100 Sermon Illustrations on Revenge

The Chicago police have a recurring problem every winter. Usually somebody will park in a nearby parking lot, then slave away for how ever many hours it takes to shovel out a car-sized space in front of his house, naturally so he can park his car there. Then he goes back to the lot to get his car. When he returns home, he finds that the space has been taken by some - other - car. He is, well, very upset.

What most people do is write nasty notes etc., and place them on the windshield of the offending vehicle. Where the police get involved, however, is the occasional case where the individual vents his wrath in somewhat more violent means. Tires and throats have been slashed over this.

One time a fellow got creative. Instead of doing the usual vindictiveness, he got out his garden hose and watered the automobile down, real well. I mean, very, very thoroughly. The water, of course, froze solid. When the owner returned, instead of a car, he found one car-sized Popsicle. The note on the car read: “You wanted this space? Here, it's yours until spring! Have a nice winter.”

There was difficulty between two neighbor farmers relative to the boundary between lands. The one who held a terrible grudge. against the other, upon leaving home for some days, gave instructions to his small son to burn the neighbor's barn while he was away. He told the boy to slip up to the barn late at night, fire it, and then run back home quickly and no one would ever know, and he would get even with his enemy. The father left and the boy carried out the instructions, The barn was burned. No one could imagine how. Soon the man returned, terribly surprised! Oh, the deceitfulness of the human heart. Soon the boy, who burned the barn, was taken ill. He was very nervous. He could not eat nor sleep. Finally he said, “Father, all I can see is the burning barn.” The father assured him that he had done right; that they had gotten even with their neighbor. But the boy grew worse and worse. Finally he was dying, and the neighbors were there. In a delirious condition, he told of burning the barn. His sin had “found him out.”

AT ONE TIME the Horse had the plain entirely to himself. Then a Stag intruded into his domain and shared his pasture. The Horse, desiring to revenge himself on the stranger, asked a man if he were willing to help him in punishing the Stag. The man replied that if the Horse would receive a bit in his mouth and agree to carry him, he would contrive effective weapons against the Stag. The Horse consented and allowed the man to mount him. From that hour he found that instead of obtaining revenge on the Stag, he had enslaved himself to the service of man.

When we allow the spirit of anger or revenge consume our heart, we allow ourselves to become enslaved.

I have no little admiration for William Tecumseh Sherman. I think the wreath, that the sculptor represents as resting on his brow in that noble statue at the entrance to Central Park in New York, rests there deservedly. He was not only the planner and executor of remarkable campaigns but a man of quick and scintillating intellect, not only a prophet of the times but a principal actor. But there is one incident in his life that I always read with sorrow.

On May 24, 1865, the victorious Union armies paraded through Washington. After Sherman, attended by Howard and all his staff, had ridden past the reviewing stand, Sherman dismounted and went upon the stand. He shook hands with the President Grant and each member of the Cabinet, save one. When he approached, Stanton, the secretary of war, extended his hand and Sherman publicly refused it. And worse than that, he records the incident with evident delight in his Memoirs. He had been aggrieved at Stanton's treatment of him after the surrender of Johnston. In this way, he sought to humiliate him, but the only person he really humiliated was General Sherman.

-- McCartney

During World War II the U.S. submarine Tang surfaced under the cover of darkness to fire upon a large Japanese convoy off the coast of China. Since previous raids had left the American vessel with only eight torpedoes, the accuracy of every shot was absolutely essential. The first seven missiles were right on target; but when the eighth was launched, it suddenly deviated and headed right back at their own ship. The emergency alarm to submerge rang out, but it was too late. Within a matter of seconds, the U.S. sub received a direct hit and sank almost instantly.

In much the same way we can destroy ourselves by hostility toward others. The effects of holding a grudge are very serious. Modern medicine has shown that emotions like bitterness and anger can cause problems such as headaches, backaches, allergic disorders, ulcers, high blood pressure, and heart attacks, to name just a few. When we do not love our enemies but strike back at them, we are usurping Gods's prerogative to mete out justice. We read in the Bible, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!” By seeking revenge, we really inflict great harm on ourselves.

There’s something psychologically enticing about the revenge plot. From THE GODFATHER to HAMLET to WUTHERING HEIGHTS, the characters may change but the lure is something so seemingly built in to human nature that we find ourselves inextricably drawn like Narcissus to the reflecting pool. That’s probably why I unintentionally know the opening line to Edgar Allen Poe’s THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

Revenge feels so natural; it rolls so nicely off the tongue. Perhaps because it feels like a reflex, when a story breaks the cycle of bloodshed, we stop. We sit up. We pay attention.

When Jean Valjean in LES MISÉRABLES uses the knife to cut the cords and not the throat of his arch-enemy and captive, Javert, we swallow hard. Perhaps we raise an eyebrow. Or when Edmund Dantes in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO lets go of the fourteen-year-old hatred of Mondego that he has caressed both day and night in the lonely dungeons of Chateau d’If while Mondego has caressed the woman who would have been Dantes’ wife, we may feel a bit lightheaded, like someone just pulled the rug out from under the universe.

If the sight of mercy and grace unsettles us so in fiction, it is no wonder that when a TRUE story like End of the Spear comes along, a disbelieving hush falls over an audience. And perhaps even angels bow their heads as they recall what they saw unfold in a remote jungle in Ecuador in 1956.

Most who know this tale of five missionaries — Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCulley — brutally killed in the jungle by the tribe with whom they had “dared to make contact,” know the story from the vantage point of Jim Elliot or his widow, Elisabeth. Inevitably, a pastor has slipped their story into a sermon illustration, and we scrawled the words, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” on the back of a program. Or we read THROUGH GATES OF SPLENDOR over a summer break or at the bidding of an older Christian friend.

But strikingly, this re-telling of the story comes from the perspective not of Jim or Elisabeth Elliot but of Steve Saint, who was only a child when his father Nate found a martyr’s crown at the end of a spear. The choice to tell the story though Steve’s eyes is undoubtedly one of the best that Every Tribe Entertainment, a brand new production company, could have made, for it allows the audience not only to internalize the pain of the loss, but also to feel the great gravitational pull toward revenge that is thwarted in the return to the tribe, and later on in Steve’s own face-to-face and highly charged encounter with his father’s killer, Mincayani.

As the impulse toward revenge is broken on the micro-level of the individual when the missionary widows, Nate Saint’s sister Rachel, and a young Steve Saint venture into the tribe and begin to live among them, slowly the drive toward revenge is broken down on the macro-level of the warring tribe itself. The Auca Indians, now called Waodani because their name had meant NAKED SAVAGE, had only known the way of revenge. Now they learn of the One who was speared without spearing back.

Because the film does a good job of touching on the spiritual themes without hammering the audience with them, it is a film that I’d quickly recommend to friends. Where the film could have left a little less to the audience’s imagination, however, was in the opening development of the missionaries’ motivation for contacting the tribe. With the yearning to reach the Waodani that we find in the journals and documented conversations of these young missionaries, the screenwriters missed a real opportunity to connect the audience with a stronger sense of the burning passion that led these men to lay down their lives in the first place. Though understandably, writers walk a fine line between the need to thrust the audience into the middle of the action right away and the need to develop character.

Viewers will not be disappointed, however, in the minor miracle that casting director Mark Fincannon accomplished in finding the Embera tribe to portray the Waodani. Director Jim Hanon comments, “There is an overall authenticity among the Embera people.... Ninabet, who played Gimade, has this incredible scene where Mincayani is over her with a machete and pulling her hair and she’s pleading for her life. You can’t watch that scene and not be hit by the fact that there’s a young Indian girl that lives in the rain forest and has never seen a motion picture before.” In fact, all but three of the actors cast to play the Waodani are native Panamanians who had never before entered a movie theater, much less had any acting experience.

