Cognitive Discopants takes a stab at Mark Driscoll’s “God hates you” sermon. The video has been bouncing around the Christian blogs lately like a ping-pong ball, and CD embeds it in his post if you want to view it for context. It’ll help to know that one example Driscoll uses in the sermon to help us understand God’s retributive justice is imagining our own reaction to a thief who had broken into our home.
[W]hat Driscoll is describing is not justice – it’s vengeance.
As a criminal defence lawyer, I routinely represent people who have broken into other people’s homes (and worse). Most have tragic stories of dysfunctional families, physical or sexual abuse, abandonment, and drug addiction. The prosecutor will often invite the victim to submit a “victim impact statement” to the court. Some victims are just like Driscoll’s notion of God. They want “justice”, by which they mean that they want the offender to be punished. They were hurt and they want to see the offender hurt in return. In short, they want revenge.
The nobler of the victims respond differently. Sure, they recognize the need for consequences. But they are more concerned with seeing the offender rehabilitated. They want consequences that serve a purpose, namely, to see the offender restored to society. Sometimes they even offer forgiveness, unsolicited.
via Driscoll and the God of Hate « Cognitive Discopants.
Great tug-o-war here. Nothing is beyond God’s power, so should we imagine him as better than us at getting the revenge he’s entitled to, or better than us at restoring relationships with those who’ve acted offensively?
Edits:
13 Oct 2011 — I changed the title of the post from “Driscoll and the God of Hate” to “Justice vs. Revenge”. Any prior inbound links were broken as a result.
18 Oct 2011 — I tweaked the last sentence to better compare the aspects of revenge and forgiveness that I’m after.