Choosing Grace Not Violence
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Activist Shane Claiborne lays out the distinct choice we can make to draw on grace or vengeance when seeking justice:
Violence is contagious. Violence begets violence. A rude look is exchanged for a cold shoulder. A middle finger for a honked horn. Hatred begets hatred. Pick up the sword and die by the sword. You kill us and we’ll kill you. There is a contagion of violence in the world; it’s spreading like a disease.
But grace is also contagious. An act of kindness inspires another act of kindness. A random smile is exchanged for an opened door. Helping someone carry their laundry or groceries makes them nicer. Randomly paying someone’s toll in the car behind you invites them to pay it forward. A single act of forgiveness can feel like it heals the world. Grace begets grace. Love rubs off on those who are loved….
There’s nowhere you can see the battle of grace and disgrace waged more vehemently than in the criminal justice system. When it comes to words like “justice,” people can say the same thing and mean something completely different.
Capital punishment offers us one version of justice. There is a sensibility to it: evil should not go without consequence. And there is a theology behind it: “An eye for an eye … a tooth for a tooth” [Exodus 21:23–24].
Yet grace offers us another version of justice. Grace makes room for redemption. Grace offers us a vision for justice that is restorative and dedicated to healing the wounds of injustice. But the grace thing is hard work. It takes faith—because it dares us to believe that not only can victims be healed, but so can the victimizers. It is not always easy to believe that love is more powerful than hatred, life more powerful than death, and that people can be better than the worst thing they’ve done.
These two versions of justice compete for our allegiance. One leads to death. The other can lead to life, and to healing and redemption and other beautiful things.
Mercy is a natural outflowing of grace:
It’s been said, “Mercy is not getting what you do deserve, and grace is getting what you don’t deserve.” Both are beautiful, but both can also seem like a betrayal of justice. That’s why justice can’t just come out of our heads, but it also has to flow from our hearts. Grace and mercy are things, just like forgiveness, that exist in the context of evil, and in contrast to it. When all is well, grace and mercy are hard to notice. But when things are rough, they are hard to ignore. They shine brightly. Just as light shines in the darkness, grace is radiant next to evil.
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From Kurt Thompson
| Dear friend, When we travel, whether for business or leisure, we often carry a quiet assumption: our “real life” is back home. Back where the rhythms are familiar. Back where the people who know us best are waiting. Back where we imagine we are most fully seen and known. The days on the road can feel temporary, almost detached. As if we are living in parentheses until we return to the place where we belong. Recently, after a full day of speaking, I was finishing dinner alone in a hotel bar. It was late. I was tired. I was already orienting myself toward the quiet of my room upstairs. And then a man approached my table. He had attended the talk and wondered if I would be interested in joining him, his wife, and another couple for conversation. He offered his invitation with the explicit stated awareness that I might rather not, that I would rather be alone after my day of work, and that he and his friends would completely understand should I choose to demur. He and his friends had noticed me being alone and wanted to offer me the chance not to be if I so desired. There it was—that small interior crossroads. The part of me that longed for solitude. And the deeper invitation to remain open. I joined them. The following evening, nearly the same time, nearly the same setting; this time, a woman approached. Once more, a similar story line: she and her husband, along with another couple had heard the lecture earlier that day and come for dinner afterward. Would I sit with the four of them for a meal? Again, the choice. Two nights. Two invitations. Two moments that could easily have been dismissed as interruptions to the life I imagined was waiting somewhere else. |
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| But here is what those evenings quickly reminded me of: my “real” life is wherever I happen to be. And here is what “where I happened to be” became. On both occasions I soon was awash in joy and delight—and energized—in hearing the stories of each of the people who had so kindly and generously come to find me. It turns out that none of these eight people over the course of the two evenings wanted something from me so much as they wanted to care for me by offering me hospitality at their tables. Moreover, they put their money where their mouths were. On both evenings they picked up the tab for my dinner. What I could have imagined as an intrusion into my “down time” was instead a gift from the Spirit. A gift of community. A gift of others caring for me as we shared with each other where we each were finding ourselves in those present moments. I cannot say it too often, not least to myself—our real lives are wherever we allow ourselves to be seen by and to see others. On both occasions, what struck me was not the content of our conversations so much as the courage of their vulnerability. The willingness of couples to speak honestly. To risk being known. To say, in one way or another, this is who we are; this is our story. And in the simple act of telling the truth, community—between people who in my case an hour ago didn’t know each other at all—began to emerge. We are not meant to live in isolation, even when we are away from home. The longing to be known does not pause when we cross time zones. Nor does our call to bear witness to one another’s lives. Community is not confined to geography; it is created whenever two or three people choose presence over distraction. So often we imagine that meaning resides somewhere else—later, back home, once we return to our “real” relationships. But the kingdom of God meets us precisely where we are. It asks us to notice who is in front of us. To resist the temptation to live as if this moment doesn’t count. Because it does. Your “real” life is wherever you happen to be. And in that place—whether at your kitchen table or in a hotel bar—you are invited to see and be seen, to know and be known. This is how community forms. This is how love takes flesh. The question is not whether your real life is happening. The question is whether you are willing to enter it. Warmly, Curt |