Yet the true story of the sacrifice of five young missionaries, of reconciliation, and of the end of the cycle of revenge as a way of life for the Waodani, so electrified the Embera that the tribe wholeheartedly agreed to take part in the making of the film. Apparently, whenever real life echoes the story of the Gospel, its reverberations are heard with similar power.

Perhaps that’s why this film pulls off creating a captivating true-life story of the incarnation of Christianity without becoming overly pedantic. We cannot help but be curious when the revenge cycle is broken. Something in us realizes, as Cornelius Plantinga notes in his BREVIARY OF SIN, that THINGS ARE NOT THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE. Five young men at the beginning of their lives are not supposed to die so pointlessly, nor so violently. Revenge is our human way of fixing what seems broken, of restoring the precarious balance of justice, of SHALOM, to the universe. But the problem is that revenge doesn’t work to restore SHALOM. Revenge moves a victim to the place of perpetrator and begins a whole new chapter of life not the way it’s supposed to be. The Waodani, once the most violent society ever documented by anthropologists, know this experientially. Maybe that’s why when they break their spears and lay them down, we stop to listen.

________

A version of this article appeared at Common Grounds Online. Catherine Claire is a writer at Prison Fellowship.

FOR FURTHER READING

“Embracing Enemies,” BreakPoint Commentary, 17 January 2006.

“FOR THE LOVE OF A TRIBE: A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE SAINT,” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

“STEVE SAINT: THE LEGACY OF THE MARTYRS,” 700 Club.

Ryan Zempel, “END OF THE SPEAR,” Townhall.com, 22 December 2005.

Greg Wright, REVIEW OF END OF THE SPEAR, HollywoodJesus.com, 13 December 2005.

Cornelius Plantinga, NOT THE WAY IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE: A BREVIARY OF SIN (Eerdmans, 1995).

Alex Wainer, “LIGHT OF THE WORLD, CAMERA, ACTION,” BreakPoint Online, 6 January 2006.

Cher Smith, “BOOK REVIEW — BEHIND THE SCREEN,” CULTURE BEAT, 11 January 2006.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #11639]

Apartment dwellers have a new weapon to use on noisy neighbors, with a New Zealand man recording a compact disc of 64 minutes of lawnmower noise.

"If your neighbors have a party Saturday night fairly late...what you do is you get up at seven o'clock in the morning, put the hour of lawnmowing sound on and go out to a cafe," Wellington noise man and cafe owner Geoff Marsland told Reuters Monday.

The astro-turf covered CD offers listeners general lawnmower sounds along with feature moments such as the emptying of the catcher and stones hitting the blades.

Five thousand of the CDs are on the market, of which more than 4,000 have been snapped up by local retailers, Marsland said.

The album is his second. He previously sold around 4,200 copies of an album of urban noise such as a car alarm sounding off and a revving motorcycle.

That album -- entitled Urban Assault -- also featured three minutes of a baby crying, which Marsland described as the ultimate contraceptive.

Cosmus, [Cosmo de’Medici (1389-1464) a banker and statesmen of Florence who was a famous patron of the arts] Duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious and neglecting friends, as if these wrongs were unpardonable:

“You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our

enemies, [Matthew 6:12] but you never read that we are commanded

to forgive our friends.” [!!!] … This is certain, that a man that

studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would

heal and do well.

*

When attorney Theresa McConville sold her vacant lot in Ventura Country in 1985, a losing bidder was Reynaldo Fong, a local anesthesiologist. Fong, embittered by the loss, devised a novel form of revenge. Over ten years he took out nearly 100,000 magazine subscriptions in her name, asking in each case that the magazine bill McConville. He also sent McConville a refrigerator - C.O.D. McConville spent $50,000 to straighten out the mess.

Southern Baptists support capital punishment because it is a "biblical position" that remains applicable, said Barrett Duke of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission at a panel discussion on religious views of the death penalty.

The discussion featured a variety of perspectives from panelists representing Jewish and different Christian backgrounds. It was held June 5 in Washington as the execution date for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh neared.

Duke, vice president for research of the ERLC, was the only panelist to favor capital punishment and not favor a moratorium on the practice. He referred to a resolution adopted at last year's Southern Baptist Convention in outlining his position.

"Southern Baptists believe all people are conceived with the right to life," Duke said. "Some people forfeit that right."

In support of the death penalty, he cited Genesis 9, in which God commanded Noah to use the death penalty prior to the establishment of Israel, and Romans 13, in which Paul says it is "still a valid exercise of government to use capital punishment," Duke said.

The government should not use execution "for its own ends," but because the "image of God" has been violated and the state has the responsibility to protect the weak, Duke said. "In a sense, civil government is making a statement about the sanctity of life," he said.

Southern Baptists have concerns about capital punishment's use, however, the greatest of which is that an innocent person could be executed, Duke said. That is why last year's resolution called for the death penalty to be used only when there is "clear and overwhelming evidence," he said.

Capital punishment "should never be a simple thing; it should never be a vindictive activity," Duke said. "If there is any possibility of doubt," the death penalty should be avoided, he said.

There are "racial and economic inequities" that need to be remedied, Duke said. The 2000 SBC resolution urged capital punishment be applied "without reference to the race, class or status of the guilty."

While calls for a moratorium on the death penalty have increased in recent years, Southern Baptists have not addressed that issue, Duke said. He would not favor it out of concern it would be a first step to abolition of capital punishment, Duke said.

Orthodox Jewish panelist Nathan Diament said, "We're not abolitionists, but we are for a moratorium."

Capital punishment was appropriate for murder, according to rabbinic teaching, said Diament, public-policy director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Orthodox Jews have concerns about the "accuracy" and "fairness" of the practice, he said.

John Carr of the U.S. Catholic Conference acknowledged government has the right to use capital punishment but said it "should forgo that right."

Although there are a range of views held by Catholics, the bishops in the United States have opposed the death penalty since the 1970s, said Carr, the USCC's director of social development and world peace.

This opposition, Carr said, is based on:

-- Capital punishment's "uncertainty and its finality;"

-- "Questions of [its] fairness;"

-- "Its coarsening effect on culture;"

-- Its "contribution to a growing disrespect for human life."

Carr said, "We cannot defend life by taking life."

Joseph Lowery denied the government has the authority to use capital punishment. Lowery is chairman of the Black Leadership Forum and president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Lowery said the death penalty is used disproportionately in the South and on black and poor people. The Bible also was used to defend slavery in the South, Lowery said.

"Capital punishment is for people who have no capital," Lowery said. "The poor are richly prosecuted but poorly defended."

He supports a moratorium and confesses he sees it "as a first step," Lowery said.

A USA Today poll showed even people who oppose capital punishment think McVeigh should be executed, Duke said. "I think the American public is going to continue to say there are some crimes that are too vicious" not to punish with the death penalty, he said.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which is based in Washington, sponsored the event.

*

The New Republic, a major national newsweekly, arrived in my mailbox the other day. Its cover offered an evening-time picture of New York City. In the foreground was the Statue of Liberty. In the background, framing that famous statue, were the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in all their vastness and solidity. The headline read: "It Happened Here."

Two weeks after the most devastating attack ever launched on the U.S. mainland by foreign enemies, the shock has just begun to wear off. Flags are back at the top of flagpoles. Football games and baseball games go on as scheduled. People go about their daily lives. But this does not mean we have even begun to assimilate what happened on Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, our forces mass in the East for what may turn out to be a ferocious military strike on the nation of Afghanistan. The full attention and power of the U.S. government is now directed to finding and destroying the terrorist network believed responsible for the slaughter that was visited upon our nation two weeks ago. The nation stands behind these efforts in almost total unanimity.

