Christian Living

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I had been meaning to write something on the biblical view of justice for a few months. I’m glad, though, that I was delayed in doing so, because perhaps writing about it now might be considered more timely. The word ‘justice’ has been bandied around a lot recently in light of the death of Osama Bin Laden. And in fact it has often been used in the very way I had originally wished to counteract. The scenes of celebration and joy at the death of this evil man personally left me feeling cold and dejected. ‘Justice has been done’ I heard again and again. ‘Really?!’ I thought, ‘this seems more like retribution than justice?!’ And indeed these two concepts, justice and retribution, are frequently equated, even by many Christians. It is my firm belief that the biblical view of justice, and of course the understanding of justice as espoused by Jesus, is very different from retribution. In fact I believe Jesus spoke out against any form of retribution, and as such I hardly feel we are doing justice to justice.

So what is the Biblical understanding of justice? I think N.T Wright, former Bishop of Durham and leading biblical scholar, defines it best as ‘putting the world to rights’. God created the world and saw that it was good. Due to the sin of man God’s beautiful creation became corrupted, and God in His infinite and never-failing love put together His rescue plan, a plan which would involve his Son freely entering into the depths of suffering, pain and despair to ransom this captive world from evil and sin. This story of redemption history reveals a God whose great desire was to restore this creation to the glory for which it was created. And so Paul speaks of ‘the righteousness of God’-this is true justice, putting right this distorted and corrupted world.

This is why I firmly believe that the Biblical view of justice does not permit capital punishment. A state which permits capital punishment within its judicial system is thus clearly ignorant of the fact that it has only succeeded in undermining its judicial system. It’s a case of pulling the carpet from under one’s feet. For true justice, biblical justice, is not just about administering a punishment which is considered to be of equal measure to the crime committed (an impossible undertaking in any case), but true justice seeks to reform and renew.

Christians often refer to the biblical phrase ‘an eye for an eye’ in defence of capital punishment, arguing that it is a clear endorsement of retributive punishment. However I believe that this represents a gross misunderstanding of the phrase. For the emphasis of ‘an eye for an eye’ is not on the act of administering revenge/punishment in equal measure, but rather on not administering revenge/punishment in greater measure. It is not a case of ‘thou SHALT take an eye for an eye’ but rather ‘thou shalt NOT take more than an eye for an eye’. This understanding makes much more sense of what Jesus has to say in Matthew 5. Jesus teaches that if one has been struck unfairly one should in fact offer his other cheek! In other words if you want to avoid the very real possibility of retaliating in such a way that you take more than eye for an eye, thereby entreating your enemy to come back at you once more, than don’t retaliate at all. Nay, why not even offer your enemy something, thereby ‘heaping hot coals upon his head’. So here, Jesus challenges us to avoid revenge altogether. He also says (it is recorded in the same Chapter of Matthew) that we should ‘love our enemies’. That would have included Osama Bin Laden. I for one think the Archbishop of Canterbury was right to question the ‘justice’ of the killing of even this evil tyrant. That is not to say that it was definitely not the right thing, especially if it was a dark, smoke-filled room to shoot someone believed to be the enemy. I have to say though that that is not the picture painted by the American politicians who have now admitted he was unarmed.

I doubt God was joining with in the celebrations at the death of one created in His image. It strikes me as ironic that a little over a week before the event of Osama’s death we reflected as Christians on those who had cheered and mocked at the innocent death of God’s anointed. Of course Osama Bin Laden was not innocent. But that picture of the jeering onlookers at the crucifixion reflects the natural human desire for vengeance and retribution. Revenge is a natural human reaction in the face of tragedy (in fact I think it is natural to want to take more than an eye for an eye), but as Sir Francis Bacon wrote ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice’ and indeed it is no real justice at all. Osama Bin Laden was a cold-hearted, indiscriminate killer. But his death, like the deaths he caused were a reminder to us, as God’s representatives on earth, that this world remains one corrupted by sin, where evil and injustice still make their mark. God has dealt a decisive blow to the cause of evil in the sending of His Son, but I long for the day when He finally puts the world to rights once more.

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