Murder. Evil. Justice.
SORRY FOR the lack of recent posts; I’ve too many irons in the fire these days. The following are portions of an essay I began writing a couple of weeks ago, trying to organize my thoughts in regard to the recent murder of a friend's son, and the possibility that state prosecutors will seek execution of the defendant. My apologies if taking these portions of the essay out of context result in a confusing read…
“First, and to cite the thoughts of others, contemporary theologian Gregory Boyd has gone to great lengths to make the point that there is much evil in the world that God will not, or perhaps cannot, prevent when a person makes an explicit effort to see it done and no other person makes any effort—not so much as a prayer—to prevent it. Boyd, claiming that God is powerful and loving yet not meticulously controlling of his creation, has presented his theodicy in the face of much opposition from other Christians, but not completely bereft of good company. Some fifty years ago the late philosopher Alan Watts, who was largely responsible for bringing Zen into the American consciousness, made the point that God, as good and ultimate reality, is so far beyond evil that there is no need for God to actively oppose evil. Evil attempts to oppose good, but in the end this is doomed to failure, since to oppose reality is to promote the idea of non-reality, which cannot avoid being self-defeating. It is impossible for evil, in the end, to win out over good. Therefore, the effort of a supremely good reality to actively oppose evil would be akin to a man wearing himself out swinging his fists through the air at an imaginary foe. It is the nature of God not to fight evil as though it has a substance that must be fought, but rather to win over evil with good. God defeats evil by being goodness. It is the nature of creation that this is what must always happen, will always happen, and does always happen. After two thousand years, it is Jesus who has proved to be vindicated as an image of God; not his pious and powerful executioners. It is the story of Jesus, after all, which teaches us that God—although never responsible for nor complicit in evil—uses emergent evil to accomplish good. In my own argument vis-à-vis the Christian majority, even Judas was saved by God. If so, then the story of Jesus and Judas is not only one of God using the evil act of Christ’s crucifixion to bring salvation to mankind, but also one of God saving the conduit of that evil. In other words, God’s victory in Jesus is complete; defeating evil in principle and rescuing those who succumb to it—all the way down to saving the greedy and self-serving man who betrayed God himself.
This version of the Judas story, born of my subjective experience of God’s ultimate and perfect goodness, is a compelling image of the contrast between God’s way of confronting evil and man’s way of confronting evil. The problem of evil continues to exist, it might be said, because mankind continues to want to fight evil on evil’s terms, rather than to defeat it on God’s terms.
Secondly, and in a related sense, is the idea of justice. In fairness to traditional Christianity, it is true that the wages of Judas’ sin was his death. But we mustn’t forget that his death was at his own hands, not God’s. God did not kill Judas; Judas did. Goodness did not kill Judas; evil did. I doubt that it is uncommon for Christians to believe that God nodded in approval, metaphorically smacking his lips, as Judas tied a rope around his own neck and hanged himself from a tree. It is likely that many Christians can almost hear God whispering, “Vengeance is mine” as Judas gasped his last breaths. But I find it highly doubtful that a good and loving God, even a highly anthropomorphized God, would do so. Satan however, as Christendom’s image of evil, would do such a thing. Evil would, I expect, find satisfaction in seeing one man crucified, and his betrayer hanged. This would be the perfect ending for one who is evil and orchestrates treachery and suffering; a rotted, festering twist of evil upon evil, where everybody loses.
As depressing at it is to admit, this is also the typical way of man’s rule. Presumably because he believes that God cannot or will not do any better, man does his best to ensure that everyone loses equally, no matter how many must be punished to accomplish this interpretation of justice. Given that a grievous crime is committed and that somebody has lost much in its commission, mankind says—in a rather puerile line of reasoning—that the only way for fairness (read, justice) to be done is for us to make sure that the one who committed the evil loses in proportion to his act. Meanwhile, man complains about culture’s decline, and the dummying-down of moral values.
The Judaic ancestry of Christianity demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, an allowance for a people who, as great as they were, had not yet reached the zenith of their maturity in God. Their eventual king David, a hero of heroes in human history, still stands today as one of few ancients who recognized that it was a contrite heart and mercy, not blood and the sacrifice of life, that God truly desired of his chosen people. Of course David was himself guilty of breaking at least four of the ten commandments in association with a single irresponsible episode, so he learned about mercy first hand; by clearly recognizing that he needed it very desperately. What made David great—his heart—ensured that the lesson was not lost on him, and so scripture itself eventually tells us that God saw David as a man after God’s own heart. We can only conclude that the compliment is in regard to David’s internalization of God’s grace and mercy, and of its ability to transcend all things—including David’s own covetousness, adultery, false witness, murder and, possibly, idolatry. David foresaw what others would see much later, and would become a core view of Christianity: That it is grace and mercy which ultimately save mankind—not adherence to moral law, nor the fear and implementation of punishment for its violation.
