The Psychology of Evil, Part 2: Moral Development

In part 1 of this series, I introduced psychologist Roy F. Baumeister's five roots of evil: predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology, specifically covering the last two, sadism, and ideology. In this second part, I will discuss the remaining roots.

Predation

This term simply refers to primitive drives of greed and lust. This is evil as a means to an end. I want what you have, so I take it by force. This is the most simplistic concept of crime, dating back to the Ten Commandments (thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet...). It is a concept of right and wrong that any child can understand, and indeed is what children learn in Kindergarten (don't hit, use your words...). In other words, the antidote to this type of harm is the natural process of developing socially--learning to share, cooperate, and so on. 

There is a connection here with social justice. For example the social dynamic in some U.S. inner cities is comparable to a failed state. When the police are not seen as serving and protecting, but are seen as a threat, the idea of "justice" is thus not entrusted to the state, and "gangs" take the role upon themselves. Since there is little hope of economic opportunity, people can feel that the normal social contract has failed them, and thus some feel compelled to take what they want by force. In other words, there is a correlation between individual justice and societal justice. The social contract which motivates a person to be social only makes sense if the society itself is indeed social. So if we want to see individual reform, an important part of this is working for societal reform. Impoverished areas all over the world lead to unstable and thus unsafe environments.

Dominance

Dominance is likewise related to moral development (or the lack thereof) and has a lot to do with one's self-esteem. We often think of a bully as someone with inflated self-esteem rather than low self-esteem. However, really what we have in a bully or egotist is a profoundly fragile self-esteem. They thus feel compelled to put other people down to feel superior. This fragile self-esteem is easily threatened, and the bully responds with acts of dominance -- put downs to belittle you, shame you, and in some cases with acts of violence.

The antidote again is moral/social development. For example, as I explained in Disarming Scripture, restorative justice programs like RSVP work with society's most violent men — wife beaters, murderers, and gang bangers — helping them to become self-reflective, developing empathy, and finding healthy ways of managing their emotions. These violent men learn for the first time how to maintain their own dignity and respect without demeaning or harming others. The results are striking: The RSVP program boasts a staggering 80% reduction of violent recidivism.

Additionally, the RSVP program has seen a dramatic reduction of inmate violence as well, not only making society safer, but making the guards safer as well. Usually in prisons we of course do the opposite. We attempt to teach people not to dominate... by dominating them. This leads to violence in prisons (which endangers both inmates and guards), as well as to a high recidivism rate, leading to a "revolving-door" prison system. That's because our prison system is about punishment rather than reform. It dehumanizes people. Restorative justice programs like RSVP offer some light here, but ultimately the view of society needs to change. As long as we think prison needs to be a place where "criminals should suffer" we will support the perpetuation of this spiral of violence. That brings us to our next root cause of evil, revenge.

Revenge

Revenge is about the cycle escalating retaliation. As humans, we naturally have an impulse for revenge. As Pinker says, "Revenge is an easily pushed button in everyone's brains." In other words, the drive for revenge is biological, related to our self-preservation. 

For me, understanding this biological aspect was tremendously helpful. It meant that when I felt the desire for revenge when I was wronged, this did not mean that I was not really following Jesus, or that I still had "sin living in me" as Paul puts it. This is simply a biological reaction. It is biologically programmed into all of us as a means of self-preservation. The question of moral development, and the question that has to do with me being faithful to the way of Jesus, is what I then do with that drive for retaliation. Am I driven by it, or do I master it? Can I rise above it and look for a better way of resolving conflict? In other words, it's not the impulse, but what I do with it. Simply put, a big part of maturing is learning impulse control.

Of all of these above roots of evil, revenge may be the hardest to overcome for us because it is still seen as a virtue in many societies today. We think of predation as criminal, and dominance as characterizing bullies and tyrants. But we often still equate revenge with justice--especially in American society. So while we generally see predation and dominance as bad, revenge is the one root of evil that is still seen as a virtue. This cultural value is reinforced constantly by nearly every action movie ever made where revenge is made synonymous with justice. It takes a lot of moral imagination to rise above that, because it means rising above the moral imagination of our contemporary society.

One powerful movement away from this is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was was set up in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid in 1994 to deal with the violence and human rights abuses that had occurred from all sides. One of the key elements of the TRC was uncompromising truth-telling. So often our legal system is focused on the opposite. If you admit guilt you are punished, so the accused never admit what they did. A typical condition of a legal settlement is that the corporation makes no admission of wrong-doing. Similarly, there is the constant spin of politicians and corporations doing "damage control" in an attempt to hide wrong-doing. But when we are wronged, we humans desperately need to hear an admission of this. We need this more than we need punishment or payment. If that's true on an individual level, it is even more so on a societal level. That's why governments and corporations fight so hard against it.

Another important principle of the TRC was the idea of incomplete (retributive) justice. There was retributive justice, but not in a way that was proportionate to the crimes committed. In one sense it was just impractical to jail everyone who took part in Apartheid. So in the interest of healing the nation they gave amnesty to most, only punishing the most severe crimes. That may seem shocking to many of us. It can feel like they "got away with it." But I'd suggest the place we need to look is not to our immediate emotional response, but the long term results. As imperfect as this justice may feel, the practical question is whether this allow us to go on as a society. Does this allow us to heal? Does it allow us to move towards repair? Does it lead us away from harm? As Amos Oz, referring to the seemingly never-ending Palestinian/Israeli conflict, puts it,

"Tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways: there is the Shakespearean resolution and there is the Chekhovian one. At the end of Shakespearean tragedy the stage is strewn with dead bodies and maybe a sense of justice hovering high above. A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. I want a Chekhovian resolution, not a Shakespearean one."

Conclusion

Commenting on the 1961 trial of Adolph Eichmann, Hannah Arendt coined the now famous idea of the "banality of evil." Evil is boring and stupid. She applied this to one of the key figures of the Holocaust, and while many have taken issue with her assessment (there certainly were aspects of the holocaust that were sadistic) what we can perhaps agree on is that evil's roots are found in very basic characteristics that all of us are susceptible to. As Solzhenitsyn so powerfully said in The Gulag Archipelago, "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."


The three roots of evil we have explored here, predation, dominance, revenge all have in common a connection to basic human social development. In other words, the antidote to all of these evils is helping people to mature socially. As discussed in part 1, sadism is not actually a root, but rather an outgrowth of evil. This leaves us with the fourth root of evil, (authoritarian) ideology, which is a social framework that endorses harm as good. In other words, (authoritarian) ideology is a morally and socially underdeveloped view of the world which seeks to paint predation, dominance and revenge as good and admirable. We instead need to first recognize that all of us can easily fall prey to these egotistical and immature impulses -- we are not immune.  Second, having embraced a morally and socially mature view of the world, we need to seek growth both as individuals and as a society together, seeking to grow towards helping rather than harming, towards repair rather than revenge.

