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Good Questions – Is God Retributive or Restorative?

Good Questions – Is God Retributive or Restorative?

Last updated on: February 6, 2025 at 4:12 pm by Karl J. Forehand

Good Questions – Is God Retributive or Restorative? 2025-02-06T16:12:52-06:00 Karl J. Forehand

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“Ours is a justice system that harms people

to show that harming people is wrong.”

~Bryan Stevenson

In his famous Letter from The Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”[1] Most segments of our population cry out for justice in various ways. Injustice appears to affect nearly everyone except those who superficially shield themselves with their power and privilege across all areas of our society.

We want someone to blame for the things that happen to us and our loved ones, and we want them to pay for the pain they have caused us. We have been conditioned to believe in a certain kind of justice, an eye for an eye, which demands at least the same level of pain that the person or institution inflicts on us and those we care about. It’s a natural reaction rooted in our evolution. We feel that if we don’t retaliate against whatever threatens us, they will harm us or someone else again. “Something has to be done” is the battle cry of the angry mob, determined posse, and sometimes, even religion.

One example of this is the Black Wall Street tragedy of 1921, when an armed mob attacked the prosperous Black community of Greenwood near Tulsa, Oklahoma. The turmoil arose from an accusation that a young Black man assaulted a young White woman in an elevator. This accusation served as the spark that ignited the chaos. Although it was later revealed that they were merely good friends or possibly even secret lovers, the fear—particularly among White women—intensified the tensions that ultimately contributed to the tragedy.

I believe that everyone involved thought they were delivering justice. An accusation founded on a presumption resulted in the complete devastation of a thriving community and led to a death toll estimated between 36 and 300. The incident serves as a powerful reminder not only of racism but also of what can occur when we hastily judge and view our only recourse as retributive ideals.

What is Retributive Justice?

Retributive justice is a legal theory that states that individuals who cause injustice and commit offenses should be punished in proportion to their “crime.” The term comes from the Latin word retribuere, meaning “to give back.”

Emily Thorne, the main character from the television show Revenge, says this phrase as a voiceover at the start of most episodes:

“In every life comes a day of reckoning—a time when unsettled scores demand

retribution and our own lies and transgressions are finally laid bare.”

I live in northwest Missouri, near the borders of Nebraska and Iowa. The landscape here feels very open, and I can easily imagine how it must have been during the Wild West and Prohibition eras. In the United States, we enjoy TV shows about revenge, and I can vividly picture the Sheriff gathering a posse to track down the “bad” guys. Think of the movies we’ve watched over the years where someone seeks vengeance for a family member’s injustice, goes on a rampage, causes significant property damage, and ultimately emerges as the hero, supposedly because “Justice has been served!”

Retributive justice requires that punishment be proportional to the crime. Most societies designate specific individuals to administer this justice and ensure its fairness. Angry mobs sometimes overstep boundaries and even harm innocent people in their rage. Retributive justice has been practiced throughout history, demonstrating that this concept has often been invoked to justify military conflicts, genocide, and the mistreatment of those who are different from us.

Retributive justice has always been part of our history, especially since it is seen as appropriate in our sacred texts and established standards of conduct. We accept it as a primary discipline because it aligns with our natural inclination for revenge and punishment. We recognize that it is only somewhat effective, addresses only immediate issues, and does not promote positive, lasting solutions. However, this has been our traditional approach, and punishing those who have wronged us feels justified.

One problem with retributive justice is that it doesn’t focus on rehabilitation or addressing the root cause of crime and injustice. Most people are somewhat deterred by fear of punishment, but depending on the environment and situation, a person in certain situations can feel like they don’t have any options, and the root cause of their criminal behavior may never be addressed to prevent it from happening again. Retributive justice may punish the active shooter if they survive the mass shooting, but using the United States as an example, we argue about who is to blame instead of determining root causes that might prevent it from happening again.

Retributive justice in the United States and other countries is often unfairly administered to minorities and people in poverty. Because they don’t have the resources to defend themselves, only 2-3% of crimes are brought to trial.[2] Disadvantaged people often accept plea deals for fear of a worse sentence even when they don’t commit the crime.

Even domestic violence in the home can be seen as justice when we accept a retributive model. Parents can sometimes justify using violence against their own children because they believe that this punishment fits the crime. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline website[3], “On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, which is more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year. Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner. Just under 15% of women (14.8%) and 4% of men in the US have been injured as a result of intimate partner violence that included rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner.”

Historically, when people come together in communities, they also develop their ideas about justice. We have often favored retributive justice because it is a basic survival response. The offenders of injustice are perceived as a threat to the community and the society that has been cultivated. After seeking and punishing the offender, we sometimes realize that this approach is not very effective at deterring future injustice or enhancing communities.

As with many other matters, better solutions often require hard work.

What is Restorative Justice?

According to the Center for Justice Innovation, “Restorative justice offers a different way of responding to harm and conflict. Instead of relying on punishment as a response, restorative justice seeks to repair harm and prevent future harm by elevating the needs of those who have been harmed and inviting those who have caused harm into a process of active accountability.”[4]

In this system, all parties involved recognize the wrong that occurred and encourage the person responsible for the harm to accept accountability and acknowledge the impact. The parties work together to create a plan to repair the damage and prevent future incidents. This involves restitution, restoration, and reconciliation. The focus shifts from “giving them what they deserve” to deliberately concentrating on rebuilding the community and preventing such offenses from happening again.

