags, and officers discovered a warrant for his arrest.

Still, the result continued to leave Professor Farid unsettled. “What is going to be the consequence of this?” Farid emphasized the need for regulatory action. “I don't understand at what point we're going to wake up as a country and say, like, ‘Why are we allowing this? Where are our regulators?’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a good example that deception is on the rise (“evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 2 Tim. 3:13). We should be discerning about the information we choose to believe and pass on to others (whether secular or religious).

For Uwe Holmer, a German pastor, the question wasn’t simple. But it was clear.

The one-time East German dictator Erich Honecker was asking for his help. Honecker had long been an enemy of the church, who had also personally harried and harassed Holmer’s own family for years.

But now the Communist leader had been pushed from power, driven from his home, turned out of a hospital onto the street—and he was asking the Lutheran church to take him in. At one point, Holmer found himself praying for Erich Honecker. He knew how much power the Communist leader had, how he was praised everywhere he went, and how bad that must be for his soul.

Holmer had to decide what he believed. He knew what the answer was.

“Jesus says to love your enemies,” he explained to his neighbors at the time. “When we pray, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us—“we must take these commands seriously.”

The evangelical minister accepted the deposed dictator into his home in January 1990 and cared for him and his wife Margot for two and a half months. The action shocked Germans, East and West. The 40-year division of the country had just collapsed, and as the Cold War came to a surprising end, the German people didn’t know how they should treat those on the other side.

The until-then unknown pastor offered one bold answer: forgiveness and hospitality. Bitterness, Holmer said, is “not a good starting point for a new beginning among our people.”

Protestors arrived to yell at the minister and demand punishment for Honecker. “No grace for Honecker!” one sign said. Holmer reminded his neighbors of a statue of Jesus in town with Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary … and I will give you rest.” He reminded them of the Lord’s Prayer, asking God to forgive them as they forgave others.

In 2019, David and Ina Steiner were running a newsletter called CommerceBytes. The newsletter reported on a lawsuit by online retailer eBay alleging that its rival Amazon had poached many of its third-party sellers. The Steiners probably knew the story would anger officials at one or both of the tech companies, but had no idea how far they might go to retaliate. As it turns out, they went too far. Way too far.

The intimidating harassment included bizarre and unexpected deliveries of items to the Steiners’ home, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said, "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.”

James Baugh was eBay’s senior director of safety and security at the time. Prosecutors called him the ringleader of the harassment, citing an email where he called Ina Steiner “a biased troll who needs to be burned down.”

The company announced in January it will pay a fine of $3 million to resolve criminal charges levied against several of its employees in connection with a campaign of harassment against the Steiners.

The CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannone, called the employee behavior “wrong and reprehensible.” He went on to say, “since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company, and eBay has strengthened its policies and training. EBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Uncontrolled anger and a thirst for revenge can lead to many costly mistakes, both in the business world and in a person’s private life.

Hannah Payne was sentenced to life in prison in December of 2023 for the 2019 shooting death of Kenneth Herring. Payne was officially convicted of felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment.

During the original incident, Payne chased down Herring after witnessing a hit-and-run involving him and another driver on Riverdale Road.

"I just seen her outside hitting on the window. And that’s what made me just grab my phone," recalled Cameron Williams, a truck driver who recorded footage of the interaction. This evidence eventually aided the prosecution in Payne’s conviction. Williams said that he saw Payne "yelling, hitting on the window, hitting on the door.”

According to authorities, Payne initially called 911 after witnessing the traffic incident, but ignored the advice of the dispatcher who told her not to follow Herring’s car. After pursuing Herring, she got into a confrontation with him, and eventually shot him, fatally wounding him in the stomach. Because of the footage, prosecutors were able to isolate images of Payne holding her gun, standing next to Herring’s truck.

Payne later told police that Herring had shot himself with her gun; the jury, however, did not agree with her version of events. It took them only two hours of deliberation before they rendered a guilty verdict. During the sentencing, Payne fought back tears as Judge Jewell Scott handed down her life sentence with a possibility of parole.

