"Is an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth appropriate?"

Pearl Harbor Day—"a day that shall live in infamy, a day that we must never forget!" On this seventy-fifth anniversary day of that attack, it is a good time to ask the question of "whether vengeance is a valid Christian response to wrongdoing?" When it comes to responding to evildoing can there be a gospel response, and not one that is driven by the law?

In the way in which Americans have worded the response to the Pearl Harbor attack, it is clear that vengeance was ours. Different interpretations of the response to the attack on Pearl Harbor have exacerbated the question. Was President Roosevelt and the United States government just looking for an opportunity to enter the war against the aggression of Japan? Some have even posited the idea that the United States even provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor. If that were the case, then we might add subterfuge to vengeance as elements of our Pearl Harbor response. But if one takes the Pearl Harbor attack at face value to be an attack on the United States and its military, then some kind of aggressive response on our behalf was called for. It would not do to just say “we find your attack unjustified. Please turn yourselves in as evil aggressors.” So we can say that a lawful response is necessary to respond to an aggressor. But should we be vengeful in our response? Perhaps the incarceration of Japanese in prisoner of war camps on American soil would be an example of a vengeful response. Others have said that the only use of nuclear bombs in the history of the world on a population that included civilians was perhaps a response to Pearl Harbor. To be ethical the gospel response to aggressive attack on innocents is one that is measured and restrained.

To a degree we have seen vengeful responses to our modern “Pearl Harbor” on 9/11/2001. 9/11 led many people to a hatred of a people and a religion. If there was xenophobia about the Japanese in the 1940s there is certainly a matched phobia of Moslems today. Our recent election, amidst a bluster of vengeful language, gives us more reason to pause today. The recent appointments of at least one general recognized for not holding back against an enemy no matter what ups the ante on these ethical questions. If 9/11 is a day that lives in infamy, where does the measured response end? Is it necessary to send all Moslems back to their countries of origin, when Islam is clearly a world religion? Do we need special prisons where we interrogate and torture members of militant Islamic groups? How much is an appropriate, measured response and how much is vengeance?

We do need to respond with force to those who attack us without provocation. We did after Pearl Harbor and we made many appropriate responses after 9/11. However, we always must remember that “vengeance is the Lord’s” and ultimately our Christian response is to “love our enemies, even when we hate the sinful things that they have done." After all, in the last analysis we are not God! History will judge us on how we have treated other human beings at all times.