Is there a distinctive Christian voice at a time like this? We are Americans, and we are Christians. Does the latter mark us off as in any way different from the former? Does the church, as church, have anything unique to say?

Many American Christian leaders are making strong just war arguments at this time. That is, we are arguing from Romans 13 and other texts, as well as from the broader Christian tradition, for the legitimacy of the resort to force on the part of our government in order to defend our nation and its way of life from the terrorist network that so viciously attacked us. The fundamental role of the government is to serve God by ordering public affairs, advancing the common good, and deterring and punishing evildoers both domestic and foreign. Those who would fly civilian jetliners into buildings and take thousands of lives certainly qualify as dangerous evildoers, and the government is certainly justified in responding to the threat they pose. Thus we argue, as Christians, and thus others argue, on the basis of other commitments and perspectives. Different paths, same outcome.

The Christian just war tradition also imposes constraints upon governments even as they undertake their legitimate function of deterring and punishing offenses against public order and justice. The tradition requires the right intention (not vengeance, but peace), the right goals (not mere mayhem, but justice and security), the right means (sufficient and proportionate force, not more) and the right spirit (not pleasure at a positive good, but mournfulness about a necessary evil). Here the Christian voice is indeed distinctive from the general public voice; that is, if we follow the just war tradition with fidelity. There can be no holy war, no crusade, no thirst for revenge, no pleasure in killing, no indiscriminate attacks, within the framework just war theory offers. If this kind of just war thinking is effectively communicated by Christians to government leaders, and it has an impact, then a distinctive Christian voice has been heard and has made a difference.

And yet a nagging question remains: Is this all there is to the Christian witness at a time like this? As we contemplate the horror just visited upon us, and the violence our nation is about to visit upon others, is there nothing more to be said? Are we as Christians content merely to bring out the just war theory, run through the categories, see that our nation is justified in making war, and then sit back and watch the bombs fall?

We do have a Savior and Lord who undertook his mission without recourse to violence. Who said that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Who argued that peacemakers are blessed, and taught ways to be a peacemaker. Whose presence in the world was not as a partisan ready to kill for a cause but instead a suffering servant ready to die for one. Who taught love of enemies and overcoming evil not with evil but good. Who wept over Jerusalem and lamented that she did not know the things that make for peace. Who was captured by the vision of another kingdom coming, in and through himself, to replace the sad and sorry kingdom we now live in.

If the witness of Jesus is anything more than dreamy idealism, or a vague future hope of a better world, then his followers must be marked by the impact of his words and witness even now, even in the cauldron of grief and anger that now grips our nation.

Christians will think differently than others. We will be aware that violent hatred is rarely eliminated by force; it may be prevented from harming us for a while, but ultimately a more radical kind of treatment is needed -- that which in the long run can turn those inclined to be enemies into friends. Christians will dare to ask unpopular questions about how to make life better for the very civilization in which hatred of our nation currently breeds. We will propose initiatives to reduce tensions and enhance mutual understanding between the Muslim world and the West, including our own nation. We will follow Jesus' teaching about removing the log from our own eye and actually listen to those who can offer insights about how we are perceived by those who hate us.

We will not assume that the only way to respond to what has happened is exactly the way our nation decides to respond, but instead be willing to offer fresh insight and alternative solutions as an expression of our loyalty both to our nation and to Jesus. We will remember that every human being is made in the image of God and will respect the dignity that this imputes to all, even those whose evil deeds are beyond description. We will pray for our nation's enemies, weep over the destruction that all warfare causes, and yearn for the coming in fullness of the reign of God, when every tear is finally wiped away, and no one -- at last -- shall hurt or destroy anyone else.

Come, Lord Jesus. Do not tarry long. May you find your church faithful, O merciful Lord, until you come.

_________________

Gushee is the Graves Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy and senior fellow with the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee.

The conversation in the online chat room was both vicious and violent. "For every American killed in the terrorist attacks," one man raged, "we ought to kill a hundred Muslims."

Emotions have been running high since September 11 -- but even so, there's no excuse for such vitriol. Yes, we want those responsible to be pursued and punished -- but we should not confuse the innocent with the guilty. And among the innocent are over 6 million Muslims who live in American neighborhoods -- and now live there in fear.

As Christians, we know that God often brings good out of evil. And one great good he may bring out of this unwanted war is a greater openness by Muslims to Christianity -- but only if we attack hatred with love.

One man who believes this is Ashton "Tat" Stewart, director of the Colorado-based Persian Ministries for World Witness. Stewart has spent a lifetime ministering to Muslims. As we battle bin Laden, Stewart says, the entire Muslim world is watching to see how we treat the Muslims among us. Instead of joining the Internet animosity and radio ranting, he says, Christians ought to seize the moment: We have a tremendous opportunity to model Christian love to Muslim neighbors.

How do we go about this?

First, Stewart says, we need to reach out in friendship. In the current climate, this might mean crossing the street to ask how a Muslim family is doing or visiting a mosque to express friendship. We might invite Muslim friends into our home for a meal. "What many Christians don't realize," Stewart says, "Is that just being a normal Christian is a radical witness to many Muslims." Their law is oppressive; they aren't used to love.

After building a bridge of friendship, the next step is to expose Muslims to what Stewart calls "kingdom realities." This might include praying in their presence, inviting them to a Bible study, or giving them a New Testament in their own language.

We should also be prepared to explain basic Christian beliefs, and familiarize ourselves with Islamic teachings. Moderate peace-loving Muslims are horrified by bin Laden's horrific attacks. They can easily be turned against him and perhaps they will then question how Islamic teaching could condone such violence. They need to see in us the love of Christ.

According to Stewart, many Muslims lack inner peace, and do not experience genuine, unconditional love; they don't understand true spiritual freedom. This means we might present Christ as the peace-giver who truly loves them and brings them freedom.

Finally, before we invite a Muslim to follow Christ, we must understand the cost we are asking him to pay. Conversion may mean a complete loss of family, friends, career, and culture.

Stewart is right. As America embarks on what may be a lengthy war, we must seize the opportunity of the moment. The faith of many Muslims is crumbling as they see the horrors some radical elements in Islam are capable of. If Christians offer unconditional love to their supposed enemies, Stewart predicts, "In the next few years we may see mass turnings to Christ."

But it won't happen if we respond to hatred with even more hatred. Instead, we overcome evil with good -- as Paul commanded. We must out-shout angry American threats with quiet Christian compassion. And we must meet terrorist lies with the transforming love of Christ.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

As the number of executions surges, Christians remain divided on the death penalty's morality and purpose.

_________________

One might think Sue Norton would be among the most ardent supporters of the death penalty in light of the 1990 double murder of her parents. Yet today, as the man convicted of killing her parents sits on Oklahoma's death row, she is among those working hardest to have his death sentence commuted.

"If our world is going to change," she says, "we have to move past hate and learn to love with the unconditional love displayed by Jesus." Norton, a member of an American Baptist church in Arkansas City, Missouri, says the man who killed her parents has converted to Christianity through her witness. She regularly visits and writes to him in prison and talks to him weekly by telephone.

Norton is among the nearly 3,000 members of the Atlantic, Virginia-based Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation (mvfr), which opposes the death penalty and advocates programs and policies aimed at crime prevention. "Our society places an expectation on families to seek vengeance," says mvfr executive director Pat Bane. "One parent told me that people made her feel like she was betraying her son because she did not want to kill the person who murdered him. Our goal is to break the cycle of violence rather than escalate it."

CAPITAL COMEBACK: Though not an mvfr member, Aldona DeVetsco opposed the May 2 lethal injection of Keith Zettlemoyer, the first person to be executed in Pennsylvania since 1962. Zettlemoyer shot and killed Charles DeVetsco, Aldona's son, in 1980. She signed a petition appealing for a stay of execution, calling capital punishment "senseless vengeance."