“Mr. Herring was a human worthy of saving,” the prosecutor said, when petitioning the court for the maximum allowable sentence. “He had a family to go home to.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Incidents of road rage are becoming all too common as people struggle with mental health issues, the deterioration of society, and taking justice and retribution into their own hands in this age of lawlessness.

Tim Keller, told the following story about a man named Hasheem Garrett, who learned the art of forgiveness. Hashim was a 15-year-old, living with his mother and hanging out on the streets of Brooklyn with a gang, when he was shot six times and was left paralyzed from the waist down.

For most of the next year he lay in a New York City hospital, fantasizing about revenge. He later wrote: “Revenge consumes me. All I could think about was, just wait, till I get better; just wait till I see this kid.”

But when he was lying on the sidewalk immediately after his shooting, he had instinctively called out to God for help, and, to his surprise, he had felt this strange tranquility. Now during his rehabilitation, a new thought, struck him, namely, that if he took revenge on this kid, why should God not pay him back for all his sins? He concluded, “I shot a kid for no reason, except that a friend told me to do it, and I wanted to prove how tough I was. Six months later, I am shot by somebody because his friend told him to do it.”

That thought was electrifying … He could not feel superior to the perpetrator. They were both fellow sinners who deserved a punishment—and needed forgiveness.

Hasheem said, “In the end I decided to forgive. I felt God had saved my life for a reason, and then I had better fulfill that purpose … And I knew I could never go back out there and harm someone. I was done with that mindset and the life that goes with it … I came to see that I had to let go and stop hating.”

Marcus Doe used to dream of revenge against his father’s killer. Then he came to faith in Christ. He writes:

We had heard the distant gunshots for a few weeks. But that morning they were close. By mid-morning we were all lying face down in the house, listening as bullets whizzed through the air. In the lull between bursts of gunfire, we could hear voices shouting instructions. If they found out my name, they would kill me.

I was born in Liberia, West Africa, where my father served in the Special Security Service of President Samuel Doe (no relation), who had come to power through a violent military coup. The “freedom fighters” had come to remove him, and killing anyone who worked in Doe’s government.

At that time, Marcus was only 11-years-old. He had already lost his mother to illness and now his father’s life was in danger. The rebels were ruthless, murdering innocent people on the barest of suspicions. So, his father sent him to live with his brother, Roosevelt, and his wife.

Later that year, Marcus and his brother left on a ship for neighboring Ghana. He felt that life was just returning to normal when he received word that his father had been killed. He was now an orphan.

My life’s goal was to find the soldier or soldiers who made me an orphan and make them pay. Then my brother and his wife came to America as refugees, and in 1993 we arrived. In quiet times, I daydreamed of revenge. I cried myself to sleep most nights.

After Marcus graduated from high school, Roosevelt had a sudden heart attack at age 38. Marcus said, “In that darkness, I turned to God. I had one question: ‘Why?’ I listed all the things that I blamed him for: Ma, Pa, the war, separation from family, their suffering — and now my beloved brother. I blamed God. Why?”

Guilt overwhelmed me. I had chosen to nurse my desire for vengeance. I realized that I could relinquish them once and for all. I begged God to forgive me. I would let go of revenge and rage. I asked God, from the sincerest and deepest part of my heart, to save my brother.

Four days later, he got the news that Roosevelt would recover. That answered prayer was the first step in his journey to faith. He says, “I began truly walking the road of forgiveness. I decided that I wanted to find my father’s killer. I practiced saying, ‘I forgive you.’”

In 2010, almost 20 years after I had left, I made my way back to Liberia. But I did not meet my father’s killer. He had died in the fighting. Even so, I forgave him. Today, I hope to share this hard-won peace and hope with fellow Liberians, so many of whom suffered greatly during our country’s brutal civil wars. But more important, I’ll strive to bring gospel healing. Because wherever Jesus’ words of forgiveness are spoken, the future is bright with hope.

Wendy Wein visited the website RentAHitman.com to attempt to arrange the murder of her ex-husband. But she wasn’t corresponding with “Guido Fanelli,” the sites ostensible owner, but a man named Bob Innes, a California man who works in internet security.

