4th April 2025

EYE AND TOOTH.

Martin Luther King Jr is on record as saying ‘If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will soon be a blind and toothless nation’ – a sobering thought where certain international events seem to embody two eyes and two teeth, and even more, for one! In the Mosaic Law the principle was simply to limit retaliation which was never to exceed the original hurt. Initially applied to individual relationships it had obvious implications for international conflict, seeking to limit the escalation of aggression.

By contrast, Jesus’ response in the Sermon on the Mount could not be more radical. Referring back to the Mosaic injunction, he counsels his hearers not to resist those who wrong them: if slapped on the right cheek they were to offer up the left, donate their cloak to the person who seized their shirt, if coerced into service for one mile to go two. In short the message was to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you [Matthew 5 38-44]. ‘Retaliation is binned, love and restoration are the only way forward’ [Steve Chalke].

The word ‘enemy’ derives from the Latin ‘in-imicus’, and thus an enemy is a person who is ‘not a friend’. Loving an enemy, therefore, begins by saying ‘Yes’ to their humanity, discovering common ground in their God-createdness, not so much that my enemy is opposed to me, but that together we are loved by God. Discovering this, the strong person is the one who cuts off the chain of hatred and evil, for hate not only harms the hated but simultaneously blights the hater. Thus whilst we usually think of what hate does to the individual or groups hated, the truth is even more tragic, for the hating process is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who does the hating.

In contrast to all this, is the power of love and forgiveness, for as Mark Twain was seen to observe, ‘Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it’, underlining poetically that quiet gentility and unassuming beauty have the potential to subdue or overcome even violent aggression.

John Briggs