Retributive Justice and Restorative Justice
When people on the news say, “We want justice!” they normally mean that bad deeds should be punished or that they want vengeance. Our judicial, legal, and penal systems are almost entirely based on this idea of retributive justice.
.. Both Jesus and Paul observed the human tendency toward retribution and spoke strongly about the limitations of the law.
.. The biblical notion of justice, beginning in the Hebrew Scriptures with the Jewish prophets–especially Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea–is quite different. If we read carefully and honestly, we will see that God’s justice isrestorative. (This term has only been around for about the last twenty-five years as human consciousness has evolved.) In each case, after the prophet chastises the Israelites for their transgressions against Yahweh, the prophet continues by saying, in effect, “And here’s what Yahweh will do for you: God will now love you more than ever! God will love you into wholeness. God will pour upon you a gratuitous, unbelievable, unaccountable, irrefutable love that you will finally be unable to resist.”