I’ve always heard the biblical phrase, “an eye for an eye,” as something kind of harsh. Quite the opposite of another teaching from Jesus about turning the other cheek. One seems to say there should be a response to wrongdoing. The other seems to say we should refuse retaliation altogether.

For a long time, those ideas felt almost contradictory to me. But the older I get, the more I see something different. An eye for an eye was not permission to seek revenge. It was a limitation on it. A boundary. You can go this far and no farther.

Then Jesus takes the idea further when He tells us to turn the other cheek. Not because wrongdoing does not matter, but because someone hurting us does not automatically give us permission to hurt them back.

Maybe an eye for an eye showed us where justice should stop, while turning the other cheek showed us where mercy should begin.

Because when someone hurts us, we want them to understand what they did. Before long, people who had nothing to do with the original wrong begin carrying some of the punishment.

Families get pulled in. Friends get pulled in. Children get pulled in. And the pain spreads.

I get it, though. I understand the desire to retaliate more than I wish I did.

I know what it means to be hurt. I know what it means to be abused, abandoned, lied about and left carrying wounds that were not easy to put down. We all have a story.

I’ve had moments when attacking felt way easier than healing. Times when picking up and swinging the proverbial baseball bat felt far more satisfying than putting it down. Imagining someone else carrying some of what I had carried almost felt like justice.

When someone hurts us deeply, something inside of us wants balance. If I hurt this much, part of me wants you to hurt too. But the longer we anticipate the opportunity to retaliate, the further we move from the healing we say we want.

We carry inside of us the conversation we hope to have someday. We imagine finally making someone understand how much damage they caused. And while we wait, we remain connected to the very pain we are trying to escape.

At some point, I had a decision to make. I could spend my life returning the pain handed to me, or I could try to build something different with it.

But if I’m truthful, there have been times when I could see pieces of that pain showing up in me anyway. In my temper. In the way I pulled away. In moments when someone I loved was receiving a reaction that belonged to something much older. In moments when I assumed I knew what someone was thinking about me, only to realize later that I was seeing the present through the wounds of my past.

That is hard to recognize.

The pain was no longer only something that had happened to me. It was becoming something I could hand to someone else. So it had to stop.

Those who hurt me had already taken enough.

I no longer wanted that pain traveling through me into my marriage, my children and someday my grandchildren. So I began trying to build the things I once needed myself.

Safety. Belonging. Encouragement. Presence. Love without fear attached to it.

I haven’t done that perfectly. Not even close. But choosing peace instead of retaliation has allowed me to begin creating a family tree that looks different from the one I inherited.

In some ways, I have been able to create the legacy I deserved as a child. Not by changing what happened to me. I can’t do that. But by deciding what happens because of me.

Eventually, all of us have to decide what our pain will produce.

We can allow it to fuel our desire to attack, punish or make someone else carry what we have carried. Or we can allow what we have suffered to make us more aware of the weight another person may already be carrying.

Maybe peace begins when we decide the pain will not travel any farther through us.

I think about that when I watch the way many of us communicate today.

Social media has given us an easy place to put our anger. Someone does something wrong. Sometimes terribly wrong. The person who was hurt matters. Their family matters. What happened to them should never be minimized in the name of compassion.

But compassion isn’t a limited resource.

We can care deeply about those carrying the original wound while recognizing that the family of the person who caused it may now be carrying pain they didn’t create.

The question isn’t whether wrongdoing should have consequences — of course it should. The better question, however, is how many more people have to hurt before we decide enough pain has already been created.

Too often, anger moves beyond the person who caused the harm and begins landing on people who had no part in creating it. When did someone else’s wrong give us permission to abandon our own compassion?

We can stand alongside those who have been hurt while also recognizing the innocent people who have been pulled into the pain through no choice of their own and decide: I will not add to what you are already carrying.

Compassion doesn’t have to choose sides.

Mike Tyson once made a blunt observation about social media. His point was that it has made people far too comfortable disrespecting others without having to consider the immediate consequences.

I’m certainly not suggesting we start punching each other. But there is something underneath that observation worth considering.

There was a time when saying something cruel usually meant standing close enough to see how your words landed. You had to look someone in the eyes and experience their reaction.

Social media removed much of that hesitation.

We type. We post. We close the app. But our words remain.

That should make us careful.

Not silent. But careful.

And maybe restraint becomes hardest when we believe our anger is justified. When someone has genuinely caused harm, refusing to add more pain can feel almost like letting them off the hook.

Sometimes forgiveness feels unfair. Sometimes compassion almost feels offensive when the wound is still fresh.

I totally understand that.

But our peace cannot depend on another person or their loved ones finally hurting enough for us to feel better. Healing begins when we decide someone else’s wrong will not determine who we become next.

Justice asks what is right. Revenge asks who else should hurt. Justice seeks accountability. Revenge seeks satisfaction.

And pain is rarely satisfied for very long. I guess that’s why those two biblical ideas no longer feel so contradictory to me. An eye for an eye reminds us that justice needs a boundary. Turning the other cheek reminds us that retaliation does too. Neither asks us to pretend the wrong never happened. They simply refuse to let one wrong become permission for another.

This far. No farther. The pain may have reached me. But it doesn’t have to travel through me.

Maybe that is another way to think about passing on the pain. We can keep passing it along to the next person, or we can look at the hurt, the anger and the invitation to retaliate and simply decide: No. I’ll pass.

Maybe that is the question worth asking the next time we are hurt, angry or our finger is hovering over the send button with something we desperately want another person to see or feel.

Will my pain become permission to wound someone else, or will it become the reason I refuse to add more pain to the world?

How much more pain do we really have to create?

“Well Rooted” is written by Jeremy Elliott. Elliott owns a lawn care business and lives in the Great Bend area.