Realistic Nonviolence in a Violent World

Every 4th of July we nonviolent bloggers feel the need to write an obligatory post on American empire. I didn't, and instead enjoyed watching fireworks with my kids that some guys were lighting illegally on the street in front of our friend's house, and baking an apple pie (Mmmmm).

I get the comparison of the United States to the Roman Empire, but one has to ask, what would the alternative be? Would we rather live in a failed state? If our goal is the reduction of violence, it is clear that a failed state is far more violent and unjust than our country. The fact that we have police and a military does serve to reduce violence. That of course does not mean there is no room for improvement, that there are no problems in our country. But it does mean that the direction we need to move is not towards anarchy. That would be naïve.

A big problem, as I see it, is that there is a tendency for both pacifists and patriots to grandstand -- both taking unrealistically romantic positions on opposite sides of the issue. This may make for good Tweets, but it leads to bad public policy. On the one side we have the patriot/hawks who speak of the necessity of violence as a means of keeping the peace. On the other hand we have the pacifists who say we should abolish the police and military, or that as Christians we should not participate in them. Both take extreme positions in reaction to the other's, employing dramatic rhetoric to appeal to their base. Here there is no possibility for a conversation, just a widening of the divide. That is certainly not peacemaking.

I would instead like to propose something different. I think we should begin by all agreeing that peace and safety are desirable, and that violence is not. The question to ask, therefore, is how can we reduce violence while maintaining peace and safety?

One clear example of this is with the many news stories we have seen of police shootings of unarmed black men and women. There is clearly a problem when there are no legal consequences for police who abuse their authority. We've seen this multiple times where Grand Juries will acquit officers who clearly seemed guilty. 

Here it is clear that there needs to be change. Police who abuse authority and commit criminal acts should be subject to the law. But legal punishment cannot be the only response. The problem runs much deeper. That is, the problem is not just a few bad apples, but a system that fosters them. On a more systemic level there is a fundamental problem with the way policing is done in low income neighborhoods, as well as how police interact with the mentally ill. 

This is something that whites like myself generally do not experience.  I feel safe around police. My interactions with them have generally been respectful. I do not feel unsafe around police. But for people of color, that is not the case.

In general, the approach often taken by police in "bad" neighborhoods is a militaristic one of "zero-tolerance." It's the "no broken windows" approach, and it has certainly only been made worse by the recent militarization of the police by the government. As a result of this, over time members of a community come to be regarded by police as "them" rather than "us," and one is either doing nothing or is a problem. If someone is a problem, then they must comply immediately with all orders or else. With such an approach it is extremely easy for things to escalate, often leading to lethal results. 

The answer is well known by the police and to the US Department of Justice. Part of it involves what is known as "community policing" where police work to build trust in the community, acting as a part of it, rather than as an occupying force. Another critical element is police training in how to deescalate a situation, rather than making it worse with threats, screaming, and a show of force. 

The result of such deescalation training makes things safer for everyone, including safer for police. So it's a win-win. Such training programs are readily available to police departments, but officers often do not participate. Perhaps such training should be a mandatory part of their qualification as police officers. That's a bigger issue, and hopefully as more light comes on to the issue, we will see needed reform here.

Let's take a step back through, and return to the broader picture: What I want to propose is that those of us who advocate for Christian nonviolence should not be calling for people to withdraw from politics or societal engagement. We should not be proposing a utopian Christian society without violence. Rather, we should be the ones training police in how to deescalate potentially dangerous situations. We should be in the middle of our messy world, offering practical and realistic means to reduce violence and actively promote justice. 

A poignant example of this is how Mennonites have worked to introduce principles of restorative justice into our judicial system. I find this remarkable because Mennonites have traditionally been the ones who have sought to separate themselves from society and politics. But now they are in the middle of that system, working to reform it.

That's where I want my nonviolence to take me as well. I am not interested in ideals that are cut off from the realities of our current world. I want instead to have ideals that actually work here and now to help make our broken world a little less broken, and a little more humane.

Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public

In part two of this series on violence and the New Testament I discussed the tendency we have to embrace parts of Scripture that fit into the values we already hold, and side-stepping those that do not. I proposed that instead of doing that, we should instead have our values shaped by the way of Jesus.

The difficulty is that the way of Jesus, expressed in his teaching on enemy love, is something that is seldom taught in church, and largely not understood. As I explained in my previous post, if we don't understand something, we won't do it and will find ways to side-step it in how we interpret Scripture.

We see this in how conservative Christians embrace Romans 13 as a God-ordained societal model, but reject Jesus' understanding of the kingdom as one. This has little to do with biblical exegesis, and a lot to do with projecting one's pre-existing values into Scripture--using the Bible to support what we think is good, rather than having the Bible shape what we think is good.

In the case of Romans 13 the reason conservatives take this one small part and uphold it as a God-ordained societal model is that they are taking their pre-existing values of empire and projecting these onto this text. In other words, they defend state violence, not because they read the whole New Testament and concluded that this was its message, but because as part of the privileged class in America, they deeply believe in state violence, and so they use whatever snippet of text they can find in the Bible to support that.

So why do they embrace state violence? The basic idea behind state violence is we give the state the right to use force, including lethal force, with the idea that this will reduce violence. If you can call the police when someone takes your stuff, you don't need to take the law into your own hands, and that means less violence overall. It's a version  of Paul's statement in Romans 12:19, except it replaces the state for God, saying effectively,

Do not take revenge, citizens, but leave that for the police take care of it, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the state.

The result is that we feel safe in our homes knowing that the police are there to "serve and protect" and part of that is that they are permitted to use force, including lethal force if needed, to do this. That's the idea behind state violence, and why it is seen as "good." When people defend state violence, they do so because they believe that it keeps them safe. I recognize this. I'm glad we have police. I feel much safer knowing that they are there.

However, as we have seen in protests across the country in response to police shootings of unarmed black men, women and boys, many people of color do not feel safe around police. They do not feel protected, they feel afraid, harassed, mistreated, and in danger.

The reason conservative Evangelicals support state violence is that, as part of the privileged majority class of American society (and I should note that when I say "conservative Evangelicals" here I really mean white conservative Evangelicals), the system works for them. That makes sense. It works for me, too as a white male.

This however is not the perspective of Paul or the New Testament. Paul is writing to a people who are a persecuted and oppressed minority in the Roman Empire, not to those who are the privileged in that empire. The situation at the time of Paul's letter was an impending revolt against abuses surrounding taxes. The church in Rome was considering taking part in that revolt, and Paul in Romans 12 & 13 is telling them not to resort to violence, telling them that this is not God's way in Jesus.

