Revenge Didn’t Satisfy Terry Crews, So He Forgave Instead
By Movieguide® Contributor
Former Movieguide® Awards Host and BROOKLYN NINE-NINE star Terry Crews is sharing why he decided to forgive his father.
Crews grew up with a very abusive father, and one of his earliest memories is seeing his father hit his mother when he was just 5 years old.
As Crews grew older, he became more bitter towards his dad. He started to work out because “I knew one day I may have to kill my father because he was just that person,” he said on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast, calling his dad’s abuse “his reign of terror,” per TBN.
He continued to build his physique, and revenge motivated his muscle and weight gains.
“When I get big enough, when I get strong enough, when I become the man, I’m going to put you in your place,” Crews recalled his mindset at the time.
During Christmas in 2000, Crews decided to go home for the holidays. While out to dinner with his wife, Rebecca, he received a call from his aunt saying his father hit his mother.
“I remember driving back to Flint,” Crews remembered. “I told Rebecca, I said get everybody out of the house and just leave us. Let me tell you, I beat that man within an inch of his life and it was horrible. There was no satisfaction there.
“Here my father is on the ground bleeding. I’m sitting on his bed, and I’m watching him.” he continued. “I’m like, ‘This is a man I want to honor.’ And I’m hitting him. And it wasn’t right. All that revenge. All that get-back. All that stuff was an attempt to control things I could never control. What I thought was going to work was the beat down.”
“But what really worked was the forgiveness and a hug,” he revealed. “And now, no matter what decision he makes – cause that’s not what I can control. But what I can control is the fact that I am free.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Crews’ journey towards forgiveness:
“I realized I needed to press the reset button, for real, on my whole life, and this, this is where being born again meant something,” he recalled on TBN. “It wasn’t a phrase. It wasn’t something people said. You had to be a new person.”
“That hit me so hard,” Crews continued. “[Being born again] was something that I would say but never acted on. I would be the new guy in [church] and then the old guy outside. But it’s like Jesus said, ‘You can’t put new wine in old wineskins.’ You have to be new. And this realization…took me to my knees…I had to raze my entire life.”
“By me forgiving him, by me finding one thing to compliment him and be thankful for, I was able to transcend that moment and we were able to transcend it and, and get past it,” Crews told Bear Grylls of his relationship with his dad now. “And I find there’s a lot of things that you just have to cut your losses on. Move on, and reevaluate the situation as it exists today. And now, I have been able to move on.”
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