“Sharks in the swimming pool,” remembers historian Carlos Eire. “Sharks and plenty of them, swarming. The sharks are looking for blood and freedom, circling furiously. There’s nothing calm about them. . . . Do they know [my stepbrother] is here, looking at them, so close to the diving board?”
There may have been a day when Carlos Eire didn’t long to push his stepbrother Ernesto into a pool filled with hungry predators. But now, at age 9, on what should be an innocent visit to the Havana aquarium, anger stirs within him.
Ernesto had cornered young Carlos and attempted to sexually molest him on multiple occasions.
I fought him off, many times.
And he wouldn’t stop trying.
Until I got big enough to punch him hard enough.
Now, at the aquarium, Eire isn’t just enraptured by the bright colors of tropical fish—he also feels the diving board and shark-filled pool call to him, “Justifiable homicide!”
Eire had been hurt, and he longed for payback, for vengeance. It’s an understandable hunger for someone who has been abused, but what should we think of this desire? Is payback one of our worst human instincts? Could it be one of the most beautiful? Could it be that suffering people and those who help them are meant to find comfort in retribution?
Rage Roaring Below the Surface
When someone’s been abused, it’s often difficult for him to speak up. He fears how the abuser will respond. He fears he won’t be believed. And yet, if Eire’s experience is common to humanity, there’s also rage roaring below the surface.
When a victim’s family and friends recognize the abuse and its affront to the victim’s dignity, they long for retribution. In those raw, angry moments, they want to answer an abuser’s harm in kind, but they may also feel conflicted. “I know it’s wrong,” you might hear, “but I’m gonna hurt him.”
Is payback one of our worst human instincts? Could it be one of the most beautiful?
That’s a normal response in a culture where retribution receives mixed reviews. When something bad happens to a hated public figure, people are quick to call it karma. But if a clergyman sees God’s judgment in a natural disaster or pandemic, people are scandalized. They say he’s out of touch. When a character like Killmonger in the Black Panther movies wants to punish imperialist oppressors, he’s a villain, but when John Wick seeks vengeance, he’s a hero.
When we look to the Scriptures, our conflicted emotions and thinking don’t immediately resolve. God’s law prescribes “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Deut. 19:21). Jesus, however, says, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39).
Scripture’s Vision of Justice
How do we parse this out? Political pundits today may pit social justice against “law and order,” but one beauty of biblical justice is that retribution and restoration are held together. The Lord keeps “steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” but at the same time, he “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:7) The law goes on to use the same Hebrew word, go’el, to name both the “avenger of blood” sent to enforce capital punishment for murder (Num. 35:19) and the “family redeemer” responsible to restore the land and heritage of a debtor or widow (Lev. 25:25–28; Ruth 4:3–6).
Before God’s judgment seat, the righteous but disadvantaged are, like the valleys Isaiah describes, “lifted up,” and the wicked who are haughty and oppressive are, like the mountains and hills, “made low” (Isa. 40:4). For justice to be done, both the lifting work of restoration and the razing work of retribution are necessary. We shouldn’t pit them against each other.
Mercy’s Surprising Motivation
The New Testament goes one logical step further. Paul shows how our human hunger for payback can move us toward mercy instead of retaliation. Near the end of Romans 12, the apostle echoes Jesus’s command to turn the other cheek. What motivates such restraint? The answer may surprise you.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to eat.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. (vv. 17–21, NIV)
According to Paul, what motivates self-control and even peacemaking kindness toward enemies is confidence in God’s vengeance, a conviction that because God is just, the wicked will ultimately get the retribution coming to them. In mercy, we endure injustice now because God won’t ultimately let evil go unpunished.
Paul tells us we can forsake our revenge because of what God achieves through his retributive work. God sometimes metes out consequences and comeuppance in this life. He also promises us all wickedness will finally be paid for, either in hell (Matt. 13:41–42, 50) or at the cross (1 John 2:1–2). Through his vengeance, God will achieve better justice than our human anger can (James 1:20).
Beautiful Prayers for Payback
This confidence that God will repay our enemies lies behind the disturbingly raw imprecatory prayers peppered throughout the Psalter (see Pss. 11; 37; 58; 69; 109; 137). We may be appalled when we first read “O daughter of Babylon. . . . Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (137:8, 9), but this is a righteous cry of grief from a nation that’s seen the same done to its own children. Christians who suffer griefs can pray similarly today. As one prayer book beautifully models,
O dear Lord, You know that if the world cannot destroy Your name or Your kingdom, there are those who work day and night with tricks, fraud, and many strange conspiracies to try to do so. They encourage and support every evil intention raging against Your name, Your Word, Your kingdom, and Your children, threatening to destroy them. . . . Constrain those who seek to harm us, and turn against them their own tricks and devices as we sing: “He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends” (Psalm 7).
When we’re caring for people who have suffered abuse and harm and we open up to one of the Psalter’s imprecatory prayers, we invite the hurting one to plead to God for recompense.
When you’re hurting, and you pray a prayer like this, you put your hunger for retribution into God’s hands instead of taking matters into your own. In that moment, you appeal to God’s justice in prayer even as you may also appeal to his instruments of justice on earth.
