by Omar King – November 15, 2024 – 4 min. read – church resource
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends (Psalm 7:9-16)
Childhood Nostalgia
Looney Tunes, one of my favorite pastimes, featured a host of fictionalized characters resembling real life albeit exaggerated and over-the-top personalities. Within the Warner Bros. catalogue two of them were almost always on screen together and usually exclusively. The timeless “good guy, bad guy” trope that has long cut across the cultural and entertainment media genres is showcased here in Road Runner and Wiley Coyote. Road Runner, our ostrich hero, a silent speedster famous for his holophrase “meep-meep” and whom the audience never knew where he was running to constantly found himself simultaneously running from his nemesis, Wiley Coyote, the predator. Wiley, a mute himself, held up signs, breaking the fourth wall, to show the audience what he was thinking. The titular Wiley lived up to his name. His sole aim in every scene was to catch the Road Runner, presumably to eat him. He was indefatigable in his pursuit; always plotting and inventing new schemes to trap his fleetfooted prey. It was clear Wiley was a brilliant engineer as he would strategize, write formulas and harness physics in service to his diabolicalness. But despite his try-hard approach or how clever his plans, he failed every time. Road Runner slipped his grasp and eluded his traps. However, the main comedic relief in these cartoons lies where Wiley found himself hurt by the very designs he planned for the Road Runner. The TNT intended to start an avalanche wind blowing up in Wiley’s face. The stone pushed off the side of a cliff would roll back and crush him. The anvil dropped from a building that somehow leaves a huge hematoma on his noggin. You get the idea.
This is known as a petard. It is typically conveyed in this idiom “hoisted by one’s own petard.” That is to say, the harm intended for others, usually by sinister actors, in the end will come back to injure the person who initially set the plot in motion.
Cartoon Come to Life
While we may get a good laugh at Wiley’s expense, did you know this fictional plot device is also true to life? Did you know the principle of petard is also biblical? Take another look at the verses above. In fact, when you get a chance read Psalm 7 in its entirety. What do you notice? David says the wicked metaphorically digs a pit for others and ends up falling into it themselves. Their evil machinations boomerang. In laymen’s terms we might say “he got his comeuppance”, or “karma”, or “what goes around comes around”, or “you sow what you reap.” Apparently, there is precedent in Scripture, especially as it pertains to those who act with malice to others hurt, where God will deflect their evil schemes back on them. There are many others like it, reminding those who trust God not to fear the plots of the wicked. David declares that God is his protector and ours. God is our shield.
Justice from Above
God can and sometimes does thwart the wicked and their schemes via the petard principle. The petard is one preferred method of meting out justice. Paul exhorts us, as a function of Christian faith and character, to never repay evil for evil and reviling for reviling (1 Peter 3:9). Instead, we are to leave room for God because he will repay (Romans 12:9). God is the ultimate and righteous judge. All forms and incorporations of human justice are flawed and incomplete. It cannot fully be trusted to bring about unimpeachable justice. This is why the Lord says, “vengeance is mine I will repay.” Placing our hopes in human justice systems inevitably leads to disappointment. Rather, we should relinquish our fears and desire to control outcomes to God. He knows the full truth and with it the extent of our integrity and innocence, and he will render just deserts against those who premeditatively seek to wrong and harm us.
A final word to the humble, Scripture also reminds us that we should not relish the downfall of our enemies. This would displease God. We can give thanks in earnest that our suffering from bad actors has ceased, and our supplication received without resorting to a twisted glee that hints of sadism gloating in the pain of others. Just as Road Runner rarely basked in Wiley’s self-imputed demise, instead he just kept running to wherever his destination. So, too, we who are in Christ are to keep running the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:1-2), being thankful for the mercy we’ve received, paying close attention to our own obedience and sanctification, and leaving the real-life Wiley’s to Christ’s retribution.