Thinking about fear as a motive for vengeance, today. It’s been on my mind quite a bit, actually. Lots of vengeance going on lately. Fear makes vengeance make sense. It makes vengeance rational, beyond a spiritual rationale. Vengeance becomes necessary when we fear that justice won’t be done. And justice is important. Justice belongs to all humanity. It is withheld by evil, true, but heaped upon the earth by good.

Fear demands revenge.
Faith awaits justice.
Fear believes that no one will hear the cry of the oppressed.
Faith believes that God will…if not in this life temporally, then beyond it eternally.

Recently, I watched the movie Faster. Make no mistake, this is a movie about vengeance. And quite honestly, when you watch it, it’s simple to make the mental adjustment necessary to completely buy into it. When a wrong has been done. It begs to be righted. Faster is movie about a man who has suffered a kind of wrong that needs to be avenged. There is a need for justice to be served…

And so pursues it…hunting the men who killed his brother in cold blood and left him for dead.
It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of Dwayne Johnson.

In the letter to the Hebrews, there is another idea at work. In a passionate sermon on perseverance, the ability to go on despite injustice, the writer proclaims:

“Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us.

For we know the one who said, “I will take revenge. I will pay them back.”
He also said, “The LORD will judge his own people.

It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb 10:29-31)

Um…that’s a scary statement. It’s a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. I think what the author of Hebrews is trying to communicate is that it’s OK to trust that God will right injustice. And when God does this thing, it will look different than we expect it will (Isa 55:8). It doesn’t look like toting a .44 magnum and performing the God like task of taking life. God’s judgment will not appear very human at all. Eugene Peterson writes that judgment looks like:

The biblical word judgment means “the decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.” Thrones of judgment are the places that that word is announced. Judgment is not a word about things, describing them; it is a word which does things, putting love in motion, applying mercy, nullifying wrong, ordering goodness. This word of God is everywhere in worship.
Eugene Peterson, “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction“

I remember seeing, on the day Osama Bin Laden was killed, the New York Times headline that read, “Bin Laden Killed By US Forces In Pakistan, Obama Says, Declaring Justice Has Been Done.” How would the writer of Hebrews respond to that statement? Possibly, simply by restating something like this, “…Declaring Revenge Has Been Done.”

In the Hebrews passage, the Greek word for ‘terrible’ is a derivative of the word for ‘fear’. I think that what makes the hand of God, the hand that dispenses justice so fearful, is that it’s terrible for everyone. Righting wrong with divine love, cosmic mercy and unfathomable goodness isn’t what victims cry out for. It’s not what evil condones and doesn’t sound all that much worth waiting for. What if judgment looks like reconciliation? [For those who need there to be punishment, don't worry. In cases where reconciliation happens somebody's going to hate it!] But that’s the business of God…pouring justice upon the needy, avenging evils, vanquishing the enemies of the righteous.

Perhaps, humanity would be satisfied and give up our desire for vengeance, if Jesus would just do it all a bit…FASTER.

What say ye?