At the time, it was inconceivable that Christians could have political influence in Rome. So Paul is not saying in Romans 13 "here's how Christian government should operate." Romans 13 is not intended to be a model for what Christians should do if they have political influence (which was not the situation they were in), it's a model for how a persecuted minority should act under oppression (which was their situation). Most of all this is about rejecting the solution of violent revolution and revolt that had been their script for centuries. Paul, and the NT in general, want to change that script of violent revolt. Paul rejects the way of the Maccabees.

So if we read Romans 13 today, from the very different context of a people of privilege living in the world's biggest empire, rather than seeing this as an affirmation of the values of empire, what the gospel and the way of Jesus call us to do is look beyond ourselves and what works for us, and to look to how our system is hurting others--especially the disenfranchised. I truly do understand why white conservative evangelicals embrace state violence as good. As a white male myself, the system of state-sanctioned violence indeed works for me. But Jesus shows me I should not only care about my own welfare, but especially for those who are marginalized, oppressed, and condemned in our society. For those people the system does not work, and these are precisely the ones Jesus tells me I need to pay attention to. As I care for them, I care for Jesus. And as I disregard and dismiss them, I do the same to Jesus. "As you have not done it unto these, you have not done it unto me. Depart from me!" 

That's quite the wake-up call. As Brian Zahnd puts it in A Farewell to Mars, Jesus judges nations on how well they care for four kinds of people:

The Poor. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink … I was naked and you gave me clothing.” 
The Sick. “I was sick and you took care of me.” 
The Immigrant. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” 
The Prisoner. “I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matt. 25: 35– 36)

Jesus did not identify with power and privilege, but rather identified with the "least"--the poor, the sick, the immigrant--in short, he identified with those who were regarded as unworthy and even as enemies. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Over and over again in his parables, the good guys are those who are dismissed and despised and seen as "other" by those in power, and the bad guys are those with power and privilege who shut the door on them.

Romans 13 is not a model for what Christian political influence should look like. The fact is, the NT does not tell us what that would look like at all. This was beyond their horizon, just as the abolition of slavery was beyond their horizon at the time. So to move away from slavery, or to move towards lessening state violence, we need to go beyond where the New Testament writers were able to go. That's where a trajectory reading becomes so important.

Charting what that trajectory may look like is our task for today, and a place to start is to begin by seeing people as Jesus did, through the lens of compassion. The big problem with (white) conservative Christianity is that it is a theology that appeals to those in a position of privilege, to those for whom the system works. That's why the wealthy and powerful like and support it--because it does not call them out for their oppression, but upholds them as noble benefactors, focusing on private sins (usually sexual sins), and ignoring systemic sin. Both personal and systemic sin are important of course, but systemic sin is more important for the simple reason that it hurts more people. When conservative evangelicalism ignores the problems of systemic sin it misses a major aspect of the gospel. It is their persistent stubborn neglect of this major aspect of Jesus ministry and heart that led me to leave conservative Evangelicalism, as I found it incompatible with the way of Jesus and far too comfortable around Caesars and CEOs.

In regards to state violence, I'd say it is still beyond our horizon today to imagine how society would function without the use of state violence and force. However, there is a lot we can do to reform police brutality and abuse, to reform our profoundly unjust and broken prison system, and to reform the systemic abuses of our military from Guantanamo to the NSA. Just as it is a part of the gospel to care for the poor, it is equally a part of the gospel to care about justice, and to look for a better way of creating justice in our society today than simply mirroring Rome. In the words of Cornell West,

"Justice is what love looks like in public."

Restorative vs. Retributive justice side by side comparison

Restorative and Retributive Justice Side by Side Comparison

(Source: "Justice Paradigm Shift" by Howard Zehr in Victim Offender Conferencing in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System)

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE Crime defined by violation of rules ____________________________ State as victim. _____________________________ State and offender primary parties. ____________________________ Interpersonal dimensions irrelevant. ____________________________ Offense defined in legal terms. ____________________________ Wrongs create guilt. _____________________________ Guilt is absolute, either/or. _____________________________ Guilt is indelible. _____________________________ Debt is abstract. _____________________________ Debt paid by taking punishment. _____________________________ Accountability = taking one’s “medicine.” _____________________________ Blame fixing central. _____________________________ Focus on past. _____________________________ Needs secondary. _____________________________ Battle, adversarial model normative. _____________________________ Imposition of pain normative. _____________________________ One social injury added to another. _____________________________ Harm done balanced by inflicting harm _____________________________ Victims’ needs ignored. _____________________________ Restitution rare. _____________________________ Sense of balance through retribution. _____________________________ State monopoly on response _____________________________ Encourages offender irresponsibility. _____________________________ Offender denounced. _____________________________ Offender stigmatized _____________________________ Justice tested by intent and process. _____________________________ Process alienates. _____________________________ Proxy professionals are the key actors. _____________________________ Win-lose outcomes assumed. _____________________________

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Crime defined by harm to people. ____________________________ People and relationships as victims. _____________________________ Victim and offender are primary parties. _____________________________ Interpersonal dimensions central. _____________________________ Offense understood in full context _____________________________ Wrongs create liabilities and obligations. _____________________________ There are degrees of responsibility. _____________________________ Guilt removable thru repentance and reparation. _____________________________ Debt is concrete. _____________________________ Debt paid by making right. _____________________________ Accountability = taking responsibility. _____________________________ Problem solving central. _____________________________ Focus on future. _____________________________ Needs primary. _____________________________ Dialogue normative. _____________________________ Restoration/reparation normative. _____________________________ Emphasis on repair of social injuries. _____________________________ Harm done balanced by making right. _____________________________ Victims’ needs central. _____________________________ Restitution normal. _____________________________ Sense of balance through restitution. _____________________________ Victim, offender, community roles recognized. _____________________________ Responsible behavior encouraged. _____________________________ Harmful act denounced. _____________________________ Reintegration offered to offender. _____________________________ Justice tested by its outcome. _____________________________ Process aims at reconciliation. _____________________________ Victim and offender central _____________________________ Win-win outcome encouraged. _____________________________

Hold On To The Good, Reject The Bad: Moving Beyond Retribution in The Bible

I received this letter from a reader,

"I was first introduced to your writing with the Sojourners article early this year. Your blog has been very helpful and inspiring. Healing the Gospel was one of the healthiest theological books I've ever read. Even though I tend to agree with all of your sentiments in your book, I think it is even helpful for individuals who strongly disagree with you; due to your demeanor and thoughtfulness--your intentions and heart were apparent and that alone is capable of spreading light to others.

I enjoyed your treatment of Romans 1 and 6; and I resonate with the idea that God's wrath is essentially the natural consequences of sin, whether the sin is our own or other's. I was wondering if you have ever written on Hebrews 10:30 or 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7. In those verses, it seems as if the wrath/vengeance/payment is more of an active role, rather than a passive consequence. Those verses have been difficult for me to reconcile with my view of God's forgiveness and non-violence. I understand that justice is pain for the unjust, but the 1st Chapter of 2 Thess doesn't seem to scream out restoration and reconciliation. I want to take all of scripture in context, but now I find myself wanting to throw these verses out because they don't fit into my current theological framework (I don't see much Jesus in these words)."

