We don\u2019t have to go too many days without coming across a story of revenge \u201d\u201c some variation on the spurned lover who cuts off the sleeves of their ex\u2019s clothes and gives their silver car a coat of red gloss paint. Many books and films are driven by a revenge-type plot, building up the tension until the bad guys gets their comeuppance, with the sense of relief that brings. There seems to be endemic in humans a desire for personal justice that is powerful and potentially deadly.<\/p>\n
Certainly that was the case in first-century Rome. In Reading Romans in Pompeii, Peter Oakes invites us to imagine how Paul\u2019s letter might have sounded to a mixed group of people meeting in the rented workshop of Holconius the cabinet-maker. If Holconius\u2019s daughter was mugged by a known criminal in the neighbourhood, Holconius could expect to muster up a group from the congregation, go to the man\u2019s house, beat him up, and take back any belongings \u201d\u201c in revenge.<\/p>\n
But Paul wants Christians to find different ways of dealing with vengeance, different ways of handling people who wrong us.<\/p>\n