From Adam S. Miller and his book “Original Grace”:
My father bought our first house with a handshake. My parents “had no money, not even two nickels to rug together.” But the prophet had said, “Get an education, marry, and buy a home. I was working on the education, married with four great kids, and no home. We dreamed of a home but you must have 20% down payment. No way for us.”
Still, my parents felt that they should look. “Having received a prompting (to window shop)”—so much of my father is captured in that opening clause—we all went driving to look at houses. We took a picnic basket and went looking that afternoon. We found ourselves in the country and found a house in the middle of nowhere. It was shabby, old with weeds three to four feet high.
My mother said, “Let’s go home.” My father said, “Let’s go inside.” They tracked down a key from a realtor and looked inside. The house was worse inside than out.
We sat in the weeds to eat our lunch, and while we ate, the farmer who owned the house came by. My father seized the day. “I talked with him for a little while, explaining that we had no money but would be willing to buy the house on agreement to pay for a down payment in twelve months. He shook my hand and said he would sell it.” So we all went to work. We got the house, worked on it for nine months, and built enough equity to qualify for a loan. We had our down payment nine months later.”
Later my father learned that while “the house had been on the market for two years with no offers to buy. . . .during the two weeks or so that it took to get the papers signed, the owner had offers to buy it for more money than we agreed upon. He turned both down for less money and the chance that we would come up with the money as promised in twelve months because he shook my hand!“4
The law is about justice, not punishment. Punishment—defined as the work of returning evil to those who have done evil—can only compound evil. Punishment, as the work of giving people what they deserve, can only make the world more unjust.
If evil is what evildoers deserve, then giving people what they deserve is not the work of justice. And if evil is what evil doers deserve, then deciding what people deserve is not the purpose of God’s law. Using the law to decide what is deserved—for example, using God’s law to decide if the beggar “deserves” your help—is a sinful misuse of the law. Punishment isn’t what justice looks like from God’s perspective. It’s what justice looks like from sin’s perspective.~ Adam S. Miller, Original Grace; An Experiment in Restoration Thinking (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2022) p. 34-35
