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Good morning,

The road to Damascus is littered with the ordnance of a violent regime: abandoned tanks, redundant checkpoints, decapitated statues and the defaced portraits of a fallen dictator.

The Syrian people seem unable to believe it. Their expressions a sort of euphoric relief, as they emerge from a very dark place into an almost forgotten light.

The World also seems to be watching incredulous, checking that these bulletins are true, hoping this really is some good news interrupting the never-ending cycle of bad.

For now, there seems to be a miraculous restraint being shown by people who have had so much abuse meted out against them. In every interview they express a desire for an end to violence:

‘Our job is to rebuild Syria,’ said a leader of the White Helmets. ‘We don’t wish to enter into a phase of revenge,’ said the interim government spokesperson.
But an understandable need for reckoning is growing. Someone has to pay. ‘We just want justice,’ said a man heading to a rumoured public execution of a notorious prison officer.

And the question hangs: will taking revenge make the country’s reconstruction more or less possible? Does revenge lead to justice, or does it lock us into an eternal loop of violence?
According to Genesis, revenge makes an early appearance in the human story. When Cain kills his brother Abel, God tells Cain that his brother’s blood cries out to him.
But, contrary to human expectations, God doesn’t exact revenge on Cain with a tit-for-tat punishment; He not only forgives this first criminal, he protects him - against the vengeance of people.

Which begs the question: what kind of God would not kill a man who killed his brother? Presumably a God who sees vengeance as a force too powerful for humans to handle.

A God with a different understanding of vengeance, a word with roots in the Latin word vindicare – which means ‘to find innocent’ as well as ‘find fault’.
Perhaps this explains God’s willingness to seek and keep relationship with homicidal humans in order to rehabilitate them and set them on a different road.
It was on the road to Damascus that Saul, a man with murderous intent, was stopped and arrested at a sort of spiritual checkpoint; not by guards but by the same God who waved Cain through.

In this encounter Saul, later St Paul, experienced a metanoia, a turning around, that changed him from righteous militant to a man of peace. So much so that this former executioner would write:

‘Beloved, don’t avenge yourselves. Repay no evil for evil. If it is possible, and much depends on you, live peaceably with all people.’
Let us hope that Syrians can find the road that gets them there.

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