Pennsylvania is the latest in the growing list of states to administer the death penalty for the first time in decades. Last year, Idaho, Maryland, and Nebraska carried out their first executions in more than 30 years. Earlier this year, Montana did the same. Across the nation, during the first six months of the year, 33 people were executed, surpassing the total for all of last year.

The resurgence of the death penalty has given rise to a more fervent opposition. Challengers of capital punishment point out that most other countries that permit the death penalty-such as Iraq and China-are infamous for human-rights violations.

Nevertheless, those in the United States who oppose the death penalty are waging what appears to be an uphill battle. From the common citizen to the Supreme Court, sentiment runs solidly in favor of capital punishment both in principle and in practice. Among politicians, a tough-on-crime posture crosses party barriers. That posture almost always translates into support for the death penalty, even if it means flip-flopping on the issue, as has happened with many officeholders, including President Clinton.

Standing against this tide, all major Protestant denominations, with the exception of Southern Baptists, officially oppose the death penalty. And the pope, in his March encyclical, stated that conditions that would justify the death penalty "are practically non-existent." Observers note this is the closest the Roman Catholic Church has ever come to supporting an outright ban on capital punishment.

PUBLIC SUPPORT: Most surveys, however, indicate that, on this issue, church leaders are out of step not only with the general public, but also with those in their pews. According to a May Gallup Poll, 77 percent of Americans support the death penalty while only 13 percent oppose it, with the remaining 10 percent undecided or saying it depends on circumstances.

According to the survey, Republicans favor the death penalty by a margin of 89 percent to 7 percent, while Democrats support it 67 to 20 percent. Those in mainline denominations support it 81 to 9 percent. Eighty percent of those identifying themselves as "born again" favor the death penalty, while only 12 percent oppose it. And despite statistics establishing that the death penalty is administered with a racial bias, according to the survey, 55 percent of black Protestants support capital punishment, while 30 percent oppose it.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center (dpic), when people are asked for a yes or no response, most favor the death penalty because the "myth persists that even the most dangerous murderers will be released in seven years if they are not executed."

dpic executive director Richard Dieter cites a 1993 bipartisan study conducted by the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg/Lake and the Republican Tarrance Group as being more reflective of public opinion. In that survey, when asked for a yes-or-no response, 77 percent-identical to the Gallup survey-said they favored the death penalty.

However, when people were asked, "If it were possible to sentence a person convicted of murder to life in prison with no possibility of parole ever, and require their earnings from prison industries to go to the victim's family," 44 percent said they favored that option, while 41 percent favored the death penalty.

Dieter maintains that fewer Americans would favor the death penalty if they realized that "45 states and the federal government now employ sentences in which no parole is possible for at least 25 years for their most serious murder cases."

DETERRENCE DETERRED: The prevalence of violence in American society despite the legality of the death penalty in 38 states has in the minds of many diminished the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent, except insofar as it prevents convicted murderers from killing again. "There is no empirical evidence of any compelling nature to support [the death penalty] on the grounds of deterrence," says Joshua Dressler, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California, and author of three books on criminal law and procedure.

Bryan Stevenson, a Christian attorney and executive director of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, notes that Texas, despite being the leading execution state since the Supreme Court's 7-to-2 Gregg V. Georgia decision affirming the death penalty in 1976, has seen its violent crime rate rise 46 percent. "I believe that people are increasingly realizing that the more we resort to killing as a legitimate response to our frustration and anger with violent crime, the more violent our society becomes," says Stevenson, who has represented more than 100 death row prisoners during the past decade. "We could execute all three thousand people on death row today, and most people would not feel any safer tomorrow."

CITING SCRIPTURE: As with many other issues, Christians on both sides of the capital punishment debate cite scriptural support for their contrasting positions.

Prison Fellowship Ministries (pfm), in which volunteers share the gospel with inmates, does not take an official stand because its own board is divided. pfm encourages Christians to weigh the biblical arguments for themselves.

pfm says there are three biblically based positions on capital punishment: One claims the Bible prohibits it; a second holds that the Bible mandates it; a third view is that Scripture permits but does not require capital punishment.

Those who oppose capital punishment maintain generally that the New Testament, especially the example set by Jesus, supersedes any such teaching in the Old Testament. "I believe that the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection is redemption for everyone," says Church of the Brethren member Bob Gross of Indianapolis, active for nearly a decade in the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "To say that some people's sins are not covered is hypocritical. That's not an excuse to murder; but Jesus said if we are not willing to forgive, we place ourselves outside of God's forgiveness."

But renowned theologian Carl Henry says such an outlook "tends to subordinate the justice of God to the love of God." Henry favors the death penalty, citing Genesis 9:6, which states, "Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed" (nrsv). He also maintains that Peter, by cutting off Malchus's ear in an effort to prevent Christ's arrest (John 18:10), was most likely trying to kill the soldier. According to Henry, Christ's statement that those who kill by the sword are subject to die by the sword implicitly recognizes the government's right to exercise the death penalty.

Those who maintain that Scripture neither mandates nor prohibits capital punishment are most likely to focus on the question of whether the administration of the death penalty is consistent with biblical principles and practices. Among these concerns are the requirement that witnesses participate in the execution, that the intent of the offender be taken into consideration, and that justice be administered without regard to social or economic status.

Charles Colson, who founded pfm in 1976 after serving a seven-month Watergate-related prison term, says he has grave reservations about the way in which capital punishment is administered. "I remain convinced that it is not a general deterrent," Colson says. "But I must say that my views have changed, and I now favor capital punishment, at least in principle, but only in extreme cases when no other punishment can satisfy the demands of justice." Colson says a visit he had with Illinois mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who was executed last year for killing 33 young men and boys during the 1970s, pushed him over the edge to a pro-death penalty view. From a theological perspective, Colson argues that "justice in God's eyes requires that the response to an offense ... be proportionate."

Although the thief on the cross alongside Christ was included in Christ's merciful action, this criminal did not have "the consequences of his crime" eliminated, Colson asserts. "Nowhere does Jesus set aside the requirements of civil law."

Likewise, Colson favors the death penalty for the perpetrators of April's Oklahoma City bombing. "No other punishment [is] sufficient for the deliberate savagery of the crime."

EQUAL JUSTICE ISSUES: Many hold anti-death penalty views primarily out of a concern for fairness. According to one frequently cited study by researchers Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, 23 people have been executed in the United States this century whose guilt was later either clearly disproven or cast in doubt. Others-48 according to the dpic-have been able to prove their innocence while still on death row, establishing the possibility of receiving the death penalty despite what many would consider reasonable doubt.

Rob Dunham, executive director of the Pennsylvania Post-Conviction Defender Organization in Philadelphia, says, "If we are going, as a matter of public policy, to have a death penalty, then we must, as a matter of public policy, ensure procedural fairness."

Dunham says that despite the clear conclusion five years ago of a joint federal and Pennsylvania court task force that the state does not provide adequate representation to indigent defendants, the legislature has enacted a law intended to hasten the rate at which death warrants are signed. "Legislators see the issue as a politically popular one," Dunham says, "and they are taking measures that enable them to claim they are tough on crime without regard for the actual legal or moral consequences."

McGeorge Law School professor Dressler adds, "The amount of money many states-especially in the South-give attorneys to take on postconviction appeals is laughable. Lawyers either have to work for $5 an hour or do a shoddy job." According to Dressler, not only do these conditions increase the risk that innocent people will be executed, but they also result in the failure to recognize mitigating circumstances under which those who are guilty of murder should by law be spared the death penalty.

Dressler maintains that a counterterrorism bill under consideration in Congress represents a greater interest in efficiency than in truth and administrative fairness. The proposed bill would limit most death row inmates to one federal court appeal.