- Geoffrey H.

It's a great question. For sake of space, I'll focus here on the passage from 2 Thessalonians. The key part Geoffrey is referring in verses 6-7 is this statement:

"For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you."

Here we have a classic statement of payback justice. An eye for an eye. Repaying hurt for those who hurt.

But didn't Jesus repudiate an eye for an eye in the sermon on the mount, replacing it with the way of enemy love?

So is this verse a contradiction to that? Is it promoting the very way Jesus rejected?

Let's take a look at the whole passage for context:

"We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, and is intended to make you worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering. For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." (2 Thes 1:4-9, NRSV)

Yuck.

The first thing we notice is the violent language. "flaming fire, inflicting vengeance... suffer the punishment of eternal destruction." However we understand the phrase "eternal destruction,"--whether we understand that to mean eternal torment, annihilation, or something else--it is pretty clear that the audience is supposed to feel comforted knowing that the people who are hurting them are gonna "get what's coming to them." This is about appealing to people's desire for vengeance. So why would they feel that way?

If we look at the beginning of this passage, we read that the church in Thesselonia was undergoing persecution and oppression, "all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring." From this context we can make a few observations:

First, this is not an endorsement of people seeking violent retribution. Unlike the Old Testament which does seem to endorse people committing violence in the name of God, the NT consistently calls on followers of Jesus to not retaliate, to not return harm for harm. This is no exception. This is a letter to a persecuted church that is practicing non-retaliation and suffering as a result, helping them cope with that, encouraging them to stay the course of nonviolence.

That brings us to the second insight: What is said here is intended to be a comfort to them in their suffering. It was supposed to make them feel better to know that their enemies would suffer. It may shock and disturb us now--That's important for us to recognize, and I'll return to that in a moment-- But it was originally intended to encourage them.

For us to wrap our heads around this, it's important to understand the broader cultural context of their time: This was a world where compassion and humility were not considered to be character traits, but immoral weaknesses. The idea of payback justice was self-evident both to Greco-Roman thinking as well as to the Jewish mindset. Today we live 2000 years after Jesus, and a lot of his values have sunk in. Love of enemies is still counter-cultural today, but back then it was literally unheard of. This was an idea that originated with Jesus, and it flew in the face of everything their Greco-Roman and Jewish religious culture told them. It was considered crazy, blasphemous, scandalous, foolish.

Consequently, to their thinking, to go from "I want to kill you" to "I will trust that God will kill you" was a big step foreword. However, for many of us today it seems like a step backwards now. Once we really start trying to love our enemies, praying for them, "blessing and not cursing" as Jesus says, this results in our developing compassion for them. We come to desire their good, not their harm. We come to have the heart of Jesus.

Jesus tells us in fact that this love is a reflection of God's heart who is our model for enemy love, encouraging us to "be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." God's "perfection" here, Jesus tells us, is seen in God's demonstration of enemy love. Paul says the same thing: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom 5:8).

So if we have a problem with this verse, it is not because we are rebelling against God. It is precisely because we have been following in the way of God in Christ, and because our heart has been changed to see things as Jesus does that we now stumble over this passage! What was intended as a way to help suffering people cope with their feelings of revenge, is now seen by us as making God look unlike Jesus. We have learned to embrace the way of Jesus, and believed that this was a reflection of God's true heart and character revealed in Christ. But this passage appears to say that God does not look like that, and does not follow the way of Jesus.

So we stop. We struggle. We question. And I think rightfully so!

After all, wasn't Jesus constantly questioning things like this? That's what got him in such hot water with the religious teachers. He even directly challenged commands like "an eye for an eye" (the very premise that this passage in Thessalonians is based on!) claiming that because God loves his enemies so should we. So, in contrast to what this above passage seems to say, Jesus says that there is not a double standard between how we are to act and how God acts. According to Jesus, God is the model for enemy love.

This passage also flies in the face of what Paul says. But wait a second, didn't Paul write this letter? Many scholars suspect that he did not, and one of the major reasons for this is that this passage just doesn't sound like something he would say. Typical for Paul is to present the "foolishness" of the gospel, to go against the cultural assumptions of payback justice, to promote the radical way of love over law, all in keeping with the message of Jesus. This passage doesn't fit with that. It doesn't sound like Paul, let alone Jesus.

But I don't think our criteria should be who said it. If we want to learn to read the Bible like Jesus did, this will involve questioning and wrestling with Scripture, no matter what the source. What I would propose is simple: We should evaluate all Scripture based on merit. As an example, let's look at something Jesus said and apply that principle:

Many people read the Sermon on the mount and understand it to be demanding us to do things that seem really hurtful: telling women to stay in relationships where they are being abused, telling people not to defend themselves, to not resist oppression, to not defend those who are being hurt or wronged.

As much as I believe in nonviolence and following that way of enemy love, I would say that if you are understanding the words of Jesus as wrong and hurtful and against your conscience, then you should not follow them. You should never do something that feels wrong or hurtful. Don't ever violate your conscience. That can cause irreparable harm.

Now I believe that I could intelligently articulate the application of enemy love in a way that would not mean submitting to oppression, but rather actively resisting it. Properly understood, enemy love is not about ignoring suffering, but actively working to alleviate it. But until you can understand this, understand how it is good and right, you should never simply blindly follow that way, even if it comes from Jesus himself. Because that can, and often has, lead to misapplying these principles, and thus promoting deeply hurtful things that are the opposite of what Jesus intended. That's what happens when we do things blindly. That's how the Pharisees read their Bibles, and why Jesus was so opposed to that way of reading.

Our priority needs to be on doing what is loving over blind obedience to commands. That is precisely the focus Jesus (and Paul) had. So we need to do things because they are good, and not simply because "those are the rules" or "the Bible says so" or even "Jesus says so."

Now let me stress here that I am not saying that we should simply do whatever we feel like doing. This is not a license for selfishness. My assumption is that we are trying to live our the way of Jesus the best we know how, not find an excuse to live out the values of Snooki from Jersey Shore. Paul councils us, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Rom 12:2). As we live in the Spirit, as we develop in our relationship with God, we come to have the mind of Christ, we come to think and see like Jesus.

The key here is that we engage our brains and hearts, rather than shutting them down. We don't do things blindly (as if we don't know Jesus, and are just following a book). Rather, we seek to develop the mind of Christ so that we "will be able to test and approve what God’s will is." Note those words: test and approve. In other words, we can evaluate Scripture on its own merit.

That means that while we should not follow something that seems hurtful to us, we should however stay open to understanding it in a healthy way. So if Jesus' way of love of enemies can be demonstrated to make sense and work (and I am convinced it absolutely can), then we should follow it. If it can be demonstrated that Jesus' way of restorative justice does a better job at addressing the deep problems we have than the way of an eye for an eye, (and again we are seeing tons of evidence that this is true too), then we should apply it.

