Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 22:10-12

10 If a man deliver unto his neighbour an ass, or an ox, or a sheep, or any beast, to keep; and it die, or be hurt, or driven away, no man seeing it:

11 Then shall an oath of the Lord be between them both, that he hath not put his hand unto his neighbour’s goods; and the owner of it shall accept thereof, and he shall not make it good.

12 And if it be stolen from him, he shall make restitution unto the owner thereof.

Yesterday’s verses mentioned how a judge would have to decide between two conflicting testimonies, trying to find the truth of the matter according to his own observation and reason. Thus, there would be a human element in matters of justice, which means there would be flawed results. Surely, sometimes the guilty would be deemed innocent and set free, while the innocent would sometimes be deemed guilty and unfairly punished.

Today’s verses answer this dilemma. They state that if a man is accused of causing the death of an animal that he had on loan, that he could defend his innocence by making a solemn oath to the Lord. This appeal to the divine is the ultimate endpoint of every legal system. While we will always have lawsuits and trials where the truth cannot be verified, where lies prevail, where the wrong judgment is administered; the sense of justice yet finds its answer in the divine. If a man would make a lying oath before the Lord, then it would become the purview of the Lord to administer justice Himself. Until recently, my own country’s court system similarly required those that testified to swear on the Bible, invoking a divine oversight upon their words. From that point on, a person may yet lie and deceive, but it is most assuredly upon their own head.

Even if a man makes no formal pledge before God, it is still essential that the people believe that God still sees and knows all, and that the unresolved wrong runs contrary to His nature, and that He will make it right in this life or the next. If such were not the case, then there would be times where evil would surpass good, where lies would triumph over truth. It would mean that if one were clever and bold enough, they could wrest the universe to their will to the harm of others, and there would be no justice to ever set things right. And if that were the case, then the entire concept of law, and right and wrong, and justice, would all be vain illusions.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:23-25

23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,

24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

These verses contain the root of what might very well be the most famous phrase in all of Hebrew law: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” As we see here, though, that is only the beginning of the saying. Hand, foot, burning, wound, stripe, and even life all are to be returned in equal measure upon the afflicter. Any harm that a man causes to another, shall be caused back on himself in return.

This is a good and fair law, it is consistent and equal to all. It is designed to deter the guilty, protect the innocent, and provide justice when all else fails. As I have stated elsewhere, when Jesus taught the higher law of turning the other cheek, he was not dissolving this principle of fair recompense, but rather teaching the other side of the same concept. Moses gave the half of justice that condemns the guilty, Jesus gave the half the exalts the holy. We need both.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Turn the Other Cheek

I spoke yesterday about two sides to God’s Justice, one that condemns the wicked and one that exalts the pure in heart. One of the scriptures I quoted was Jesus teaching his followers to “turn the other cheek.” I wanted to explore that sentiment even more, but my comments were becoming large enough that I decided pulled them out into this separate post. To help us get into it, let’s pull up the relevant verses:

Matthew 5:39-40:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

Imagine if Christ has said “whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, do not strike him back,” or if he had said, “if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, just let him have it.” If those were the things that he had said, then this would already be advocating for an unexpected, unnatural behavior, one that is much more mild than we are accustomed to. What Christ would be asking of us in this case would be a sort of passive pacifism, a call to inaction.

But those are not the things that Christ actually said. He took it a step further and said “turn to him the other [cheek] also” and “let him have they cloak also.” This is not passive inaction at all, but active action. We are actually being told to do something. Specifically, something that deliberately causes greater harm to our own self!

I don’t think it wise to assume that Jesus was just exaggerating when he said these things, to suppose that he just really wanted to hammer home the point of non-retaliation. The more I’ve thought about, the more I think he really meant that when someone does you harm you, should actively double up on it!

Christ is not calling for non-retaliation, but rather a sort of reflected retaliation. When one cheek is struck, justice requires that another cheek be struck in return. Christ’s advice does not dissolve that justice, but rather states that we should have that recompense be met upon our own person. He is calling us to take the retribution of justice and absorb within our self! We are taking the punishment for their own crimes, and that terminates the cycle of harm right there.