Restorative justice can be effective as it helps repair relationships, rehabilitate offenders, and reduce recidivism, contributing to a more just and fair society. This approach engages the entire community in seeking a more effective, positive, and permanent resolution rather than merely applying the immediate Band-Aid of punishing the perpetrator.

A key component of restorative justice is relationships. When I lack a relationship with my neighbor, it’s difficult to understand their basic needs, making it easier to overlook them. People commit horrific acts against their neighbors and ignore the injunctions to love them because they don’t know them. Be cautious not to assume that just because you have a cohesive group that doesn’t intentionally harm each other, your group or individuals within it don’t harm others outside of it. Jesus challenged this assumption by encouraging his disciples to love their enemies, not just their neighbors and friends.

Once again, we conclude that effective, permanent solutions require hard work. My friend Paula Stone Williams says, “Most of our problems can be solved by proximity and narrative.” Brené Brown says, “It’s hard to hate people up close.” However, problems cannot be resolved with proximity alone—they also require the right narrative, which has been broken for a long time, including in our holy books.

The Role Religion Plays

Religion often promotes retributive justice by creating narratives around its gods, depicting them as just and presenting appropriate justice as Divine retribution. This reinforces the belief that wrongful actions should lead to negative consequences. This theme is especially prevalent in Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, where scriptures frequently recount stories of divine punishment. While we label this as retributive justice, it can sometimes extend even further.

In my Christian tradition, asserting that one could suffer eternally, even for the smallest misdeeds, was easy. In the Hebrew scriptures, children were often killed for their parents’ sins, and many people were brutally murdered for offending the wrong person or failing to honor the Hebrew God, Yahweh.

Although modern-day Christians may seek a more restorative view of justice from Jesus, they also ground their understanding of God in the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye.” While Jesus approached some of the Hebrew Scriptures with a different perspective, making them less retributive in certain instances and more restrictive in others, he still stressed that simply contemplating an action could be viewed as equivalent to committing the offense, thus meriting greater punishment. For example, he articulated this view clearly in his speech, The Sermon on the Mount.

Religious perspectives on crime and punishment can sometimes seem contradictory. While they promote the idea of divine retribution, they often struggle to clearly define what constitutes a crime and the appropriate punishment. In my tradition, the Bible presents conflicting and perplexing conclusions depending on the interpreter and their cultural viewpoint. This portrayal of God vacillates between a frightening monster and a compassionate savior.

Most religions determine what they consider a violation based on their understanding of their deities. While many religions define their God as understanding, compassionate, and often forgiving, they also view God as retributive, at times angry, judgmental, and unpredictable. Over time, these traditions have envisioned post-life punishment if their conditions for salvation or deliverance are not met. For Christians, the concept of hell has evolved into the idea of eternal conscious torment, even for minor offenses.

Of course, most of these systems prescribe deliverance from retribution. However, the explanations can be confusing, and daily practices often contradict the resolutions that holy texts prescribe for their followers.

My Experience

After serving as a pastor for 20 years, I contemplated the question, “Is God primarily retributive or restorative?” This question was quite perplexing because Jesus presented a vision of restoration, forgiveness, and mercy. Yet the Christians I knew also anticipated God punishing their enemies, which included most people beyond their immediate circle.

While I understand that the basic ideas of forgiveness and mercy could restore people to a right relationship with each other and possibly with God, I didn’t see this played out in my country and the world. Atheists, agnostics, and people in other religions were sometimes more loving, kinder, and forgiving than the Christians that I knew. They expected God to be restorative in some magical way to them and retributive to almost everyone else.

Not only did I see little evidence of a restorative God, but I could easily disprove it using their own Scriptures. With careful study, I soon realized that Scriptures tend to evolve over time and depend much more on their culture and source of origin than on any divine message from the gods they invented.

When I concluded that the ideal God should be uniquely restorative rather than retributive, I began a thorough search for evidence supporting this belief. As I mentioned earlier, it was difficult to find strong physical evidence, even from the heroes of the faith, who sometimes displayed a retributive nature and were loving and forgiving only toward those closest to them. I also searched for evidence in history and noted that most wars, the ultimate expression of retribution, were instigated by religious individuals who believed they were right, and that God was on their side. Did you know that most of Hitler’s army consisted of Protestant and Catholic Christians? I didn’t either until I questioned this and sought the answer.

As a pastor, I tried to focus on love, compassion, and mercy. Christians wanted to believe this about their God, so I embarked on a journey with the three churches I pastored. However, when I asked the question honestly and researched it thoroughly, I realized that if God really does exist, the narrative is so far off base that it only frustrated me to try to change it within the confines of religion. Much like people, religions don’t like to change and usually resist reconsidering their beliefs. So, I left and began searching for something that made more sense.

In my book Apparent Faith, I asked a similar question: “Shouldn’t God be better than me?” This was followed by the question we are asking now: “Is God retributive or restorative?” As I continued to ask questions, I understood that it is incongruent to say that the source of everything could be both. In my mind, two different paths lead in different directions and can’t be considered equally just.

Keep asking questions about the justice of your God narrative that you inherited.

Karl Forehand

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Karl Forehand is a former pastor, podcaster, and award-winning author. His books include Out into the Desert, Leaning Forward, Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father’s Heart, The Tea Shop and Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity. He is the creator of The Desert Sanctuary podcast and community. He is married to his wife Laura of 35 years and has one dog named Winston. His three children are grown and are beginning to multiply! You can read more about the author here.

[1] Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963

[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-criminal-cases-actually-go-trial.html#

[3] https://www.thehotline.org/stakeholders/domestic-violence-statistics/

[4] https://www.innovatingjustice.org/areas-of-focus/restorative-justice

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