Yet Christian faith as a whole has done little better than the majority of its ancestors when it comes to internalizing this truth. Christianity has long argued that God is loving and just, and since he is, his love demands justice. In the pale light of man’s ways, this has meant that any and all wrongdoing must be dealt with as swiftly and severely as possible. The wages of sin, Christianity is quick to note, is death. And so, Christianity has operated under the unsophisticated theory that God’s love compels him to mete out retributive justice upon those who choose evil, and that he must do so in order to be fair (read, just) to those who choose good. How loving and fair would it be, says mankind, for the bad people to enjoy any lasting reward from a good God? How fair would it be, for example, for those who take life to be granted life? In practical terms, most people—to include most Christian people—hold the view that it isn’t fair for those we consider less good than ourselves to be given as much grace as we are. We have a tendency to calculate that we ourselves deserve God’s mercy while other people deserve God’s sword, and to conclude that this, precisely, is justice. By way of our propensity for fear, anger, hatred and revenge, we think this way. By way of our pride, we assume God thinks this way. The only problem with this view is that apparently God doesn’t think this way; not if we are to give any credence to the story of David, and to the recorded claim that Jesus, as God himself, forgave those who murdered him. God, it seems, is not encumbered by the weaknesses of man, and much of Christianity seems to have forgotten two not-so-small points: That God declared vengeance as his and his alone, and that claiming vengeance as one’s own does not necessitate an intent to employ it.
To the contrary, if God is just and loving, then God is just and loving and there is no separation between the two. In the reign and rule of God, justice occurs when the representative parties on both sides of evil acts are reconciled one to another in the light of God’s grace working through them. Whereas man’s justice prefers that evil acts be forever labeled, that right and wrong be eternally separated and duly treated, God seeks to resolve all things unto himself in a single, homogenous goodness. God’s justice is about man’s ideas of right and wrong, along with their incumbent pride and prejudices, dissolving away into oneness in God’s loving mercy. In the reign and rule of God, justice is served when the perpetrator of evil confronts his guilt, is humbled before God, thirsts for forgiveness, and is granted an equally humble forgiveness fully and freely by he who remains most affected by the evil. Among other things, this is what the Jesus story means, and it is the only true justice in all of creation. Those who seek justice outside of God’s love are chasing a phantom, and believing in something that can never be.
While man’s form of justice is to trade wound for wound, God’s form of justice is to utterly heal every wound and every person who is willing to be healed. God’s form of justice is in loving as he loves—to forgive fully, freely and completely. If we cannot accept this as true, then there is no longer any point in us speaking, thinking, or hoping of heaven.”
“First, and to cite the thoughts of others, contemporary theologian Gregory Boyd has gone to great lengths to make the point that there is much evil in the world that God will not, or perhaps cannot, prevent when a person makes an explicit effort to see it done and no other person makes any effort—not so much as a prayer—to prevent it. Boyd, claiming that God is powerful and loving yet not meticulously controlling of his creation, has presented his theodicy in the face of much opposition from other Christians, but not completely bereft of good company. Some fifty years ago the late philosopher Alan Watts, who was largely responsible for bringing Zen into the American consciousness, made the point that God, as good and ultimate reality, is so far beyond evil that there is no need for God to actively oppose evil. Evil attempts to oppose good, but in the end this is doomed to failure, since to oppose reality is to promote the idea of non-reality, which cannot avoid being self-defeating. It is impossible for evil, in the end, to win out over good. Therefore, the effort of a supremely good reality to actively oppose evil would be akin to a man wearing himself out swinging his fists through the air at an imaginary foe. It is the nature of God not to fight evil as though it has a substance that must be fought, but rather to win over evil with good. God defeats evil by being goodness. It is the nature of creation that this is what must always happen, will always happen, and does always happen. After two thousand years, it is Jesus who has proved to be vindicated as an image of God; not his pious and powerful executioners. It is the story of Jesus, after all, which teaches us that God—although never responsible for nor complicit in evil—uses emergent evil to accomplish good. In my own argument vis-à-vis the Christian majority, even Judas was saved by God. If so, then the story of Jesus and Judas is not only one of God using the evil act of Christ’s crucifixion to bring salvation to mankind, but also one of God saving the conduit of that evil. In other words, God’s victory in Jesus is complete; defeating evil in principle and rescuing those who succumb to it—all the way down to saving the greedy and self-serving man who betrayed God himself.
This version of the Judas story, born of my subjective experience of God’s ultimate and perfect goodness, is a compelling image of the contrast between God’s way of confronting evil and man’s way of confronting evil. The problem of evil continues to exist, it might be said, because mankind continues to want to fight evil on evil’s terms, rather than to defeat it on God’s terms.
