An Eye for an Eye and a Fork for a Fork

Someone recently sent me a rather humorous article titled, "An Eye for an Eye and a Fork for a Fork Never Ends Well." In this article the author, Lori Borgman, recounts an interaction with her 4-year-old granddaughter where the little girl told of a friend who had "forked" her, stabbing her in the shoulder with a fork. She wisely told her "gwamma" that she didn't fork her back because, "I don't pay evil with evil."

I am sure that this precocious 4-year-old doesn't know the history of lex talionis, the ancient formula of retributive justice found in the Babylonian Code of Hammurapi and in Jewish laws in Exodus 21:24, but she certainly knew of the Apostle Paul's interpretation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount teaching (see Romans 12:17 and Matthew 5:39). That's quite a lot of wisdom for a preschooler, even if she is simply parroting what her parents taught her.

Most people don't know that the retributive models of justice we find in our criminal justice system today find their origins in these ancient Near East laws. "Justice" then was too often carried out by the family of the injured party, so lex talionis was put into place to limit the consequences of a crime to equal that of the harm done. These laws were designed to ensure equal justice, not to validate revenge or retaliation. As researcher Kathryn Getek Soltis says, lex talionis "gives rights to those who have had their rights violated through crime. The law restores power to victims by offering them a claim to the equivalent suffering of the offender" (115). This restored power was designed to benefit and protect the poor and vulnerable of society.

This principle of righting the imbalances caused by crime makes sense. It appeals to our human desire for fairness. So, why did Jesus reject this law in the Sermon on the Mount, and why does our so-called Christian nation model the ancient Near East law rather than Jesus' teaching? In other teachings Jesus encouraged people to follow the laws, but His teaching to not repay evil for evil and to turn the other cheek defined justice anew. Perhaps He recognized that following "an eye for an eye" would result in nothing more than a lot of blind citizens. Perhaps He wanted to prepare us for the concept of grace that He ushered in by His substitutionary act of radical love on the cross.

Whether we live by "an eye for an eye" or by Jesus' teaching of radical love, we don't have to stop holding people accountable for their actions. The little girl who forked her friend needed to learn that her behavior was wrong, and she needed to learn how to make that wrong right. But if we begin with a mind towards restoration rather than equaling harms, we would all be better off.

Sources cited:
The Borgman article came from the Herald Palladium, date unknown.
Soltis, Kathryn Getek, "Mass Incarceration and Theological Images of Justice," Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2011), pp. 113-130.