By Landon Jordan, Lead Pastor at New Anthem Church
There’s one thing in life you should never pray for.
But before we get there, let me remind you of a story that’s all too familiar in pop-culture—good guys win, bad guys lose. Have you noticed this?
Is it not the plot of every action movie? The villain has left the hero, or the hero’s brother, sister, parents, wife, kids, dog, etc. for dead. Filled with righteous indignation the hero gears up for battle and is given over to revenge; and we eat it up. Even though we know what’s coming.
Is this hatred for the bad guy not the story WWE tells every Monday night? What can we do to make the “heel” even more hated, so that at the next pay-per-view, the “baby-face” can get over?
Is it not why we’re drawn to stories where it seems like the bad guys went free? Case and point, “Making a Murderer”. How is that attorney not in prison?
Imprinted in our souls is a divine longing for justice. We crave for things to be made right.
And in order for things to be made right, we want punishment. To “bring about justice” means violence, and hurting those who have hurt us. We want to take away everything they have robbed from us.
Conversely, mercy means to refrain from violence. Mercy is mainly understood as an inaction. Mercy means doing nothing.
Now. As a Christian, I don’t believe that this yearning for justice is an evolutionary coincidence. You don’t see any other mammals organizing rallies because they’ve been wronged or treated unfairly. Instead, you see humans, being made in the image of God, reflecting a communicable attribute of God; that is, justice.
