Is revenge ever right?  I just finished reading a gripping yet harrowing novel called I am Still Alive.  It tells the story of a young girl who suddenly finds herself alone in a vast and little traveled section of the Alaska wilderness.  Although she had been living in a cabin with her father, two of her father's "business associates" had recently killed him and burned their cabin down.  Her mother has been dead for years; she has no one.
     Happily, she discovers another cabin her father had stocked with ample provisions and, with a little fishing and hunting, looks set to get through the winter and get rescue come spring.  However, she wants revenge.  She wants revenge on the men who killed her father.

Tower of Refuge, Theth, Albania

     When we were traveling in Albania a few years ago, we visited a tiny mountain town in which was a "tower of refuge."  This was a place to which people could go if people in another clan had decided, for reasons of honor, to kill him/her.  It was considered sacrosanct.  No one could touch him/her there.  No one could avenge the harm that they believed this person had done to their clan.  Once this person left the tower, he/she was of course open game for revenge.

     Many religious traditions condemn taking revenge.  They do so because they believe that there is a God who exercises ultimate judgment.  Ours, they say, is not to take revenge.  In the world of I am Still Alive, however, there is no God.  There's only the girl, her father's murderers, and a lust to get even.
     In a world without God, however, revenge means nothing.  But neither does kindness.  In a blank and empty universe, how can we really know?