It's a very simple exegetical principle: Evaluate on merit. Test and approve. Follow what you understand. Remain open to learn and grow. Honestly, that's how most of us already read the Bible. We highlight and underline the parts that speak to us, and skip over the parts that don't. The major difference is that rather than doing this unthinkingly (and perhaps pretending we aren't!) I am proposing we do it purposely and intelligently, and with the intention of developing the mind of Christ and following in his way.

Consequently, when we run into a verse that strikes us as wrong (especially ones that seem to fly in the face of what we have learned from Jesus and his way!) such as this one in Thessalonians or the one that says that women should never teach men (which lots of scholars also doubt Paul wrote by the way), then we should apply that same test that we did to the Sermon on the Mount: We should evaluate it on its own merit.

We ask: Is it compelling? Does it help us love better? To act more like Jesus? To open our hearts to God in trust?

As I see it, this passage in Thessalonians fails those tests. Perhaps it did all of these things in its original context, as a way to help people steeped in a culture of retribution to cope with their need for violence. But it seems to do the opposite now. It pulls me away from Jesus, and tethers me to the very broken way of seeing the world that Jesus was trying so hard to help us all move away from. It's a good step forward for those who are still stuck in the thinking of payback justice, but it pales in comparison of the God revealed in Christ.

If we can allow that the people who wrote the Bible were human like us, that they (like us) were not immune to their own cultural blinders, that they (like us) had different levels of insight into the depths of Christ's love and way... then we can look for the good in what they wrote, and pass over the not so good.

As Paul says in his (undisputed) 1st letter to the Thessalonians,

"Test everything. Hold on to what is good. Reject what seems bad"

(1 Thesselonians 5:21-22).

A Response to the Gospel Coalition's Review of my Book

Recently, the Gospel Coalition published a review of my book Healing the Gospel. The book offers a major critique of hyper-Calvinism and the violent and retributive image of God behind it, proposing instead that the gospel is rooted in the idea of God’s enemy love and restorative justice. So it will probably come as little surprise that they didn't care for the book much.

The review was written by Peter Gurry, a student at Dallas Theological Seminary. Peter begins by correctly identifying a central thesis of my book:

"That thesis, in brief, is 'restoration triumphs over retribution'—purportedly 'the central narrative of the New Testament'"(58). In other words, Flood doesn’t just argue that penal substitution is wrong, misguided, or unbiblical (though he claims all that); he argues that it’s antithetical to the true gospel because it promotes the very thing God saves us from—retributive justice"

He continues, correctly describing the harm that comes from our embracing retribution, which I outline in the book,

    "Retributive justice, as Flood sees it, is deeply harmful. It leads to a battery of heinous ills such as “beating children, torturing prisoners and heretics, etc.” and culminates in even more destructive views of God and ourselves (8). Believers and unbelievers alike are affected. Unbelievers wonder how being saved by a vindictive God could be good news, and believers suffer a crippling sense of self-loathing. The result is a “faith motivated by fear, threat, and feelings of worthlessness” (3)"

His critique begins by making a number of unsubstantiated assertions: Peter claims for example that there is no problem in simultaneously claiming that we die with Christ, and that Christ dies instead of us. He offers no explanation however of how that would be logically possible. Nor does he mention that while the NT frequently says Christ died “for us” and also frequently says that we die “with Christ,” it never once says Christ died instead of us. This is why many Pauline scholars have suggested that the language of "participation" is more reflective of what Paul was expressing than the traditional Reform language of "substitution" is.

Similarly, Peter rejects several readings of Scripture that I outline in the book, but offers no arguments as to why they should be rejected other than to simply declare them "untenable." Considering that the arguments I make in the book are based on work done by some pretty major biblical scholars (James Dunn, Michael Gorman, Morna Hooker, to name a few), I hardly think that one can simply dismiss them out of hand as "untenable."

I make the case in my book that viewing sin strictly from a legal lens has led to a profoundly deficient understanding of sin that in fact trivializes the problem and offers no real cure, and in fact adds to the hurt. It is a view of sin that is out of step with everything we have learned over the last century about mental health, and out of step with the NT.

Peter completely ignores all that his review, and simply makes the unsubstantiated claim that there is no problem with viewing sin as crime. But there is in fact a huge problem. If I get a speeding ticket, that works pretty well at deterring me from speeding. So in cases like this, it seems to work fine. But our prison system has an enormously high rate of repeat offenders, and an alarming amount of people in prison are mentally ill or addicts. What we are increasingly finding is that punitive measures do not lead to their reform, they make them worse. In contrast, restorative programs have had great success at reducing violence in prison and bringing about actual rehabilitation (no repeat offenses). In addition to that, restorative programs also help the victims of crime to heal. Punitive programs do nothing to restore victims.

It’s important to also make clear that Peter does not think that retributive justice should have the function of restoring (or deterring for that matter). He thinks that the purpose should be to inflict hurt for hurt. When he says retribution, he really means it. We need to keep that in mind when he speaks about the "vertical aspect" that is allegedly missing in my book. What is missing is the idea that God must punish sin, and that God cannot simply heal it. In other words, in his view, even if God could heal us and make us loving, good, and holy in Christ, Peter thinks that would not be enough. Even if God could mend the hurt done by our sin to ourselves and others, that would not be enough. God (according to Peter) demands blood, demands hurt. I think that is a view of God that is completely out of step with the New Testament, and deeply troubling.

This brings us to Peter’s biggest objection which is that he feels I focus too much on the "horizontal" impact of sin—how it harms us—and not enough on the "vertical" aspect of how it offends God:

    "[N]ot once does he angle his definition of sin vertically. He does not mention that the first commandment is always the first to be broken. He does not follow Joseph's or David’s concern that sin is fundamentally against God ... Because Flood provides no antidote to our idolatry, his cure turns out to be worse than his diagnosis. Much better to know that in Christ God has not only cured our idol-loving hearts, but he has publicly punished them, too."

In response I would say that this is simply not true. I do focus on the vertical aspect of sin, but the focus is God-down-to-us rather than us-up-to-God. In other words: God is not the one with the problem, we are. That's why God comes to us, while we were yet sinners, while we were God's enemies, and first loved us. Jesus continually draws our attention to how we treat others as a reflection of how we love God. "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me" Jesus tells us. When David says in Psalm 51 "Against you only, Lord, have I sinned" he is saying the same thing as Jesus. As the king he had thought that he could do whatever he wanted, and so he raped Bathsheba, and then had her husband killed. But now David has realized that in sinning against these powerless subjects of his, he had in fact sinned against the king of kings. The point here is not to say that God doesn't care about what David has done to that poor couple, and instead wanted to have all the attention. The whole point is that God wants us to care about the least, to care about each other. Vertical sin is inseparably connected to horizontal sin.