Innes initially built the site for his internet security business back in 2005, but over the years, he’s received several inquiries from people who take its name literally and think he’s offering murder-for-hire. To engage, site visitors are asked to fill out a service request form with a name, email address, and phone number. Each time it happens, Innes turns over the contact information to local law enforcement.

Thus, when Wein was contacted for a sit-down at a local café, it was not with a shadowy assassin, but rather, an undercover police detective. Wein repeatedly told the detective she wanted her ex-husband murdered, and paid $200 as a cash down payment on a $5,000 fee. As a result, Wein was arrested several days later, and charged with using a computer to commit a crime, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and solicitation of murder, which has the potential for a life sentence.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Evil deeds committed in darkness will eventually be brought to light, and evildoers will face judgment; 2) We may not be guilty of attempted murder, but many of us have harbored anger towards another. The Lord said that this is also a sin (Matt. 5:22).

Stephen Olford tells the story of Peter Miller, a Baptist pastor during the American Revolution. Miller, lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and one of his dearest friends was General George Washington. In the town of Ephrata there also lived a spiteful troublemaker named Michael Wittman who did all he could to oppose and humiliate Miller.

One day, Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to death. When he heard the news, Miller set out to Philadelphia to plead for the life of his enemy. After walking seventy miles—on foot—Miller petitioned his friend, General Washington, to spare Wittman’s life.

“No, Peter,” General Washington said. “I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”

“My friend?” exclaimed the old preacher. “He’s not my friend. In fact, he is the bitterest enemy I have.”

“What?” cried Washington. “You’ve walked seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in different light. I’ll grant your pardon.” And he did.

That day, Miller and Wittman walked back home to Ephrata together. When they arrived home, they were no longer enemies. They were friends.

Hell is not a popular topic today, except for all the wrong reasons.

The theme song for the film Cruella tells us right up front that Ms. de Vil was "born to be bad." Estella Miller is a creative child with a talent for fashion but has a cruel streak, leading her mother Catherine to nickname her "Cruella." After a tragic series of circumstances Estella finds herself an orphan on the streets of London. She tries to be good, but when she befriends fashion legend Baroness von Hellman, she embraces her wicked side to become the raucous and revenge-bent Cruella.

The chorus to the theme song reads:

Call me crazy, call me insane

But you're stuck in the past

And I'm ahead of the game

A life lived in penance, it just seems a waste

And the devil has much better taste

And I tried to be sweet, I tried to be kind

But I feel much better now that I'm out of my mind

Well, there's always a line at the gates of Hell

Possible Preaching Angle:

The truth is, almost everything about these lyrics is wrong. Penance is not a waste, when won through Christ. The devil does not have better taste. But the one area where the lyrics are spot on, there is a long line at the gates of hell.

One morning Mauricio Estrella walked into the office, sat down at his desk, and was greeted with the message: “Your password has expired. Click ‘Change password’ to change your password.”

You know how, when you are emotionally raw, small things can be so frustrating? This, for Estrella, was one of those times. He was running late that morning, had forgotten to eat breakfast, had a meeting to attend, and then there were those nagging frustrations with his ex. Estrella had just gone through an emotionally brutal divorce that had left him in a deep depression.

At his workplace, the server is configured to ask thousands of employees around the planet to change their password every 30 days. As the empty field with the pulsating cursor awaited his input, Estrella thought to himself, “I’m gonna use a password to change my life.” His password became: “Forgive@h3r.”

Each time he came back from a break or lunch, he typed “Forgive@h3r.” For one month, the password became a mantra. And that mantra changed his life. Estrella shared: “That constant reminder that I should forgive her led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.”

Revenge really is a dish best served cold--as people who feel wronged by someone else can take up to a year to exact retribution, according to new research. Instant retaliation is uncommon, say Dutch psychologists, who found that only about one person in ten strikes back immediately after being offended.

Study co-author Maartje Elshout said, “Our results show that revenge takes place after some time. Real-life revenge is not so much focused on deterrence, but on restoring self-esteem or a sense of power. The act of revenge does not need to be instantaneous nor proportional.”

