Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Wife by David Chadwick

Author:David Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736967266
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

HONOR THROUGH DE-ESCALATION

The Old Testament teaches “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exodus 21:24). It’s called lex talionis, or “the law of retaliation.” It means tit for tat. Whatever you do to me, I, in turn, can do the same to you.

It was a way of maintaining justice and purging evil. It is still practiced in some cultures today. It’s supposedly a deterrent to crime—especially when the criminal knows the stiff penalty he faces if caught for his crime.

Interestingly, some would argue that lex talionis is filled with grace. That’s because most retaliation never stops at merely giving back what was taken in kind. Most retaliation is angrily motivated to escalate the offense. It strikes back harder than the way someone was struck. It steals more than was stolen. It kills more than was killed. It hurts more than was hurt. It’s filled with revenge.

The source of most genocide and tribalism is an escalating lex talionis. A person is killed. Anger rises among members of the tribe that lost one of its members. Revenge is demanded. So the tribe retaliates and kills two members of the other tribe. More revenge is enacted and several members of the other tribe are killed. The cycle of revenge killing escalates. Eventually, dozens, hundreds, even thousands of lives are lost. Genocide, the attempted elimination of an entire tribe, sadly becomes the eventual outcome.

That’s why some would argue that God’s intention for lex talionis is filled with grace. Its original design was to prevent the increasing escalation of revenge killing. By grace, God wanted justice to allow only one eye for another person’s eye, and only one tooth for another person’s tooth.

Realistically, however, that seldom happens. Human nature doesn’t work that way. It seldom wants an exact revenge. It wants the person who hurt me to suffer more than I did. It wants the other person to experience more pain than I experienced.

That’s why the best way to thwart the increasing escalation of revenge killing is to practice what Jesus said in Matthew 5:38-39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Jesus was confronting individual conduct amidst the universal urge for an escalating, personal revenge. Since most people are right-handed, the backhanded slap was the ultimate insult. Thus Jesus was addressing the necessity to thwart escalating violence—one that motivates a more potent counterattack on the person who deeply offended me.

What does this have to do with a husband honoring his wife? Plenty. It speaks to the need for husbands to learn how to practice honor by de-escalating conflict when it arises in marriage. It speaks to husbands about practicing what that inestimable theologian, Barney Fife, constantly counseled on The Andy Griffith Show: “Nip it in the bud.”

In other words, Deputy Fife was trying to teach us the need to stop the problem before it starts.

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