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She was only sixteen years old when the court sentenced her to death for her crime. She and two or three other teenage girls had attacked and killed an old woman. They broke into her house. They kicked, stabbed, and beat her viciously and without mercy until she died. As I listened to the story, I felt a growing rage within me. How could anyone be so cruel, so insensitive, so callous, and so mean? How could they listen to her pleas for mercy and not be touched? They set upon the old woman who had done nothing to them and assaulted her body until she fell to the floor. The poor soul died repeating the Lord's Prayer. The ring leader of the group was fifteen years old at the time. She was caught, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to die. As I heard the story -- let me be candid -- I was so angry with her despite her youth that I almost wanted to strangle her myself. The premeditated viciousness and cruelty were totally unprovoked and without cause. I felt all my convictions against the death penalty being tested. Are there not some crimes so monstrous that those who commit them forfeit their membership in the human community? I was outraged and wrathful that these heartless girls could continue to stab and beat an old woman who was pleading for mercy and praying to God.

A few minutes later I was watching this young woman being interviewed. First of all, it was the look on her face that got to me. It was an expression of such sadness and tragedy that, despite what she had done, I felt my heart softening a bit. She said she didn't want to die. She wanted to live out her normal span of years. She began to tell the story of her own life. She had been mistreated and abused in her own home. She spoke of how ashamed she was of her family situation. They seemed different somehow. Here was a vulnerable, sensitive child who needed love and security in her own tender years and had not received it. I sat there watching her and listening. The sorrow and pain on her face broke through my rage. A large tear formed in each eye and slowly ran down her cheek.

What inner pain and humiliation she must have known in her early years. It all came to the surface now and was plainly revealed in the expression on her face. She had done a vicious thing and had been sentenced to die for it. Her young life appeared to be headed for a tragic end. She had never known how good life can be when you are loved and cared for by those who matter most. I shall never forget the look on her face. A few minutes ago, I had been ready to strangle her. Now I was moved to tears of my own and wanted to reach out in compassion and let her know that somebody cares. There but for the grace of God and love of family and friends -- especially in those early years -- go we all.

It was a rather remarkable experience for me. I went from wrath and rage to mercy and compassion toward one human being. She was a cruel murderer. She was also a precious young life whose own spirit had been crushed by people and powers beyond her control when she needed to be loved and nourished.1

I came to a new appreciation of Paul's letter to the Romans that day. The apostle does not begin with any sentimentality about a liberal, warm-hearted deity who overlooks our wrongdoing as if it did not matter much. No namby-pamby, teddy bear, wimp of a God here. This is no tearful bleeding heart who is so concerned for the perpetrator of violence that the victim is forgotten. Instead, we are told in thundering terms that the Almighty is full of fierce anger at rebelliousness and unrighteousness. The wrathful deity of Romans 1 is the God the visiting evangelist would hold up before the fourth grade Sunday school class during the revival meeting. That would soften them up for the altar call later during the preaching service, as we sang the invitation hymn.

Just listen to Paul for a moment. The wrath of God is revealed from on high against all the ungodliness and wickedness of humanity ... Sinners are without excuse; they know better. And since they did not see fit to pay attention to God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but approve those who practice them (Romans 1:18-32).

One has the impression that Paul was writing rapidly at the end of this first chapter, putting down whatever came to mind. The point was not to make a complete list of the sins of the race but to illustrate the fact that humanity is in bad trouble with Almighty God. We have made a mess of the world. The divine law has been violated. God is full of wrath at what we have done. While thinking and writing about all this, one gets the feeling that Paul was getting all worked up and infuriated himself. He was getting madder and madder at wicked sinners.

Yet only a couple of pages later, we seem to be in a completely different world. Now we are told that despite the fact that we come short of the glory of God, we are justified by grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. This gift is to be accepted in grateful love and simple trust. We are saved by grace through faith. The astounding good news is that God shows love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 3:23-36; 5:6-11). Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saves the wretches of the world who have turned earth into hell. What boundless love, what infinite mercy, what tender compassion this is. The good news is that wrath is not the last word; grace is. The final verdict is that love will not let us off, will not let us down, will not let us go.

Christian faith is born in a paradox. This does not imply that it is based on a logical contradiction. It means that Christian preaching witnesses to something contrary to what we would have expected. Wrath and hot anger are overcome by suffering love. Forgiveness is offered to us as a gift to those who do not deserve it.

I have raised a lot more questions with all this heavy theology and the tragic story with which I began than I will answer. There is, for example, the terribly difficult question of how free and responsible we are for our actions. Every fiber of my being wants to say that we are accountable for what we do, no matter what our childhood was like. But I am not sure that in every instance we have the power to choose otherwise than we do. Just as a bridge can hold up only so much weight, maybe our human frame can bear only so much and beyond that collapses into actions that are beyond our control. A few tragic souls may have become so broken down by their past that they have lost most of their capacity to decide between alternatives. They may be nearly enslaved to the demons that rage within. In any case, I am pretty sure that some people have a greater range of choice than others.

One thing has impressed me. Again and again when the newspapers report some horrible crime that is truly outrageous, the follow-up articles on the childhood backgrounds reveal a similar pattern. Time after time it turns out that these violent people have themselves been victims of violence. Parents who mistreat their children have often themselves been abused. Assassins and murderers have frequently known childhood experiences in which they were beaten or neglected or felt themselves deeply humiliated and unloved.