In the study, Dr. Elshout and her team quizzed nearly 2,000 people aged 16 to 89 about their experience of revenge. Results show that 14 percent took revenge immediately, within a minute. About 36 per cent took up to a week, with 23 percent striking one to four weeks later. Some 21 percent hit back between one month and a year later, and around five percent took more than a year to get their own back. Dr. Elshout said, “Our findings suggest that revenge is typically delayed.”

Revenge acts admitted by participants in the study include infidelity, damaging a car, disclosing secrets, making false accusations, and trying to get someone fired. Other ways of taking revenge included humiliating someone, gossiping, lying, and breaking a promise.

It was late at night and a group of Jewish teenagers were on a walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Massachusetts. Boston College Police Officer Carl Mascioli was on patrol on May 17, that night. "As I approached them, two of them ran up to my car," said the patrolman. They said, "There was a body in the water."

Mascioli ran down the embankment and found a man partially submerged and not moving. He said, “While I was pulling him out of the water, I observed that he had a swastika on his hand ... It turned out the man the Jewish boys helped save had a tattoo of the Nazi symbol. I … let the gentlemen know sometimes some deeds have a funny way of turning around. Their good deed had a little bit of a twist to it.”

The students, who study at a nearby Yeshiva high school in Brighton, were not permitted to speak with reporters about the incident. But they had a message for the officer to share with the man they helped rescue. Mascioli recalled, “They wanted just to let him know that it was four young Jewish boys that helped save his life.” He said the students had no regrets about helping a man with an anti-Semitic tattoo. “A good deed is a good deed and that's part of life. We should be helping everybody out.”

It's unknown how the man ended up in the water. But police say he didn't have much time left, and if it hadn't been for the teenagers, the patrolman likely wouldn't have seen him. The man is expected to recover.

While seeking to better understand the nature of aggression, David Chester of Virginia Commonwealth University, along with Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky, started studying revenge. They discovered that a person who is insulted or socially rejected feels an emotional pain. The area in the brain associated with pain was most active in participants who went on to react with an aggressive response after feeling rejected. Chester said, “It’s tapping into an ancient … tendency to respond to threats and harm with aggressive retaliation.”

In a follow-up study he was surprised to find that emotional pain was intricately yoked with pleasure. That is, while rejection initially feels painful, it can quickly be masked by pleasure when presented with the opportunity to get revenge. It even activates the brain's known reward circuit, the nucleus accumbens. People who are provoked behave aggressively precisely because it can be a rewarding experience. Revenge really can be sweet.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In contrast to the desire of our old nature, God wants believers to forgive those who harm them, love their enemies, and pray for those who persecute them so that we show the world what God is like.

One-third of Americans say they lie awake at least a few nights a week. You can try meditation or medication, but according to a study published in the Journal of Psychology and Health, there’s another practice you could consider instead: forgiveness.

Researchers asked 1,423 American adults to rate themselves on how likely they were to forgive themselves for the things they did wrong and forgive others for hurting them. They also answered questions about how they had slept in the past 30 days.

The results suggest people who were more forgiving were more likely to sleep better and for longer, and, in turn, have better physical health. Forgiveness may help individuals leave the day’s regrets and offenses in the past and promote sound sleep. Otherwise, as many troubled sleepers have experienced, we might have too much on our minds to get any rest.

People who don’t forgive, researchers explain, tend to linger on unpleasant thoughts and feelings, such as anger, blame, and regret. This can involve painful rumination—repetitive thoughts about distress. That resentment or bitterness could be detracting from sleep quality and well-being, the study suggests.

Possible Preaching Angles: This study offers a new perspective on forgiveness as a key factor in achieving healthy sleep. So while it isn’t guaranteed to resolve your sleeping issues, forgiveness could be something to try out. Letting go of lingering difficult thoughts and feelings may help you not only avoid that stare-down with your clock tonight, but also feel better tomorrow.

A New York Times obituary for a woman named Victoria Ruvolo provided a moving story about the power of forgiveness.