And this, of course, is the very thing that Christ did for all the world. In his atonement he was unjustly condemned, which to be balanced out would require his persecutors to be justly condemned by God. But Christ accounted for both the initial offense and the recompense in his sacrifice. In submitting himself to his condemnation, Christ took not only the direct pain of what they were doing to him in the moment, but also the pain of what the Father would do to them in return, paying the price for their sins that they might go free. They were both condemned and redeemed in the single act of Jesus’s death.

Christ is the end of the back-and-forth nature of justice. He takes the never-ending cycle of harm and self-closes the loop in his own person. And in his injunction to “turn the other cheek,” he is asking to us to do the same thing in our own small way. We can be the cul-de-sac where the road of affliction turns back on itself and dissolves.

Of course, as with Christ’s atonement, it is still up to the offender to accept the grace that is offered. You have done your part to preserve peace in the world, but the world still has the choice whether to take that peace or not. And if the world rejects that opportunity, then it is doubly condemned for having struck the innocent twice!

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Two Halves of Justice

Some time ago I did a study on the qualities of Justice and Mercy. One key takeaway was how justice is both a law for punishment and reward. If we harm another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we be harmed. Conversely, if we do good to another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we receive good, too. Justice can be either the vehicle for our damnation or our ascension, depending on which way we choose to engage with it.

Recently, I thought some more about this dual nature of justice, and I wanted to point out two more observations that I had.

Two Teachings of Justice)

I’ve realized that the complete picture of justice is only seen by combining two Biblical laws that were given by two different men at two very different times. The first treatise on justice comes from Moses, when he famously pronounced “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This mandate was given while describing the rules for punishment that would befall those who broke Hebrew law and wronged their neighbor. It was, therefore, a representation of only the negative half of justice. To this day, no one uses the term “an eye for an eye” to mean paying a good deed forward, only for retaliation against the wrong that has been done by another.

The second treatise on justice was given over multiple discourses by Christ. His famous injunction to “do unto others what you would have them do to you” is, at its core, a call for justice. “Doing unto others” is giving the just reaction to a yet unreceived action.

Jesus also invoked the image of justice when he stated, “with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” That is you being recompensed equally for how you treat another, which is another way of saying ‘justice.’ Undeserved kindness that you show to others must be returned by undeserved kindness from God because the scales of justice require it.

Moses gave the half of justice that condemned the guilty, but Christ gave the half that exonerated the innocent. Christ did not contradict the law of justice given by Moses, he completed it, and both halves have been in full force forever after.

Judicial Justice and Personal Justice)

It also stood out to me that Moses’s half of justice, that of punishment and redress, is the correct form of justice for a people. The chief purpose of a judicial system is to provide protection for the innocent, and to right those that have been wronged. In the western world our sense of national justice still mirrors that of Moses’s. Our court systems are in essence an eye-for-an-eye, intended to allow the victim to be restored to whole by taking from the perpetrator.

Meanwhile, Christ’s half of justice, that of forgiveness and reward, is the correct form of justice for the individual. We do not compel a person in our laws to forgive another who has wronged them, or to turn the other cheek, but we do applaud them when they choose for themselves to take that higher road.

And this is how it should be. There should be a default protection for the weak and innocent, and there should also be an option for the individual to waive the offense if they so choose. We are properly incensed at a judge who decides to withhold justice, while we are properly in awe of those who, without compulsion, show their offender mercy.

One law, two halves, each aligned with the righteous and blessed order of God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Turn the Other Cheek

Matthew 5:38-40, 43-44:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

There are a few passages of scripture that are often used to to argue that Christians should not judge others. Today I am looking at the first, which is Christ’s teaching that we should “turn the other cheek.”