I state no universal laws. I excuse no person or group who commits acts of cruelty and terror. Certainly I make no declarations that all wrongdoing can be traced to particular causes. I do not assert that all who sin have been sinned against in equal or worse ways. I suspect that the truth is both more simple and more complicated than all the theories the theologians and psychologists have ever put forward.

Let us take another example. For a while back in 1985 we were all preoccupied with the hijacking of a TWA airplane in which passengers were held captive. One of the hostages later confessed that the experience had given him an education regarding the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs.ÊFrom the hijackers he had learned that the Arabs have legitimate points to make.ÊAll that struck a responsive chord in me because my education was advanced a bit also during this period. Those responsible for the hijacking were Shiites.ÊIn many Arab countries the Shiites have been a minor-ity.ÊThey have often been oppressed, abused, shunned, and, in general, badly treated.ÊMany of them are poor and desperate.ÊIt is out of this kind of background that some of them have turned to violence and terrorism.

A small group of people did some terrible things.ÊThey took innocent people on an airplane and held them hostage. One person was beaten and killed.ÊAt the same time, the perpetrators of violence themselves have a history of persecution, oppression, and bad treatment. I am not pretending to have instant expertise on these matters.ÊThe issues go back for centuries.ÊThey are complex, many-sided.ÊAll parties have legitimate complaints and valid claims. Probably no group has as much truth and justice in their camp as they maintain.Ê

The question I want to press is this: What attitude should we take toward people who do awful things to others? How should we treat those who rape, murder, torture, and mistreat without mercy? What shall we do with adults who physically and sexually abuse children, punish them without mercy, starve them, and do all sorts of other vicious and heartless things? In particular, how should we deal with such people when we discover that they have themselves been the victim of violence? Does the letter to the Romans have anything to teach us? I think it may. In fact, we have in the paradoxical combination of wrath and love that overcomes wrath just the combination we need.

First of all, when horrible crimes of murder, rape, and violence are committed, it is appropriate to be wrathful. Those who do such things must be held accountable. A civilized and decent world cannot tolerate such lawlessness. There may be a place for retribution in some appropriate fashion at the level of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in the crazy, absurd world in which we live. Wrath is the side of love that comes into play when violence is done to the children of God.

Beyond wrath, however, is forgiving love. This is the hard part. Let no one tell you it is easy. When God forgives us, there is a cost to pay. There is suffering. Love suffers when it forgives. That is the meaning of the cross. That is what all that talk about being saved by the blood of Jesus is about, all that talk about expiation for sin, all that talk about Christ dying for us. When we forgive one another, we suffer. To forgive means to bear the hurt the other has caused and burn it out in cross-bearing love. We must accept the evil inflicted on us and suffer through it until wrath has been consumed by love. Only then are we able to set the perpetrator free.

And what about the terrorists? We hear a lot about punishing the perpetrators. If we are to follow the way of the cross, there is more to it than that. A first step is to ask whether violence is a desperate measure to call attention to injustice. Love will seek justice for all. The surprising thing is that treating everyone fairly may be the only way to end violence. Unless somebody, somewhere, somehow is able to love beyond wrath, the vicious cycle of terror will go on and on. In the long run love may be the only thing that works.

Walter Wangerin, Jr., tells of an episode in his family life. He caught his young son Matthew stealing comic books from the local library. He was appalled that his own offspring would do such a thing. Various things were tried to make him stop. Matthew got a stern lecture from the librarian, Mrs. Outlaw. But it kept happening. Finally, in desperation Walter felt he had to punish the boy. So he turned Matthew across his lap and paddled his little bottom and then rushed out into the hall in tears. He eventually composed himself and came back into the room and held his little boy, telling him how much he loved him and how much he hated to punish him.

Years later, Matthew and his mother were in the car returning from a shopping center. They talked about old times. The comic book incident came into the conversation. He asked his mother if she knew why he quit stealing the comic books. "Yes," she replied. "Your father punished you." "No," he protested. "That's not the reason. I quit because Daddy cried."2 It was not the wrath of Matthew's father that was effective. It was the suffering love of old dad who could not stand to paddle his child, even though he was mad at the child for stealing. It was not punishment that brought about repentance and new life. It was Daddy's tears.

While the world goes about seeking revenge and prescribing force and retaliation, here are those silly Christians going all over the place pointing to a cross and preaching about the day God cried. God demonstrates love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). This is the foolishness of the cross. Oh, it's true that wrath and law and punishment have a preliminary work to do. But the folly of the word we preach is that ultimate redeeming power is suffering love. The most powerful force for redemptive change in those who do wicked deeds is not fear of punishment but that they come to know in their hearts that despite everything they are deeply loved by those they have offended. God still cries for wayward children, and in that example is to be found the clue to how we must act toward those who act unjustly if we are to save them and us from perpetual conflict and strife.

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1. The preceding paragraphs were originally published in The Many Faces Of Evil, CSS Publishing Co., Lima, Ohio, 1997, pp. 41-42. Used by permission.

2. Walter Wangerin, Jr., The Manger Is Empty: Stories In Time (San Francisco: Harper & Row, l989), pp. 116-132.