So if by a vertical focus we mean the notion that God is somehow “offended,” and needs to be mollified by us—that God can't love us until “satisfied” by violent punishment, then yes I do reject that idea. God is not some insecure monarch demanding his pound of flesh. God is the one who comes to us in Jesus, seeking reconciliation. God is not the one with the problem, we are. God does not need to be changed, we do. God does not need to be turned around (=repenting), we do.

If however a vertical focus means that we need to center our lives around God revealed in Christ, then this is in fact something I discuss at great length in the book. I see it as absolutely essential because it is through living with Jesus as our bottom line, as our Lord, and indeed as our friend in an intimate and growing relationship that we learn to love others just as Christ did. This is the "antidote to idolatry" Peter is looking for, found in a loving and transformative relationship with God. That vertical relationship with God naturally flows into our horizontal relationships with others because when we have truly experienced what it is like to be unconditionally loved by God, not based on our goodness, but based on God’s goodness, how can we help but want to treat others with that same grace and mercy we have known? This is not a heaven-ward focus, because a focus on God in Christ calls us not to look up, but to look down to the least. That's where we find Christ.

So the claim made here that I do not have a vertical focus is simply not true. On the contrary, I have a clear "vertical focus" in the book, but it is one focused on a loving and good God showing us enemy love and grace, rather than on an angry God demanding punishment in order to be mollified. That latter view sounds more like a primitive volcano god, and not like God revealed in Jesus Christ.

50 Shades of Grace: Restorative justice and the Bible

A reader of my new book Healing the Gospel wrote and asked me this excellent question:

"You say that restorative justice is the solution to retributive justice.  One question ... isn't the latter the position of the OT that was instigated by God under the law?   If so then is God solving a problem that he has created?  If retributive justice is not that of the law then where did it come from?" 

I think the answer can be found in how Paul has come to read Scripture: Paul tells us in Galatians that the law was something that was given as a temporary thing until the real thing--the "promise" in Christ--comes and makes the law obsolete:

"Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian" (Gal 3:23-25).

The purpose of the law is to keep us in check as a "guardian". The purpose of en eye for an eye is to restrict the escalation of violence. it is 1 eye instead of the 7 times of Cain and the 77 times Lamech demands "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times!" (Gen 4:24). We see in the genesis account that vengeance is a sinful human response which quickly escalates into out of control violence. The law comes in and curbs this violence by saying "no not 77 eyes, just 1 eye." However, it is not God's intent that the law is the permanent solution. That's why Jesus overturns an eye for an eye in the Sermon on the mount, replacing it with the superior system of enemy love, and why he also reveres Lamech's declaration of extreme violence by making it that we forgive 77 times instead of 7 times (Matt 18:22). Now it is the escalation of forgiveness!

We are under a new way in Christ, the way of radical forgiveness and enemy love. Although it was good in that it curbed the escalation of violence, Paul says in that the reason the law was insufficient is because is cannot produce life:

"Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law" (Gal 3:21).

This idea of the gospel being life-imparting is one that Paul returns to frequently. Retribution and punishment are not life-imparting because they can only give a negative consequence for hurtful actions, but they cannot change our hearts, they cannot heal. Restorative justice can. It heals, mends, imparts life. The one gives restrictions, and the other is all about our being transformed by being in union with Christ, in a loving relationship where we are transformed by God's love as we spend time with Jesus and grow to be like him.

The law is limited in what it can do (it cannot impart life, it cannot make us holy) and thus is not God's ultimate plan (As Paul says, the promise is not the law), however Paul maintains that it has a good purpose. However, it has also through sin become something deeply hurtful, as Paul confesses in Romans:

"I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.  For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death" (Rom 7:10-11)

Anything good can become hurtful. In fact, the more good something is, the more potential it has to cause harm when it goes bad. Families are meant to be a place where we are safe and loved, but they can also be deeply abusive and leave devastating scars. Religion and law are also meant to be good, but can likewise become abusive. We see that abuse in the Pharisees whom Jesus is continually confronting. Paul was a Pharisee too before he changed his way and took up the way of Christ.

This is not about pitting Judaism against Christianity! Jesus and Paul were both Jews. It is about how we approach faith. Whether we use religion to justify hurtfulness (ranging from hurtful words that exclude and condemn, to actual acts of violence done in God's name) or whether we instead take up the way of grace, restoration, and love of enemies.

So, with all that under our belt, let's return to the original question: retributive justice (i.e. the way of seeking vengeance for harm done) is something that pre-existed the law. It is a human response to hurt that quickly escalates in to more and more hurt. The law of an eye for an eye was a temporary measure intended to curb violence. However, as Paul tells us, this was not God's ultimate plan. God's ultimate plan is seen in the superior way of restorative justice which is modeled by God in his act of restorative justice in Christ. That is how God loves us, and we are to likewise love like that too.

Wrath can be understood as the consequence for sin (Paul describes it in terms of wages, inheritance, fruit which are all different ways at getting at this idea). So saying that wrath follows sin is a bit like saying that death follows a terminal illness. According to the laws of medicine, that is how sickness works. So the intent of the law is to warn people to avoid behaviors that are hurtful in the same way that a doctor would advise us to avoid behavior that would lead to sickness. At best it the law can give us a picture of what the ideal picture of healthy relationships should look like.

The role we see wrath playing in the OT is therefore primarily one of warning. Similar to those warning on the side of cigarette boxes, the prophets warn of impending disaster from sin with the intent of moving their hearers to repentance. That is, the desire is never for harm, it is always instead for people to turn from their hurtful ways and to live.

But what so we do with people who don't listen and get sick? What do we do with people who fall outside of that law, people who both hurt others and have been hurt themselves? (which, if we are honest would probably be all of us!) What do we do with people who are blinded by their pain, and who make dumb and hurtful choices? Do we just write them off? Do we wish pain on them? Not if we love them we don't. But we also cannot simply look on while the hurt continues.

That is where the idea of healing comes in. A doctor may warn you not to smoke, but if you get cancer, that doctor will nevertheless do everything they can to fight that cancer and save your life. This is exactly what we see Jesus doing: he does not blame or condemn people, he restores, heals, and forgives them, and calls them to follow. People thought that when a person was sick that this was a judgement of God due to their sin. We see this for example in the story of the man born blind where his disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). We can see this same thinking backed up in many parts of the Old Testament. Jesus does not affirm these "judgments," and in fact identifies this not with God's judgment, but with the work of the Satan, and declares that he has come to oppose that reign with his kingdom. 

So we see some pretty radical shifts taking place here. A major take-away is that neither Jesus or Paul understand the Old Testament to be a perfect revelation of God's eternal way. There are many things about it that a provisional and limited. That's why Jesus says that it needed to be "fulfilled" (the Greek word means "completed") and then proceeds to amend and reverse things like an eye for an eye with love of enemies on the sermon on the Mount. In other words, his fulfillment does not mean he accepts everything (since we see him immediately reversing some things), rather it means he lovingly brings it to its full intended place, just as Jesus does not leave us as he finds us, but lovingly shapes us into Christ-likeness.