Death penalty opponents have thoroughly documented a racial bias in the administration of capital punishment. Roughly half of all murder victims are black, but in executions, 85 percent of those they had murdered were white. "I think it is clear that the death penalty is reserved primarily for the poor and for people of color," Stevenson says. "As we say in our circles, 'Capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment.' "

Stevenson believes that the death penalty has a subconscious attraction to the middle class "by symbolically communicating to poor people and racial minorities, 'We will not let you terrify us. We will strike back at you.'" He believes that if the death penalty were administered fairly, it would lose this symbolic value and as a result be abolished. "I don't believe our society is capable of making the judgment that the life of any person, even a guilty person, no longer has purpose or value."

Christians who favor the death penalty, however, believe the answer lies not in eliminating a punishment whose purpose is to recognize the value of human life, but in advocating legal remedies to ensure fair application.

Given the current mood of the country, laws supporting the death penalty are not likely to disappear anytime soon. Then again, neither will those committed to opposing those laws.

______________________

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

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*

In 1999 on Halloween night a girl driving a Volkswagen Jetta with several passengers in it pulled out onto highway 114 right in front of Steven Kolhonen, who was driving a large Ford Expedition. Kolhonen hit the brakes and avoided ramming into the back of the Volkswagen but it made him angry. So when the Volkswagen slowed for a stoplight, Kolhonen did ram into the back of the Volkswagen Jetta pushing it through the intersection. He continued to pursue the Volkswagen down the highway ramming it again and again. At one point it was reportedly pushing the Volkswagen down the highway at 55mph, with the Volkswagen’s brakes fully applied. It was about as flagrant and frightening an act of road rage as I could imagine short of using other weapons.

Eventually both cars pulled off the road. There was much screaming and yelling at Kolhonen who sat in his vehicle and just stared straight ahead. The police were called and charges were filed. Five days later, someone set fire to Kolhonen’s Ford Expedition and it burned up in his driveway.

What do you think about that? I had been thinking that he ought to lose his drivers license for the rest of his life or twenty years or something, but I must admit that I chuckled because I didn’t think that burning his car was a bad alternative. However, when his house was burned down two days later, it became apparent that revenge is no solution. The anticlimactic postscript to the story was that revenge had nothing to do with it, as some months later, Kolhonen was found guilty of burning his own car and his own house, hoping to collect the insurance money.

Dr. Pennel stepped out of the door of the hospital. A group of men were coming down the hill toward him with a stretcher. “Who are you bringing?” he asked them as they lowered the stretcher in front of him. The men shrugged. “We don't know. We found him lying by the side of the road. He is seriously hurt. Do you have room for him, Sahib?” The doctor bent over the man on the stretcher. He could tell from his clothing that he was an Afghani, a member of the Patau tribe, which was always at war with the surrounding population.

“Bring him in,” the doctor said. “For him, we have a bed.” After the patient was settled, Dr. Pennel came to examine him. “Sahib,” the patient moaned, trying to tear the bandage off his eyes. “Give me back my sight. Help me to see. Then I can go find the man who did this to me and kill him. I want revenge. After that I do not care whether I can see or not. I just want revenge. My enemy took my eyes. He will pay with his life. There is nothing more powerful than revenge.”

The doctor sat down beside him and said, “My friend, let me tell you a story. Many years ago the British government sent as an envoy to Afghanistan by the name of Captain Connoly. However, he never reached the capital. On a lonely stretch of road, he was seized by a group of outlaws. They took away his baggage, bound him, accused him of espionage and threw him in prison. He had no idea what would happen to him.”

“Weeks and months passed. The guards routinely mistreated him. He was given very little to eat. The only light in his cell came from a hole in the ceiling. In his misery, he had only one comfort. It was a little prayer book the guards allowed Captain Connoly to keep. He had received it as a farewell gift from his sister when he left England. The prayers and songs comforted him, for in them he felt the presence of Jesus in his cell with him.”

The prayer book also did something else. For you see, Captain Connoly was able to persuade the guards to give him a pen and he filled the margins of that little book with reports of his experience as a prisoner. He wrote of the mistreatment, the beatings and the starvation. And he also wrote of his faith that God would see him through.

“A whole year went by. The last entry in the book was made by someone else. It said that Captain Connoly had been brought out of the prison, publicly flogged and then forced to dig his own grave. He was never seen again after that. No one except his captors knew of his execution. In vain his family and friends and the government of England searched for news of him, all to no avail.

“Twenty-one years passed. Then one day, a British officer was sauntering along the streets of Buchara, a city in central Afghanistan, when he stopped in a second-hand store. Among the odds and ends, he discovered an English prayer book with all kinds of entries in the margins. There was also a name written in the back of that book, with an address in England. The officer thought that perhaps that little book might be of some importance to someone, so he sent it back home.

And that is how Captain Connoly's sister learned of his fate. With great anguish, she read the account of his imprisonment and was moved by his faith in God. “What should I do?” she asked herself. The terrible injustice done to her brother cried out for revenge. For holy revenge. She was not a wealthy person, but she sent all the money that she could to this very hospital with these instructions, “Please keep a bed free at all times for a sick or wounded Afghani and use the money to take care of him until he regains his health. I am doing this in the memory of my brother who suffered at the hands of the Afghans and who died in their country."

As you might expect, when the doctor finished his story, there was a heavy silence. The doctor put his hand on the shoulder of the blind man and said to him, “You, my friend, are now lying in that bed. That you are being cared for is the Christian revenge for the death of Captain Connoly.” For the first time in his life, that Afghan soldier who so passionately desired revenge and who throughout his life had so resolutely rejected the message of Christ, sensed a power stronger than hate. It is the power of Christian love - love made real through faith in Christ.

*

Over 20 years ago an 11-year old boy named Timothy Jordon stole some cassettes from a 17-year old named Lawrenz Pillow. In order to teach him a lesson, Lawrenz told Timothy’s parents what happened and he got in big trouble. Timothy was so mad that, 8 years later, he tracked Lawrenz down and shot him in the face, leaving him with a glass eye and a bullet lodged in his head. Timothy Jordon served 18 months for assault.

Several years ago, at a chance reunion in a Detroit barbershop, Lawrenz Pillow returned the favor by shooting Timothy Jordon in the head. Jordon is now dead and Pillow is serving time in prison. When his wife was asked for her reaction, she said, “The boy never forgave him.”

Rwanda. A lot of Americans had never heard of that African country until, a few years ago, it became the scene of horrific bloodshed and a tribal war that left thousands of Rwandans brutally slaughtered. With this awful season of attempted genocide, Rwanda became a word written in blood. And now the challenge is to attempt to heal the nation. Leaders who helped South Africa reconcile its years of apartheid violence have come to Rwanda to help them find a healing road. Out of this struggle has come a story I will not soon forget. The son of a lady named Deborah was murdered in an act of ethnic vengeance. Months after the killing, a young man visited Deborah with this amazing confession - and request: “I killed your son. So take me to the authorities and let them deal with me as they will. I have not slept since I shot your son. Every time I lie down, I see you praying, and I know you are praying for me.” As extraordinary as that young man's words were, Deborah's response was even more amazing. She said, “I do want you to restore justice by replacing the son you killed. I'm asking you to become my son. When you visit me, I will care for you.” Today that young man is an adopted member of her household.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Open Arms and No Closed Door.”

I know a little bit of how that young man must feel. I've been accepted as part of the family by someone from whom I deserved only punishment and rejection. After all, I had a part in the death of His Son. But, then, so have you. The Son's name is Jesus - who was nailed to a cross for your sins and mine. God has every reason to throw the book at us. But this very day, He's offering you instead a chance to join His family and live with Him forever.