We all have a basic sense of justice within us that when a person insults us we want to insult them back, and when they strike us we want to strike them back. But Christ compelled his followers to suppress that natural spirit of retaliation, and instead invite another rebuke from them! This is extraordinary, and it certainly asks a great deal of every disciple, but we should note that there are certain requirements attributed to this sermon that Jesus never actually called for:

  1. Nowhere does Christ say that the offender is to be absolved of their guilt. Turning the other cheek is not the same as justifying what the other person has done. If anything, our invitation to be struck again doubly condemns the offender! Also, note that while verse 44 calls on us to love, bless, pray for, and do good to those that harm us, Christ does not ever say for us to approve, justify, or defend their crimes. We can both love our enemy and turn the other cheek, while still maintaining that their behavior is wrong.
  2. Christ gives examples of how we would accept relatively light forms of physical violence and the loss of an article of clothing. These are both small infractions, and both related to the loss or harm of earthly, physical things. It is not right to take this instruction and apply it to wrongs of a greater severity, such as another person trying to kill you and your family, or of a different type, such as another person trying to spread lies in your community. Nothing in this passage suggests that there is never a time to defend or push back.
  3. In each example, Christ is only talking about the disciple accepting a personal slight. There is a great difference between allowing wrongs to be perpetrated against the self and allowing wrongs to be perpetrated against others. Christ does not say, “whosoever shall smite your child upon the cheek, turn to him your other child’s also!” That would be passivity to the point of cruelty to the innocent. We do not only refute the evil of the world for our own sake, but for the protection of the weak and the innocent also.

What Christ teaches in these verses has real weight and meaning, and calls for a real change in his followers. But we should limit the lessons that we take from this to the ones that were actually intended, and not mis-attribute other lessons upon it as well. Christ is calling us to do something very hard, but only on a personal level and for particular sorts of offense. Nowhere in these verses does Christ say that we should allow others to take every liberty against our person, or call evil good, or cease to preach repentance to the wicked, or fail to protect the innocent. We can do all of those things while still being totally consistent with the instruction to turn the other cheek.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Question

Jesus showed mercy to the adulterous woman, but he also gave punishment to moneychangers at the temple when he drove them out with a whip.

Jesus besought forgiveness for the very men that carried out his execution, yet he also assured the pharisees that they would not be able to “escape the damnation of hell.”

Jesus besought his followers to turn the other cheek, but he also commanded the nation of Israel to destroy their enemies in the land of Canaan.

In short, at times Christ called for mercy, forgiveness, and patience with sinners and oppressors, while at other times he called for the punishment and condemnation.

The purpose of this study is to understand when we are to be the Lord’s balm and when to be His sword? When are we to be patient and longsuffering, and when are we to stand with boldness against evil? When are we to be a vessel of mercy, and when of justice?

In my following posts I will seek to answer these questions by looking at several examples in the scriptures, particularly of Christ, that speak to both sides. It is not my intention to argue for one side over another, but only to understand how to do what is right, serving God in either fashion according to His will and dictates.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 41:1

1 And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

Two more years passed after the event of Joseph interpreting the dreams for the chief butler and baker, and all the while he was left stewing in jail. To me that seems long enough to give up hope that the chief butler would ever help Joseph to get out of jail.

We don’t hear anything about how Joseph conducted himself during all this time. Presumably he still retained his conscience, but I can’t help but wonder what state his heart was in. Did he ever have days of despair where he assumed that this imprisonment would never end?

Certainly we also have our difficult situations that we cannot see a way out of. We each have situations where every attempt to find deliverance is frustrated, until at last we accept that we have no control over the matter. Then we try to turn things over to God, but after a time of our prayers going unanswered we start to question whether even He will ever take this obstacle away. We start to surrender to the expectation that things will remain just as they are forever.

This is an extremely humbling, even heart-breaking, experience to pass through. We have an innate sense of justice inside of us, which cries out that everything should be brought to its rightful place. The innocent should be exonerated and the guilty condemned, that is the right and natural order of things, yet that isn’t what we see happening around us. It is a hard thing to maintain our sense of what the right and ordered world should be, while also submitting to the fact that that simply is not how things always are.

The nature of bubbles in water is to rise to the surface, but sometimes these pockets of air get caught on sunken debris and held down where they should not be. But even a pocket of air trapped for a hundred years never loses its true nature. When decay and currents finally clear away the obstacle, air will still rise to the top.

So it is meant to be for us. Justice may be frustrated for a time and our surroundings may not match our quality of character for a season; but whether in this life or the next, all will eventually be made right. Though it takes an act of God, the good will eventually rise and the evil will fall. As we will see soon, this is what happens for Joseph. He is trapped with no earthly hope of deliverance, and certainly for a longer period than he would have preferred, yet deliverance does occur.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Spiritual Analysis- Genesis 19:23-25

23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.