Consider Paul's story: He had read his Bible as a Pharisee and it had led him to a life of religious violence--persecuting the church, participating in the stoning of Stephen--which later led him to call himself "the greatest of sinners." Paul's great sin as he understood it was using religion as a justification for hurting people. After he came to Christ (which at involved an act of healing and enemy love), he had to go back and learn to read his Bible in a completely different way. He had been trained in the law, he knew the Bible inside and out, and yet it had lead him to that he describes as "producing death." The New Testament is all about confronting that legacy of toxic religion which is epitomized in the way of retribution and religiously justified violence and replacing it with the superior way of grace and God's restorative justice revealed in Christ.

Part of the consequence of that means that we need to learn to read the Bible like Jesus did, and like Paul learned to as well. That means that we learn to look for the way of Jesus, and recognize that, especially in the Old Testament, we do not always see that way reflected. So we need to learn to read Scripture Christocentrically, that is, we need to learn to recognize when Scripture reflects Christ... and when it does not. That's why Paul writes,

"To this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away" (2 Cor 3:14).

This is a huge topic (and this is a really long blog post already!), so let me end with some resources: My Sojourners article on how Paul wrestled with violence in the Bible is a good place to start. If you've read Brian McLaren's new book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? you'll likely recognize the same content in one of the chapters, which he based on my Sojourners article (he of course asked me, and I was thrilled). I'm in the process of working that article into a full length book for my next major project, but that will take a while. In the meantime, another helpful resource is the work of Eric Seibert. Eric has two books out on this topic: Disturbing Divine Behavior and The Violence of Scripture. Both highly recommended. Another great resource is the work of William Webb and his trajectory hermeneutics.

My book Healing the Gospel is now on Amazon!

UPDATE: News on Kindle, faster shipping, and discounts! (Details below)

I'm happy to announce that my book Healing the Gospel is finally out! You can order the book from Amazon or get it directly from the publisher Wipf and Stock / Cascade Books for a discount. Here's the description from the back cover:

Why did Jesus have to die? Was it to appease a wrathful God's demand for punishment? Does that mean Jesus died to save us from God? How could someone ever truly love or trust a God like that? How can that ever be called "Good News"? It's questions like these that make so many people want to have nothing to do with Christianity.

Healing the Gospel challenges the assumption that the Christian understanding of justice is rooted in a demand for violent punishment, and instead offers a radically different understanding of the gospel based on God's restorative justice. Connecting our own experiences of faith with the New Testament narrative, author Derek Flood shows us an understanding of the cross that not only reveals God's heart of grace, but also models our own way of Christ-like love. It's a vision of the gospel that exposes violence, rather than supporting it--a gospel rooted in love of enemies, rather than retribution. The result is a nonviolent understanding of the atonement that is not only thoroughly biblical, but will help people struggling with their faith to encounter grace.

As those of you who have been following my blog for a while know, this book has been in the works for a long time, and this blog has chronicled that process. So I am thrilled that it's finally available! It will certainly ruffle some feathers, as it takes on penal substitution as not only unbiblical, but also deeply harmful. But my hope is that it will be a vehicle of healing to those whose faith has been damaged by that hurtful understanding of God, and in some small way open up a way for folks to recognize and experience the truly good news of God's amazing grace and love!

I've gotten a lot of help and encouragement from others along the way. Brian McLaren, who wrote the foreword to the book, has been really supportive of the project from the get go. Michael Gorman gave his careful scholarly eye to the manuscript, offering lots of exacting challenges that were invaluable in sharpening the biblical arguments. And I've gotten lots of encouragement from many wonderful folks (see the endorsements section on Amazon for details).

So go get yourself a copy, and let me know what you think--both here on the blog and on the reviews at Amazon!

UPDATE: Get the book shipped right away! Because the book is selling so well on Amazon, there's currently a delay on shipping times there. Wouldn't you like to get it shipped right away? Of course you would, and you can! You can get a brand new version on Amazon shipped right away if you order it from the Windowsbooks seller. They are the official reseller of my publisher, so you can be sure the quality is perfect, and you have the Amazon guarantee too! Heck, they even do international orders.

UPDATE: 40% off for Bulk discounts! If you need to get multiple copies for your discussion group or class there is a bulk discount of 40% off the retail price when you buy 5 or more copies. To get this special offer  all you need to do is send an email to orders@wipfandstock.com

UPDATE:  Get Kindle and read it without the wait!  In addition to the paperback version, you can also now get the book instantly on Kindle. Also you will find the search inside the book feature there if you wanted to browse through it a bit (I always like to do that).


(UUTPB9QGH7EU)

New Article: The Abolishment of Retribution in the Church Fathers

 In 2010 I wrote an article for EQ entitled "Substitutionary atonement in the Church Fathers" (you'll find a link in the Articles section to the right) where I argued that the "substitutionary" aspect of the atonement was not understood by the Fathers in the terms of retributive justice (as the Calvinist doctrine of penal substitution holds) but in terms of God's restorative justice.

Recently, Garry Williams has written a rebuttal of my article in EQ where he argues that the Fathers did understand substitution in terms of the fulfillment of retributive justice. After this came out many of you wrote to me and asked for my response to his critiques. Well, today is your lucky day! I've written a response entitled:

The Abolishment of Retribution in the Church Fathers

In this new article I decided not to reply to every point Garry made in his article (which I thought would just be self-indulgent and tedious to most folks). Instead, I decided to take the strongest points he made, and address those in a deep way. So I've focused the article on two big figures: Athanasius and Augustine.

I dig in deep to their respective understandings of the atonement, getting into a lot of the Greek for Athanasius, but also (and I think perhaps more substantially) using my artist's eye to recognize the broad narrative themes they both paint of God's struggle to save humanity. So there's lots of good stuff for you theology nerds out there to sink your teeth into!

 At the same time, I wanted to go beyond my first article and ask some more probing questions of the Fathers: Beyond their understanding of the atonement--which I maintain are clearly based on a model of God's restorative justice--do the Church Fathers also embrace the way of restorative justice as it applies to our lives together? In other words, is their understanding of God's restorative justice only applied to our individual personal salvation, and the rest of life governed by retributive/punitive justice? Or does that understanding of God's restorative justice inform how we should act in our world--including how we understand the role of civil authority? Considering the history of violence and religion that still shapes our thought today, these are difficult but critical questions to ask.

So give it a read and let me know what you think in the comments below!