God gives us a beautiful picture of this amazing possibility in a story from the life of King David, the one from whom Jesus was descended. In 2 Samuel 9, our word for today from the Word of God, David has become the king after the previous King Saul's all-out attempts to have him killed. It was the custom of kings then to exile or execute the families of those who wanted them dead, so they wouldn't become part of a future rebellion or plot. But there was one man left of Saul's family. His name was Mephibosheth, and he was crippled in both feet. King David had Mephibosheth brought to him, and Saul's grandson was scared to death.

“'Don't be afraid,' David said to him, 'for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan (who was Saul's son and David's friend) ... I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.’ ... and Mephibosheth ate at the king's table like one of the king's sons.”

That's what God wants to do for you even though you have, like all of us, rebelled against His kingship and run your own life. It's that rebellion that could be paid for only with the blood of God's Son. Which means you and I were part of the reason God's Son died. But He stands ready, no matter what you've done, to throw open the door and welcome you into His family and into His heaven when you die.

The only way you'll ever be allowed into God's heaven is on the basis of your personal relationship with the person God loves most - His one and only Son, Jesus. So where you stand with God and where you'll spend eternity depends totally on whether or not you have welcomed the Son of God into your life as your Savior from your sin. You can do that today and God will cancel the hell you deserve and give you instead the heaven you could never deserve.

Like me, you deserve the punishment for your sins against the King of all kings. But He's ready to welcome you into His family today and you will “eat at the king's table like one of the king's sons” because He wants you with Him forever!

________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

In the 1970s, Zhou Enlai, communist China's elder statesman and foreign minister, was asked to assess the historical impact of the French Revolution of 1789.

Zhou paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Too soon to tell,” he replied.

When you're part of a 4,000-year-old culture, you take the long view. That's an alien concept to Americans; we have a hard time remembering who won the last Super Bowl -- or waiting for the next one. Regardless of the issue or task at hand, we like to deal with it and “move on.”

Problem is, the world won't “move on” with us.

Only recently did China and South Korea tentatively settle a dispute over the borders of the kingdom of Koguryo, which ruled parts of both lands –- from 37 B.C. to A.D. 668. In the heart of modern Europe, the Balkan wars of the 1990s resulted in part from religious and ethnic hatreds spawned a millennium ago.

After surviving ideologies born in the 19th and 20th centuries (communism, fascism), the West now finds itself under sustained attack by medieval warriors with modern weapons. One of their aims: to re-establish a grand Islamic empire that went into decline centuries before Karl Marx was born.

These warriors also want revenge -– not just for current U.S support of Israel or foreign military presence in the land of Mecca, but for the expulsion of Muslims from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. They aren't likely to win, but they could heavily damage the delicate machinery of international order before they're defeated.

Revenge has a long shelf life.

The desire for revenge grips people –- from the driver who gets cut off in traffic to the victims of great injustice. It becomes part of the historical memory of whole nations. Unchecked, it becomes obsession. Over time, its exact origins become distorted, expanded into mythologies of grievance, perhaps even forgotten –- but seldom abandoned. The branches of the tree of bitterness keep blooming.

Revenge is in no hurry. If you can't get it in this generation, there's always the next. “We ain't forgettin,'“ some Confederate diehards still say, nearly 140 years after the Civil War. Avenging agents abound in literature and pop culture: Iago, Shylock, Dirty Harry, Rambo, “Kill Bill.”

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” the saying goes.

One of Bill Cosby's best childhood stories recounts his detailed plan for getting even with a kid who hit him in the head with a big snowball. Before winter ended, Cosby painstakingly sculpted a monster snowball and hid it in the back of the family freezer. His fiendish intention: to deliver it at high speed to his rival's head on the hottest day of the following summer. Cosby's mom ruined the plot by thawing his snowball in the sink before he got a chance to use it.

But he enjoyed thinking about sweet revenge for months.

According to new findings by scientists at the University of Zurich, the impulse for revenge actually stimulates the dorsal striatum -- a part of the brain that plays a key role in the emotions of enjoyment and satisfaction.

Forgiveness really is divine; it sure isn't human.

No wonder loving enemies is so hard. But it's the way of the Lord, who has a very long memory. He, being righteous, chooses to forgive those who seek His mercy. And He commands His people to proclaim the offer of mercy to all –- even enemies. He sent Jonah to preach to the wicked Ninevites, who repented in sackcloth in ashes. Jonah wanted God to destroy them; God wanted to redeem them. He sent Jesus Christ to save those who had already betrayed Him many times.

In a time of war and terror, American Christians must remember mercy. We're citizens of a great democracy -- second. First, we're subjects of an absolute monarchy: the Kingdom of God.

“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him a drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:19-21).

His justice will come in His time. Until then, mercy triumphs over our justice.

“Living well is the best revenge,” wrote George Herbert, the 17th-century Anglican poet and priest. For the follower of Christ, living well is living in forgiveness –- and showing mercy as it has been shown to us.

*

December 1984. Four black youths in a crowded New York subway surrounded a thin white man. They asked him for five dollars so they could play video games. Without saying a word, Bernhard Goetz pulled out a .38 revolver and shot each one in rapid succession. He then checked the first three to see that they were "taken care of," in his words. When he came to the fourth one, Goetz didn't see any blood. So he said, "You don't look too bad, here's another." The bullet struck nineteen year old Darrell Cabey in the spinal cord, which has paralyzed him and left him in a coma to this day.

What should you, as a Christian, do in such a situation?

Apparently many people can justify everything. Goetz did. Before he turned himself in, police put up wanted posters with a sketch of him on it. Subway passengers drew halos on the posters. More thoughtful people have said they can see his need to defend himself, but the last shot seems to have been nothing but brutal vengeance.

Still others would argue, on the basis of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, that Goetz should not even have defended himself. He should have turned the other cheek and given them the five dollars. Then given them the shirt off his back, and anything else they wanted (Luke 6:29).

This passage from the Sermon on the Mount is very well known. We all know it's in the Bible, but we don't know what to do with it. If Jesus is saying what we think he is saying, it doesn't seem very practical. What does it really mean to turn the other cheek?

*

Many years ago two young men with long records of crime and delinquency robbed the YMCA on the Lower East Side of New York City. On their way out of the door they noticed a man at the telephone switchboard. Fearing that he would call the police, the young men grabbed him and beat him savagely with brass knuckles and a black jack. Thinking that he was dead, they then stuffed him behind a radiator near the swimming pool and left.

Later that evening Gertrude Ederle, the famous swimmer, was walking near the pool and stepped in some blood, slipped, screamed, and then found Donald Tippet's body. Tippet was rushed to the hospital where for days he lingered between life and death. Eventually he lived, but one eye had been so badly damaged that it could not be saved.

Meanwhile the two young men were caught and brought to trial. Their past record assured they would get a long sentence. At this point, Donald Tippet did an amazing thing. He asked that the two young men be put in his custody. He believed in them, believed they could be changed.

One of the boys refused to change and was soon caught for another crime. The other boy however was more receptive. He went on to college. Eventually he went to medical school and became a surgeon, an eye surgeon. The late Bishop Everett Palmer wrote of this surgeon, “I wonder if he ever performs one of those delicate operations without stopping to think of that night in the YMCA and of a young man, who later became Bishop Donald Tippet of the San Francisco area, whose confidence changed his life.”

There is something life changing about that kind of love. Who could help but be touched by it? What we need today is not a revival that would bring more people into church. What we need is a revival that would motivate us to take Christ's redemptive love out into the world.