Faithful Appeals to the Sword
Before his death, Chuck Colson wrote on capital punishment. In his essay, Colson first makes a compelling case against it. “As a lawyer I observed how flawed the legal system is,” he writes, “and I concluded . . . it was better that a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be executed.” Colson was also convinced capital punishment doesn’t work pragmatically—it doesn’t effectively deter violent crime. Yet Colson came to favor capital punishment for barbaric crimes, at least in principle. Why did he change his mind? The biblical necessity of payback. “There can be no mercy,” he writes, “where justice is not satisfied.”
Political pundits today may pit social justice against ‘law and order,’ but one beauty of biblical justice is that retribution and restoration are held together.
Whether you agree with Colson’s conclusion about capital punishment or not, you’ll probably still know it’s important for victims of harm to have a place where they can appeal for legal justice. Governing authorities exist for just this reason. As Paul makes clear, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but . . . if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.” (Rom. 13:3–4).
Sadly, appealing to the government isn’t always the first instinct for Christian leaders when they discover evidence of abuse. It’s one thing to know you’re a mandatory reporter, but when a toddler comes to Sunday school repeatedly with large bruises, or a pre-teen boy is found molesting his friend in the church basement, many church leaders’ first instinct is to look for more information, to ask parents what’s been happening at home. This gut reaction could endanger a child by alerting his abuser. It also misunderstands the church leader’s responsibility.
Why Don’t We Appeal?
As counselor Brad Hambrick observes, though Christians may be skeptical about secular government’s intent to do what is right, “the jurisdictional authority of a social worker or police officer can help promote safety in a way that a pastor, deacon, or small group leader cannot.” We should be grateful for their involvement in cases of abuse and neglect, even if this goes against our instincts.
In such cases, church leaders often think first of the Bible’s instructions about restorative church discipline (Matt. 18:15–18) and Christ’s provision of salvation for even the worst sinners (1 Cor. 6:9–11). We think in terms of pastoral care and shepherding. We’re self-critical, not wanting to falsely accuse a brother or sister, or we think about the potential fallout when the situation is made public: Will people leave the church? Will they wonder what else may be going wrong?
We may even think that if an abuser quickly repents and reconciles with the abused, this is a “holier” solution than “secular” justice. But shepherds and ministers aren’t detectives or investigators. It’s not a church leader’s responsibility to substantiate suspicions but simply to report them to Child Protective Services (or the equivalent agency in your state or region). Our biblical convictions about retribution help us here. The one in authority “is God’s servant for [our] good” (Rom. 13:4). We trust God to vindicate the innocent and punish the guilty. We can also trust his authorities to do their investigative and (if necessary) crime-punishing work.
The Panic of Waiting
Seventeen years after his trip to the aquarium in Havana, Carlos Eire swims laps in an Olympic-size pool in Minnesota. He’s on his lunch break, and he has the pool to himself.
I’ve already completed about thirty laps when, suddenly, I’m seized by an irrational panic. I’ve just crossed from the shallow end to the deep end. This is also a diving pool, and it’s very deep. I look down at the bottom, so far from me. It’s green down there. . . . I see sharks circling. I feel them coming up from the bottom of the pool, from behind me, from the right and left.
Eire’s panic attack is intense. “I can feel their jaws approaching. I can see my blood streaming into the pool, mingling with the chlorine. I can feel my femur sticking out of my severed leg. I can feel the pain.” Where does this fear come from? Why are the sharks Carlos intended for Ernesto now coming for him?
Hunger for, prayers for, and even appeals for retributive justice are biblical and important for suffering people. But even when you trust God, waiting for his justice in this broken world can feel discouraging and confusing. Maybe justice never comes in this life. Perhaps the wrong person is punished. Maybe the longing and search for justice consumes your life and the sharks in your mind begin to circle; there can be a deep human cost of not appealing to the powers God has ordained.
He Swam with the Sharks
The good news is we already have a perfect demonstration of justice. Thankfully, Eire shows us where to find it.
I reach the end of the pool and leap out, shaking like Jell-O. I look at the water. Blue-green. Calm. Not one shark in sight. . . . When will someone else show up? I’ll be all right if someone else is in there to attract the sharks. Five minutes later, someone opens the door from the locker room, walks over, and dives in. Thank God. Now the sharks in my mind will go for him instead. Now I can finish up.
Earlier in Paul’s epistle to the Romans—before he writes about overcoming evil with good or God-ordained government bearing the sword—he writes of humanity’s universal need for justice. Paul describes how all people, Jew and Gentile alike, stand under God’s wrath because of sin. Then he gives sinners and sufferers the best news about retribution.
Through his vengeance, God will achieve better justice than human anger ever can.
By God’s grace, Jesus has taken God’s payback on our behalf. Paul writes, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. . . . He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just [in paying for sin] and the one who justifies [by restoring to salvation] those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:25–26, NIV).
For hurting people who long for payback and for the church leaders who help them, Jesus is the other man in the pool. Our hunger for vengeance is God-given, but we can release our grudges in prayer, appeal to God-ordained authorities for earthly justice, and refuse to retaliate. We can both find comfort and leave vengeance in God’s hands because God demonstrated his perfect justice for us in Christ at the cross. Thank God.
The Gospel Coalition