God's restorative justice

In my last post, I addressed the first part of my answer to some questions Peter's Gurry asked in the comments to another blog post. Here I'd like to deal with the second part:

"I struggle to see how your definition of God's righteousness/justice will hold in Rom 3:21-26, especially vv. 25-26. When God passed over previously committed sins, does that mean he never healed people of their brokenness? And if so, how does healing that brokenness now through the cross show that God is, in fact, restoratively just when he restores those who have faith in Christ (3:26)? In other words, I still don't see the need for a blood-stained cross in your system.

I think Paul's logic in this section of Romans makes much more sense if the question he's addressing is not "When will God restore broken, fractured lives" (important as that question is) but rather, "How can God possibly forgive punishment-deserving rebels in a way that doesn't make a mockery of the very retribution they deserve?" In other words, How can God be both just and the justifier? Remember, the question that sets this section going is a question of God's wrath against rebellious humans (1:18-3:20). It's not a question about our fractured human lives. We are victims to be sure, but far more serious is the fact that we are perpetrators and that all our sin is finally directed Godward."

As Peter notes, my definition of "God's righteousness/justice" (Greek: diakaiosyne theo) is restorative justice, as opposed to retributive justice. Peter asks about how that understanding of justice as "making things right" fits with Romans 3:25-26:

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

So let's back up to the beginning of Romans and follow Paul's argument up to here. Paul opens Romans with a discussion of the wrath God (beginning at Ro 1:18). Wrath here can be understood as retributive justice: it is the just punitive consequence for our sinful actions. We do bad stuff, and bad things happen to us. It is the law of sewing and reaping, quid pro quo, or if you like "karma." Paul is addressing his fellow Jews, and begins by speaking about pagan depravity. At this point his audience is thinking "yeah, those pagans sure are rotten! God's gonna get them!" It is here that Paul turns the tables and says that we have no right to judge others when we are just as bad. He then goes on to argue (Ro 2:1-3:20) that we are all under sin, and therefore when we hope for God to judge, we are in fact calling down wrath on ourselves.

This is something that Paul knew from practical experience. He had himself, before his conversion, not only wished for God's wrath, but had seen himself as an instrument of it, acting to persecute, harm, and even kill Christians based on his belief that he was doing this all in the name of God. Paul's major sin was that of religious zeal leading to acts of violence in God's name. This motivation to religious violence was common in his time, has continued to be among the church throughout its history (the crusades, the inquisitions, etc) and frankly still is today among many Christians.

While Paul begins by saying that we are all guilty of sins in general (chapter 2), he then moves on in chapter 3 to address the specific sins of religious people. Notice that the specific sins he lists here have to do with hateful speech (“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness”) and violence (“Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”) What Paul is describing here is the sins of religious zeal that results in hateful judgment and acts of violence done in God's name. Since Paul would of course include himself in his indictment, we could read this as Paul's own confession of the shape of his religious life before his conversion:

“My throats was an open grave; my tongue practiced deceit. The poison of vipers was on my lips. My mouth was full of cursing and bitterness.
My feet were swift to shed blood; ruin and misery marked my ways, and the way of peace I did not know. There is no fear of God before my eyes.”

Paul did not know the way of peace, and there was no fear of God before his eyes. So Paul's aim in this first part of his argument is to put the fear of God before our eyes: if we continue on this way of judgment and retribution, it will lead to our own destruction. This is also a common theme of Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus warns of God's wrath unless we embrace the radical way of forgiveness.

At this point in Romans, Paul introduces a new concept: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify" (Ro 3:21). The law here represents the system of retributive justice, of blessings and curses, that Paul has been discussing up to now. If we obey the law we receive blessing, and if we break it we find wrath. Paul contrasts this way of retribution with "the righteousness/justice of God." This is God's action, motivated by unmerited love of enemies, to make things right. It is restorative justice. So what Paul is proposing is that God's restorative justice breaks into the cycle of violence inherit in retributive justice. God overcomes the cycle of our hurting and being hurt by acting to restore and reconcile us.

With all that in mind, let's return to 3:25-26: Paul writes that God made things right through Jesus in order to "demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished." In other words, God leaving sins unpunished was seen as wrong by Paul's audience who wanted to see God's wrath poured out on bad people. They felt it was unfair that bad people got away with it, and wanted God to punish them. Paul has been arguing that the bigger problem is that we are all bad, and so in wanting this we are really just hoping to add to the hatred and pain, we are pulling ourselves into the destructive cycle of retribution. In order for God to show that he was not unjust in leaving past sins unpunished, in not wiping us all out (and it would be unjust to simply do nothing in the face of evil), God now acts to make things right through Jesus. "God did this to demonstrate his restorative justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." (v 26, my translation). We could also translate this verse as "God did this to demonstrate his goodness at the present time, so as to be good and the one who makes-good those who have faith in Jesus."

So I think Peter is absolutely right in saying that Paul is not addressing the question "When will God restore broken, fractured lives" (important as that question is) but rather, "How can God possibly forgive punishment-deserving rebels in a way that doesn't make a mockery of the very retribution they deserve?" More specifically, the question is how can God just ignore sin, and not punish it? Paul's answer is that God cannot simply ignore sin and be just, but God can act to heal sin (and sinners) and make things right, and in doing so God demonstrates true justice which is God's restorative justice that comes through Jesus.

Now how exactly God's action in Jesus (in the incarnation, cross, and resurrection) acts to restore us, Paul does not detail here (he does elsewhere, but that will need to be the subject of another post). He simply claims here that what God is doing now in Jesus apart from law (that is, in contrast to the system of retribution) is about God's act to restore ("the justice of God" diakaiosyne theo) as an answer to the problem of retributive justice (wrath).

Peter Gurry writes that "We are victims to be sure, but far more serious is the fact that we are perpetrators and that all our sin is finally directed Godward." As we have seen, Paul was a perpetrator. That sin was indeed directed Godward. Jesus confronts Paul on the road to Damascus with the words "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5). Because God identifies with the victim, when we hurt others, even when we do this as Paul did in God's name, (or perhaps especially when we do) as do it unto them, the least, the vulnerable, we do it unto God. But what Paul the violent perpetrator encountered was grace and forgiveness instead of wrath, and that unmerited enemy love turned him around so that he renounced his former commitment to the way of retribution, and instead embraced the way of grace and restorative justice in Jesus. Paul's brokenness was precisely his hurtful understanding of religion that lead him to hatred and violence, and it is this wrong understanding of justice that Jesus undoes in Paul, replacing that with a new understanding of God's justice typified by restorative enemy love.

Following Jesus means following in that way of love of enemies, of forsaking judgment and instead embracing healing restoring forgiveness. To claim that the atonement is one rooted in the fulfillment of a retributive demand (that God punishes Jesus to fulfill the demands of retributive justice) is to utterly miss the entire point of the New Testament--that God's way is the way of radical restorative grace. That is what God's justice means. The cross is a demonstration of that restorative justice acting to overcome the way of retribution by making things good again, rather than adding hurt to hurt.