Ms. Ruvolo’s widely publicized kindness toward her attacker provided emotional counterpoint to a senseless act that began in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2004. She was returning home from watching a niece sing at a recital in Amityville, also on Long Island. The turkey crashed through Ms. Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing the bones in her cheeks and jaw, fracturing the socket of her left eye, causing her esophagus to cave in and leaving her with brain trauma. Suffolk County prosecutors had wanted Mr. Cushing to serve the maximum of 25 years in prison for first-degree assault and other offenses. But Ms. Ruvolo persuasively argued that a long sentence would only turn him into a hardened criminal.

After his guilty plea in August 2005, Mr. Cushing—aware that Ms. Ruvolo had pressed for a short sentence—stopped to speak to her in the courtroom and wept profusely. She embraced him, stroked his face and patted his back. “I’m so sorry,” he said to her as he sobbed. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s O.K., it’s O.K.,” she replied. “I just want you to make your life the best it can be.”

Two months later, at his sentencing hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, he told her: “Your ability to forgive has had a profound effect on me. It has already made a positive change in my life.”

You can read her own account of the incident here.

Spurned by family members who left him out of an event, an Oregon man got his revenge in a most public, disruptive fashion.

Sonny Donnie Smith, 38, was sentenced to three years of probation after he dialed in a terrorist threat that implicated his father and brother, who were both traveling through airports. He placed two anonymous phone calls to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and Midland International Air and Space Port, in Midland, Texas.

Smith's father and brother were detained and questioned as part of an investigation, which eventually yielded no evidence of terrorist activity. The temporary detention caused Smith's brother to miss his flight.

US District Judge Anna Brown was reserved in her words to Smith: "I hope you appreciate what you did really did disrupt not just your family but the whole system,'' Brown said.

Smith was tearful and apologetic as he stood before the court, and his attorney Todd Bofferding requested that his sentence not include community service, because Smith's emotional needs were so pressing. Bofferding claimed his client suffers from high levels of anxiety and has been prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication.

As if to confirm his counsel's advocacy, Smith burst into tears at the conclusion of the hearing.

Potential Preaching Angles: Jealousy can turn into immorality under the guise of pranking. When family members turn against each other, it's a sign of impending destruction. If we can't love our family members, it's difficult to love God.

Vishal Mangalwadi, a Christian leader from India, writes movingly of the impact that Gladys Stains had on his nation. Gladys and her husband, Graham, and their sons, had devoted their life to serving lepers in India's eastern state of Orissa. Vishal writes:

Gladys was an ordinary housewife, but she stunned our nation by spontaneously, unpretentiously, humbly, and genuinely forgiving militant Hindus for their atrocities. They had burned alive her husband, Graham, and two little sons on January 23, 1999. In 2005, the government of India honored Gladys with one of our highest civilian honors—Padma Bhushan.

Why should an individual be given a national honor simply for forgiving murderers? To appreciate that forgiveness, remember that India's and Pakistan's births as free nations came with the terrible pain of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh sectarian riots. About ten million were made homeless. One-half to one million people were killed, including Mahatma Gandhi. Fifty years of secular democracy and education could not free us from this destructive chain of violence and revenge. Hindu-Muslim clashes have burned trainloads of innocent passengers, leading to riots that last for weeks. Frequent riots have reduced Indian Muslims to relative poverty and powerlessness. Any successful Muslim businessman is a marked target for the next round of riots. Even sympathetic bankers hesitate to lend to him.

Gladys's simple act of forgiveness became a national phenomenon because it broke this common chain of cause and effect. In city after city, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and secular leaders gathered to publicly honor Gladys as a saint to emulate. The government of India was simply the last in line to acknowledge that Gladys Stains is an ordinary woman with an extraordinary spirit—possessed of a spirituality that could heal our nation.

An old joke. A letter to a neighbor reads:

Dear Frank. We've been neighbors for six tumultuous years. When you borrowed my tiller, you returned it in pieces. When I was sick, you blasted rap music. And when your dog went to the bathroom all over my lawn, you laughed. I could go on, but I'm certainly not one to hold grudges. So I am writing this letter to tell you that your house is on fire. Cordially, Bob