Secondly, and in a related sense, is the idea of justice. In fairness to traditional Christianity, it is true that the wages of Judas’ sin was his death. But we mustn’t forget that his death was at his own hands, not God’s. God did not kill Judas; Judas did. Goodness did not kill Judas; evil did. I doubt that it is uncommon for Christians to believe that God nodded in approval, metaphorically smacking his lips, as Judas tied a rope around his own neck and hanged himself from a tree. It is likely that many Christians can almost hear God whispering, “Vengeance is mine” as Judas gasped his last breaths. But I find it highly doubtful that a good and loving God, even a highly anthropomorphized God, would do so. Satan however, as Christendom’s image of evil, would do such a thing. Evil would, I expect, find satisfaction in seeing one man crucified, and his betrayer hanged. This would be the perfect ending for one who is evil and orchestrates treachery and suffering; a rotted, festering twist of evil upon evil, where everybody loses.
As depressing at it is to admit, this is also the typical way of man’s rule. Presumably because he believes that God cannot or will not do any better, man does his best to ensure that everyone loses equally, no matter how many must be punished to accomplish this interpretation of justice. Given that a grievous crime is committed and that somebody has lost much in its commission, mankind says—in a rather puerile line of reasoning—that the only way for fairness (read, justice) to be done is for us to make sure that the one who committed the evil loses in proportion to his act. Meanwhile, man complains about culture’s decline, and the dummying-down of moral values.
The Judaic ancestry of Christianity demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, an allowance for a people who, as great as they were, had not yet reached the zenith of their maturity in God. Their eventual king David, a hero of heroes in human history, still stands today as one of few ancients who recognized that it was a contrite heart and mercy, not blood and the sacrifice of life, that God truly desired of his chosen people. Of course David was himself guilty of breaking at least four of the ten commandments in association with a single irresponsible episode, so he learned about mercy first hand; by clearly recognizing that he needed it very desperately. What made David great—his heart—ensured that the lesson was not lost on him, and so scripture itself eventually tells us that God saw David as a man after God’s own heart. We can only conclude that the compliment is in regard to David’s internalization of God’s grace and mercy, and of its ability to transcend all things—including David’s own covetousness, adultery, false witness, murder and, possibly, idolatry. David foresaw what others would see much later, and would become a core view of Christianity: That it is grace and mercy which ultimately save mankind—not adherence to moral law, nor the fear and implementation of punishment for its violation.
Yet Christian faith as a whole has done little better than the majority of its ancestors when it comes to internalizing this truth. Christianity has long argued that God is loving and just, and since he is, his love demands justice. In the pale light of man’s ways, this has meant that any and all wrongdoing must be dealt with as swiftly and severely as possible. The wages of sin, Christianity is quick to note, is death. And so, Christianity has operated under the unsophisticated theory that God’s love compels him to mete out retributive justice upon those who choose evil, and that he must do so in order to be fair (read, just) to those who choose good. How loving and fair would it be, says mankind, for the bad people to enjoy any lasting reward from a good God? How fair would it be, for example, for those who take life to be granted life? In practical terms, most people—to include most Christian people—hold the view that it isn’t fair for those we consider less good than ourselves to be given as much grace as we are. We have a tendency to calculate that we ourselves deserve God’s mercy while other people deserve God’s sword, and to conclude that this, precisely, is justice. By way of our propensity for fear, anger, hatred and revenge, we think this way. By way of our pride, we assume God thinks this way. The only problem with this view is that apparently God doesn’t think this way; not if we are to give any credence to the story of David, and to the recorded claim that Jesus, as God himself, forgave those who murdered him. God, it seems, is not encumbered by the weaknesses of man, and much of Christianity seems to have forgotten two not-so-small points: That God declared vengeance as his and his alone, and that claiming vengeance as one’s own does not necessitate an intent to employ it.
To the contrary, if God is just and loving, then God is just and loving and there is no separation between the two. In the reign and rule of God, justice occurs when the representative parties on both sides of evil acts are reconciled one to another in the light of God’s grace working through them. Whereas man’s justice prefers that evil acts be forever labeled, that right and wrong be eternally separated and duly treated, God seeks to resolve all things unto himself in a single, homogenous goodness. God’s justice is about man’s ideas of right and wrong, along with their incumbent pride and prejudices, dissolving away into oneness in God’s loving mercy. In the reign and rule of God, justice is served when the perpetrator of evil confronts his guilt, is humbled before God, thirsts for forgiveness, and is granted an equally humble forgiveness fully and freely by he who remains most affected by the evil. Among other things, this is what the Jesus story means, and it is the only true justice in all of creation. Those who seek justice outside of God’s love are chasing a phantom, and believing in something that can never be.
While man’s form of justice is to trade wound for wound, God’s form of justice is to utterly heal every wound and every person who is willing to be healed. God’s form of justice is in loving as he loves—to forgive fully, freely and completely. If we cannot accept this as true, then there is no longer any point in us speaking, thinking, or hoping of heaven.”
posted by A.Lee at 11:13 PM