________

Collected Sermons, King Duncan, http://www.eSermons.com; source: Illustrations, http://www.cybersaltlists.org

*

Fifty years ago, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and the three other American missionaries dared to make contact with the most violent society ever documented by anthropologists. This week END OF THE SPEAR, the story of their martyrdoms, hits the theaters, and the film makers hope contact will be made with another violent and spiritually blind society -- our own. It is a story that should be told in this age of ethnic cleansings, gulags, holocausts, genocide, and riots.

When the film's director, Jim Hanon, traveled to Ecuador to get permission from the Waodani (formerly Auca) Indians to make the movie, the tribe initially refused. But when Steve Saint, Ned Saint's son, told them stories about situations like the Columbine shootings, the Waodani were electrified. “If this story will help your culture not live so violently,” they said, “then we [want you to] tell our story.”

For those unfamiliar with the five men who risked and gave their lives to make contact with this remote and violent tribe in Ecuador, END OF THE SPEAR brings their story to life. But while the story of their deaths is important, what emerges more powerfully from this film is the life of those who carried on. Rachel Saint, Nate's sister; Steve Saint, his son; and the widows all risked their lives to travel into the Amazon basin and finish their loved ones' work.

In the movie, Steve Saint meets his father's killer, a Waodani named Mincayani and fights an internal battle. Revenge is at the heart of the generations of conflict in places like the primitive jungles of Ecuador -- or the Middle East, or Croatia, or Africa, for that matter. Will he spear the one who speared his father? Or will he be able to conquer the impulse for revenge? Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian who was teaching seminary students while Serbians were establishing rape camps in and around his hometown, wrestled with this question in his 1996 book EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE.

Volf comes to the same powerful conclusion that is portrayed in the film END OF THE SPEAR. The only way to break the cycle of revenge is through the triumph of the cross of Christ. Volf writes this: “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one,” he writes, “can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without ... transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness.”

As Steve Saint and his father's killer embrace at the film's close, Steve recalls, “For years, many people would tell me that they could identify with our loss, but they never could imagine how we'd experienced gain.” This is the gain of the cross, and here, of course, is the real message of the movie: The Bible provides the only worldview that provides for reconciliation. No other religion does -- not the Hindus, who know no salvation, not Muslims, no philosophy.

I hope you will get out and see this film and bring your neighbors with you. Let them see in a vivid drama the one belief system, the one hope for mankind, is found at the cross.

________

Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Men take pleasure from revenge, while women do not. That's the conclusion of a British study in which researchers used an MRI to examine the brains of men and women as they watched an enemy suffering punishment. In the study, a planted group of “selfish” players cheated the others out of money in a game, and deliberately made themselves seem obnoxious and unlikable.

At the end of the game, the selfish players were subjected to a series of apparent electric shocks, while the study subjects looked on. When a male volunteer saw one of the “bad” players being punished, the primitive reward centers of his brain lit up with pleasure. The scan of his compassion centers, meanwhile, showed no surge of sympathy. When women viewed the villains being shocked, on the other hand, they experienced no pleasure at all. In fact, they felt empathetic.

The results were a surprise for researchers, who expected that women would experience some level of schadenfreude [getting pleasure from the misfortunes of others]. They speculate that there's an evolutionary advantage in men taking pleasure from others' pain; it may have enabled alpha males to subdue rivals and rule-breakers without hesitation or guilt. Researcher Tania Singer tells THE NEW YORK TIMES that the study “would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment.”

If there is anything harder to comprehend than 2006’s massacre of Amish schoolgirls in Pennsylvania, said the LOS ANGELES TIMES in an editorial, “it is the Amish community’s reaction to the tragedy. “No one would blame the Amish for feeling revulsion and rage toward Charles Roberts IV, the madman who took over the one-room Nickel Mines school and shot 10 little girls in the head, killing five. Instead, said Steven Gimbel in THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, the tight-knit Amish community publicly forgave Roberts and “opened their hearts” to his family, setting up a fund for his children and inviting his widow to a funeral service for four of the victims. Amid the all-too-familiar horror of a school shooting, we saw “a glimmer of the best part of humanity.”

Why is their forgiveness so mysterious? asked religious history professor David Weaver-Zercher in the PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE. The Amish, after all, are a Christian sect, and Jesus Christ was unambiguous about the importance of forgiving those who trespass against you. “Bless them that curse you,” Christ said, “and pray for them which despitefully use you.” In fact, if anything needs explaining, said Bruce Kluger in USA TODAY, it’s why other communities of faith find it so hard to practice the compassion their religions preach. Islamic fundamentalists have twisted the Koran into a “global death warrant.” Lebanese Shiites and Israeli Jews spent the summer of 2006 ignoring their respective holy book’s commandments that they treat all human beings with “decency and forgiveness and love.” In the U.S., a “small but rabid band of evangelicals” is trying to turn its judgmental and divisive reading of scripture into the law of the land. As the Amish laid their little girls to rest last week with dignity and grace, these gentle people have shown the world what genuine faith really means.

Forgive me for saying so, said Cristina Odone in the London OBSERVER, but I find the Amish readiness to forgive Charles Roberts “disturbing.” What’s being praised as Christian love is actually more like bleak fatalism. The Amish solution to the problems of the world is first denial -- in the self-imposed exile of their closed communities -- and, when that proves impossible, passive resignation. It’s one thing to forgive those who have wounded you, said Jeff Jacoby in THE BOSTON GLOBE, and quite another to forgive a man who slaughtered innocent children. What Charles Roberts did was simply evil, and shrugging off such atrocities as the will of God does not make the world a better place. “Hatred is not always wrong, and forgiveness is not always deserved.”

=======================

THE CONTEXT OF FORGIVENESS: GRACE IN AMISH COUNTRY

Breakpoint commentary by Charles Colson, October 3, 2007

With the massacre at Virginia Tech and the chilling execution-style murder of four Delaware State students, it is not surprising that many Americans have almost forgotten an equally horrifying event that took place one year ago yesterday.

A demented gunman, Charles Roberts, took a school-room full of Amish girls hostage in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Before he killed himself, Roberts had murdered five girls in cold blood.

But as shocking as this senseless act of violence was, it was what followed that sent the real shock waves through the nation.

Within hours of the shooting, several members of the Amish community visited Mrs. Roberts and her family, to express their sorrow over her loss and to say they did not hold anything against them. Another Amish man visited the killer’s father. A Roberts family spokesperson said, “He stood there for an hour, and he held [Mr. Roberts] in his arms and said, ‘We forgive you.’”

Four days later at the killer’s burial, some 70 people in attendance were Amish. And when funds began pouring in for victims after the shooting, the Nickel Mines community established a fund for the shooter’s wife and children.

Reactions to the news of this forgiveness ran the gamut from awestruck to disgust. Detractors like Jeff Jacoby opined in the BOSTON GLOBE, “I cannot see how the world is made a better place by assuring someone who would do terrible things that he will be readily forgiven afterward.”

But what Jacoby and others missed was the broader context of the forgiveness. It was not a cheap forgiveness that denied the pain and wrong of what had happened. From amazing grief through amazing faith came amazing grace.

In a new book titled AMISH GRACE, three experts on the Amish explain, “Our actions are rarely random. We all embrace patterns of behavior and habits of mind that shape what we do in a given situation.” As the authors note, there are “habits of forgiveness” in the Amish culture, Christian habits that come into clear focus. For instance, the Amish celebrate communion only twice a year, but they go through a month-long season of preparation. During that season of preparation, the Amish take seriously the admonition that if anyone holds a grudge against his brother, he is not to partake in the communion until he has put things right. A council meeting two weeks prior to communion is a time of admonishment, then there is a season of fasting, and sometimes the communion service is even delayed for weeks if there is more widespread disharmony among the community.

There is much more we could say about the wave of forgiveness that startled the world last October. Get the book AMISH GRACE, and read about it. You can even order it from our website, BreakPoint.org.

