My History of Violence

I found great humor and was disturbed by that when I read Tim Ferriss article today, Why I started punching jerks again. Now I grew up with lots of violence in my neighborhood of Baltimore, MD. If anyone has watch the HBO show The Wire, I grew up one mile from that neighborhood. I was in my first fight, of significance, in the third grade. It was with an eighth grader. I got in one amazing shot right across his jaw..had to jump to land it...and that was about all I remember other than my head being bashed against a brink wall at some point. When I returned home, beaten badly, my brother showed no sympathy on my, but decided it was the best time to teach me to fight. After that I never lost a fight, I won't say I won all of them a few may have been draws.

In my pea brain somewhere I do believe violence solves things. It gets results. Now with all of that said at 31 years old and a dad of two I have not been in a fight in ages, thankfully. Yet I still like a good action flick. When I step back I am able to see that there is satisfaction in engaging the world for change, even through violence. The question then becomes is violence the best means? From a Christian perspective the loud answer is, "Of course not!" Jesus would have never gone to the cross if that were the case. Now we live in a fallen world, and I know growing up there were times when the only thing a bully in my life understood was a hard blow to the head. I look back on that and it makes me sad. I still hate bullies, but these were kids who were doing awful things, and they learned it somewhere. I find it sad that as a kid the only solutions I knew was violence in order to get me out of circumstances of being bullied, and I feel really sad for the kids who were not strong/big/brave/goofy enough to stand up the way I did.

Anyway I guess that I do not support punching someone in the face not matter how much they might deserve it. Yet, that doesn't mean I won't pray that they do get it eventually. Call it Karma, or you reap what you sow, but they will get it and sometimes I even pray that I'll get to witness it, not really.