Punishment and Judgement

We know that God is just, we know too that in God’s Kingdom, mercy triumphs over judgment, that His grace means that we don’t receive what justice alone might demand. Yet there seems to be something ingrained that leads us to presume that punishment is part of God’s plan.

When someone is caught in criminal activity, they receive a punishment that society has deemed appropriate. Once the culprit has served their time or paid the fine, we often speak of the ‘slate being wiped clean’ – after all, they have paid their debt to society. It becomes a transaction: I did x, society inflicted y, we are all square.

Of course, nothing has changed as a result of the transaction. The punishment might well make the perpetrator more reluctant to be caught, but that might as easily result in more circumspect crime than in reformed behaviour. In truth, there is very little evidence that even the most disproportionate of punishments has much impact on the level of crime. (Perhaps as a perception that the punishment won’t happen, because they won’t get caught)

So, what underlies our belief that punishment should be such a prominent dynamic in our consideration of justice? Perhaps part of it might be that sense of “well, if we don’t do something, they will have just got away with it” and that offends our sense of fair play, and part is probably our natural desire to have someone feel how they have made us feel. Punishment then becomes a kind of enforced empathy: “I am hurting as a result of what you did, now you can hurt too – see if you like it!”

But of course, the pain we impose on them by way of punishment, doesn’t equate, either in magnitude or type, with what has been inflicted on us. It fails, even in this most basic of requirements.

So, I have a number of problems with punishment as a general response to crime or sin: 

1. It gives the sense that we can pay for our crime. It is simply then like anything else we might pay for – a lifestyle choice. One person might choose to pay for a new car by taking out a loan and paying it back over time. Another might choose to pay for a new car by taking yours and doing time if caught. At the end of the term, in either case, the debt is paid, and we are free to make other ‘purchase’ choices.
2. The pain resulting from punishment may or may not modify behaviour in a desirable way. But whether it does or doesn’t, of itself, it has no impact on the person’s character. In the end, the only purpose it serves is to make the victim feel as if something has been done.
3. The pain of the punishment does not create empathy with the victim and does not reduce the pain that they feel. All we achieve is to increase the amount of pain in the world.
4. Even in our flawed legal system, punishment is modified based on mitigating circumstances. Some actions that might attract punishment are rooted in brokenness, not evil – and only God, with His wisdom and knowledge, has the ability or right to distinguish appropriately.

Now, if we with our limited understanding can see this, how much more God? And indeed, this understanding seems to be reflected in the Gospels where time and again the disciples desire for punishment to be inflicted is rebuffed by Jesus: “Shall we even now call down fire from heaven?”, “How many times shall I forgive my brother, seven?”, “Our law says this woman should be stoned, what do you say?”, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

For these reasons, it seems to me that punishment has very little, if anything to do with justice and that therefore, whilst I am passionate about justice, I am bemused by the focus on it within the church.

This is not an academic point, the connection in our minds between crime and punishment risks skewing our reading of the Gospels and beyond. It has led to the cross being seen as an instrument of punishment in the hands of a just God. The bad news told to sinners is that they cannot pay their debt, the punishment that is due is more than they can pay. The good news is then presented as God paying for that which they cannot – He is punished in our place.

But, the thrust of the New Testament is that the nature of sin makes the debt un-payable. Not because the life of the sinner isn’t valuable or worthy enough to pay the price, but because by nature, the debt is un-payable… The debt of broken relationship with a loving God, is simply not the sort of debt that can be paid – it isn’t that the price tag is too high – there simply isn’t a price-tag; relationship with God is price-less. It cannot be restored by us enduring the appropriate punishment – there isn’t an appropriate punishment.

And in any case, the pain of broken relationship cannot be resolved by hurting the person who hurt you and it certainly can’t be resolved by self-harm – by God killing Himself.

Law and punishment are fuelled by fear, the fear of being caught, the fear of the pain of punishment. Fear cannot restore love, but love can eradicate fear. Only love is capable of restoring loving relationship. It is love, and only love that can heal the brokenness of the human condition. It is the love of God seen in the mercy and forgiveness of the Cross that woos the broken sinner back into loving relationship with God, back into loving relationship with his fellow sinners, back into loving relationship with his own identity.

When we look at the Biblical remedy – the love of God drawing confession and repentance from the sinner and the profound love that springs in their heart as they realise the depths of their forgiveness – we can see a better way.

Confession is an agreement with God – to say the same as He does, to see things the same way. And having seen it, repentance is a change of mind, of heart, of values that brings us into line with God’s mind, God’s heart, God’s values. And that, and not some fear of punishment, is what transforms behaviour.

And isn’t that what the victim really longs for? A vindication that they were in the right, that their person, their values, their possessions are important? Isn’t that it – a profound ‘getting it’ – a real understanding in the transformative depths of their being of the consequences of what they did? Surely that has been the power of the ‘truth and reconciliation’ sessions in South Africa and in Rwanda. Perpetrator and victim brought together in safety, with the opportunity for each to tell the truth, to hear and to be heard – ultimately to see the understanding dawn, the light of regret, the fire of genuine repentance and contrition. Not in order to belittle, but simply to be real, to be human together.

And judgment is linked to this. A formal accounting of what we have done. Not just a listing of sins committed, but an opportunity for us to own the full measure of our lives – the good and the bad. Not as seen through our own blinkered eyes or our hazy and biased recollection, but as seen by the one who has perfect perspective. I suspect there will be things that seemed heinous to us that from God’s knowledge of our brokenness are seen in a different light. At the same time there will be things that we barely noticed that will have had profoundly damaging effects on others. And as this is played out over time, we will have the opportunity to acknowledge the rightness of it, to own the depth of it, to confess and repent in fulness for it. And at the end to receive the full forgiveness of it – from God Himself – but also from those brothers and sisters who we hurt.

What an amazing time that will be – heaven indeed – from that untarnished reality will spring a love and a wholeness, a healing that cannot begin to be described: life in all its fulness.

And for those humans and angels who even in this place of truth and reality, refuse to acknowledge, refuse to own, refuse the opportunity for restored relationship? Or for those who knowingly and wilfully set out to break that relationship – both for themselves and for others? Well, “how shall we escape, if we reject so great a salvation?”