But the question is, how are we working in our own communities to build cultures of grace? Do we teach our children to forgive? Are we actively working to restore offenders and to reach out in aid to victims? And are we overcoming the evil in the world by good, as we are commanded to?

The Amish have given us a great lesson in the way to defeat hatred and alienation. It is the Christian worldview — the only one that makes such a magnificent response to such a horrible tragedy possible.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #12911]

In the Old Testament I like the story of Joseph, particularly its outcome. Joseph is the favored one. The older brothers say, “Dad always liked you best.” In this case it was true. The brothers go out and fake Joseph’s death. They bring back some bloodied clothes and say to their father, “He is dead.” In actuality they have sold him into slavery in Egypt. Time passes. Famine comes to Israel. These brothers are forced to go to Egypt and ask the king for food. Traditionally, the king has been their enemy. Can you imagine the drama of that moment when they lift up their eyes and see their brother? There is an exchange and the very last line is the most important. Joseph looks upon them with the eyes of forgiveness and says, “You intended what you did to me as something that would create evil, but God and I were able to bend it into something good.” You see, the noblest revenge is to forgive your enemy, and it is perhaps the last of the lessons that we learn from Jesus.

The words of Jesus that we would like to duck most are the ones in front of us, the ones about forgiving enemies. They are so difficult. Fred Craddock, a good teacher of New Testament and preaching, was teaching an undergraduate course in Oklahoma on the Gospels of Jesus. He was taking the simple writings of Jesus and putting them plainly in front of his students. There was a girl sitting in the back of the class, and as he came to the part about loving your enemies, she stood up and started slamming her books all around. She started mumbling, “Jesus and the losers. I hate Jesus and the losers. I can’t stand this.” She stuffed her bag and went out still mumbling, “Jesus and a bunch of losers, forgiving their enemies.”

Frederick Buechner said: When somebody you have wronged forgives you, you are spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive someone who has wronged you, you are spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride for both parties. Forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside your own skin and to be glad in each other’s presence.

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There was a Zen school in Japan. They were training young boys in the discipline of meditation. The boys had been taken into seclusion. Among the boys there was one who kept stealing. So the boys finally put together a petition and brought he thief to the headmaster and stood there and said, “We are threatening right now to leave because we can’t stand this kid any longer.” With wisdom the Zen master approached them, looked at them, and said, “You are wise brothers. You are very wise. You are wise because you know the difference between right and wrong. You may go somewhere else to study if you wish, but this poor brother does not even know right from wrong. Who will teach him if I do not? I am going to keep him here even if all the rest of you leave.” The story goes that a torrent of tears cleansed the face of that boy who had stolen, and the desire to steal was banished from him forever in that decisive moment.

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Resisting Revenge

When we are wronged in some way, our natural inclination is to fight back, to get even. Needless to say, this reaction, though thoroughly human, is almost always in error. “Forgiveness,” said Epictetus, “is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is the sign of a savage nature.”

A dramatic example is the experience of a Hungarian refugee — to protect his privacy we’ll call him Joseph Kudar. Kudar was a successful young lawyer in Hungary before the uprisings in that country in 1956. A strong believer in freedom for his country, he fought Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest with his friends. When the uprising failed, he was forced to flee the country.

When Kudar arrived in the U.S. he had no money, no job, no friends. He was, however, well educated; he spoke and wrote several languages, including English. For several months he tried to get a job in a law office, but because of his lack of familiarity with American law, he received only polite refusals.

Finally, it occurred to him that with his knowledge of language he might be able to get a job with an import-export company. He selected one such company and wrote a letter to the owner.

Two weeks later he received an answer, but was hardly prepared for the vindictiveness of the man’s reply. Among other things, it said that even if they did need someone, they wouldn’t hire him because he couldn’t even write good English.

Crushed, Kudar’s hurt quickly turned to anger. What right did this rude, arrogant man have to tell him he couldn’t write the language! The man was obviously crude and uneducated — his letter was chock-full of grammatical errors!

Kudar sat down and, in the white heat of anger, wrote a scathing reply, calculated to rip the man to shreds. When he’d finished, however, as he was reading it over, his anger began to drain away. Then he remembered the biblical admonition, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”

No, he wouldn’t mail the letter. Maybe the man was right. English was not his native tongue. Maybe he did need further study in it. Possibly this man had done him a favor by making him realize he did need to work harder on perfecting his English.

Kudar tore up the letter and wrote another. This time he apologized for the previous letter, explained his situation, and thanked the man for pointing out his need for further study.

Two days later he received a phone call inviting him to New York for an interview. A week later he went to work for them as a correspondent. Later, Joseph Kudar became vice president and executive officer of the company, destined to succeed the man he had hated and sought revenge against for a fleeting moment — and then resisted.

Bits & Pieces, March 31, 1994, pp. 12-15

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Prayer for Enemies

Almighty and tender Lord Jesus Christ,

Just as I have asked you to love my friends

So I ask you to love my enemies.

You alone, Lord, are mighty.

You alone are merciful.

Whatever you make me desire for my enemies,

Give it to them.

And give the same back to me.

If I ever ask for them anything

Which is outside your perfect rule of love,

Whether through weakness, ignorance or malice,

Good Lord, do not give it to them

And do not give it back to me.

You who are the whole truth, correct their errors.

You who are the incarnate word, give life to their souls.

Tender Lord Jesus.

Let me not be a stumbling block to them

Nor a rock of offence.

My sin is sufficient to me, without harming others.

I, a slave to sin,

Beg your mercy on my fellow slaves.

let them, be reconciled with you,

And through you reconciled to me.

Anselm of Canterbury

If you’ve ever had a delivery stolen from the front of your house then you understand the desire for revenge.

That’s exactly the situation YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober found himself in when a package was swiped from outside of his home. But despite his security cameras catching the thief red-handed, he was told by police that the crime wasn’t worth their time to investigate.

So Rober took matters into his own hands, engineering a package that would shower a future thief with glitter when opened. But while this could have been accomplished with a couple of loaded springs, Rober wanted to be able to film the entire incident as it unfolded. The result is an over-engineered bait package that took six months to develop, and used motion sensors, a GPS tracker, and the combined wide-angle cameras of four mobile phones. It even used [flatulence] spray to ensure the thief would throw it away, so that Rober could recover and reuse it.

Like his other work, which includes giant Super Soakers, self-tracking dart-boards, and techie halloween costumes, Rober’s latest invention is meant primarily as a bit of lighthearted fun. Unfortunately, so-called “porch pirates” have turned into enough of a problem that police have started targeting them in sting operations. Although various solutions such as Amazon Key, have been proposed, the problem is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

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Former NASA engineer designs ‘glitter bomb’ to get revenge on porch pirates who stole his package

By Ryan Gaydos | Fox News

A former NASA engineer took matters into his own hands after he had a package stolen off of the porch of his California home in the middle of the day seven months ago.

Mark Rober attempted to get the police involved and even caught the thieves on camera, but he said authorities told him that it wasn’t “worth their time” to check into, he said in a YouTube video posted Monday.

Rober explained in the video that his “revenge bait” was an inspiration from the movie “Home Alone.” He disguised the package as an Apple HomePod Box, which would also be GPS-enabled. He would also record the theft with cellphones.

And once the thief picked up the package, a glitter bomb attached to the package would go off.

“Ultimately, when they opened the package, I wanted to celebrate their choice of profession with a cloud of glitter,” Rober said in the video clip.

He also programmed a can of “[flatulence] spray” to go off on top of the glitter, adding insult to injury.

Rober, who helped design hardware being used on the Mars Curiosity Rover, said it took six months to put the special package together.

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[Rober's video, with outtakes from the box's camera, went viral. Multiple people stole the box. His video was edited after he found out some of his friends staged a few of the incidents.]