24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

Interestingly, the further we get from the beginning of the biblical record, the more rare these grandiose moments become. With Noah we hear about the entire earth being flooded, but with Moses it’s only the Red Sea being parted, and with Jesus it’s only walking over the Sea of Galilee.

Perhaps this is because the human population increased enough that it became simpler for God to topple one empire with another, rather than send fantastic powers out of heaven. Or perhaps it is because the further humanity exists from the Garden of Eden, the less God’s hand is directly shown. Or perhaps the miraculous judgments of God are actually just as prolific as ever, but we do not attribute His hand to them, calling a natural disaster or an epidemic “bad luck” instead of the hand of justice.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Justice and Mercy- Summary

I began this study with the thought that justice and mercy might simply be two sides of the same principle. As I worked through the scriptures, though, I’m starting to think I was wrong. Each is distinct from the other, but both work together for our good.
The way I would define them now is that justice is the principle of fairness by which sin is punished and virtue is rewarded. Mercy is the conduit by which the punishment of justice can be diverted to Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, and the blessing of justice can be received by us.
In any case, I’ve certainly gained a deeper appreciation for why both of these principles needs to exist. Without both, God’s plan for us could not be fulfilled.

Laws Provide Blessings When Followed, but Curses When Broken

Commandments are not given to restrict or condemn. They are given to enable our betterment. It is by receiving and following law that we receive blessings. Every blessing comes as the result of adhering to some law of God’s, and our spiritual maturity is developed by bending our will to His.
However a law cannot simply include a principle and a reward for when it is followed. A law must also detail a punishment for when that principle is defied. Once both consequences, one good and one bad, are affixed to the principle, then the demands of justice will swing one way or the other dependent upon our behavior.
Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21- There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated. And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.
2 Nephi 2:11- For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.

All of us Have Fallen Short of God’s Laws

This certainly seems like a straightforward plan to receiving all that is good, and avoiding all that is bad. All one has to do is keep the law perfectly. And it would be a simple path to perfection, if not for the fact that we are born with a tendency to sin. We are imperfect beings, with imperfect minds and bodies, susceptible to coercion, deception, and misunderstanding.
We all have our particular strengths, areas by which Satan always seems to fail in his efforts to sway us. But also have our weaknesses. And Satan does find them, exploit them, and sooner or later each one of us tastes of forbidden fruit and now stand condemned by the law that was supposed to have liberated us.
With all of the human race failing to attain perfection, we would be doomed as a whole to eternal damnation.
Romans 3:23- For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God
Moses 6:55- And the Lord spake unto Adam, saying: Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter

Jesus’s Sacrifice Restores us to the Benefits of Justice Via Mercy

Except there was one man who didn’t break a single one of God’s laws. Jesus of Nazareth was the only human ever to walk a perfect life. I do not know how much of that was due to the extra dose of divinity that ran through his veins, or whether it was simply due to his personal nature. In either case, the fact is he was born a human, was therefore put under the same law of perfection, and he actually managed to fill that measure in its entirety.
While I do not know the reasons why, one requirement for being able to replace one law with another seems to be fulfilling the first. As the only one to manage that particular feat, Jesus was free to take the punishment for all of our failings on himself, supplant the demands of perfection, and grant us mercy instead.
Alma 34:14, 16- And behold, this is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal.
And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice.


Posted on by Abe Austin

Justice and Mercy- Matthew 7:2, 12

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

COMMENTARY

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law
We have discussed how the intervention of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice allows the demands of justice to be satiated in regards to our failures to follow’s God law. Which of course means we can be shown mercy, forgiveness, and all other blessings God has to bestow.
And that includes enjoying all of the positive sides of justice. Once we are no longer under fear of its punishment, then we see really it is a principle given for our own empowerment.
Following the golden rule is the right way to treat others, it is what God wants of us and it cultivates the best qualities in our soul. But even after all that, it also allows for justice to tip the scales in our favor. If we do unto others as we would wish to receive, then sooner or later we will receive that which we wish. We will knock and it will be answered, we will seek and we will find. If we forgive freely, then justice demands we be forgiven freely. If we look for the good in others, we will find the good in our selves as well. This is the side of justice God always meant to show to us. The justice of His mercy.