When someone strikes us, be it with words or more tangible weaponry, we instinctively launch a counterattack in an effort to level the playing field through mutually assured destruction of peace or personhood. We learn early in life that failure to respond in kind signals weakness or, worse, inattention to a commonly held rule of law that demands reciprocity. The old tooth-for-tooth mentality (Exodus 21:23-26) governs the neighborhood park and office space alike. Choosing to turn away from a chance at revenge feels fundamentally wrong. It just isn't . . . just.

And that's the problem. Christ does not call his followers to a preoccupation with justice. Sure, we should recognize the moral law He's inscribed on our hearts and shape our own behavior and that of our kids accordingly. Yes, if we are among the few who sit in a seat of judicial authority at some level of government or business, circumstances will require that we dole out punishment for infractions against our immediate community. At some point in our lives, we will indeed find ourselves in situations where our instinctive desire to balance the scales serves a useful purpose.

This craving for justice should not, however, be allowed to dictate the daily behavior of the proclaiming Christian. The high moral standard to which we wed ourselves should mold our own behavior, but it should not be used to measure everyone else's shortcomings--even if those shortcomings involve injury to ourselves.

In fact, injury to ourselves should call out love.

This is the very conclusion arrived at, too late, by a group of teenagers in Jacob Aaron Estes's Mean Creek (2004). With one of their number recovering from embarrassment and physical injury inflicted by a school bully who has bothered most of them at one time, they decide to even the score by inflicting a bit of physical discomfort and a whole lot of humiliation on their shared adversary. To this end, they employ an elaborate deception that begins with a feigned gesture of friendship.

And then, only an hour or two into the ruse, they discover that withdrawing a proffered hand is hard to do when it has been firmly grasped by desperate fingers.

Their scam works a little too well. The isolated, obese boy who has thus far shared his life primarily with a camcorder leaps at the prospect of contact with those who might listen to his stories, appreciate his jokes, and benefit from his hidden store of kindnesses. His companions begin to sense their target's humanity, and it complicates their endgame.

And it should.

Christ calls us to love our enemies not because they deserve it (none of us have really earned much of anything, if you think about it), but because gifts of unlooked-for love can transform both the giver and receiver. An injured party might just learn to focus a little less on his own pain and more on the emptiness hidden by his assailant's anger and violence, and the bully might find his edge blunted by the harder steel of unremitting friendship.

Who knows, maybe even the pained soul of a young man on the verge of committing mass murder could be healed, transformed by the overtures of kindness delivered by someone who had decided to show love in the face of angry words, cold stares, and a turned back.