Written by Darrell B. Harrison |
Friday, January 5, 2024
Where McKinsey & Company’s definition of equity goes wrong – and this is also where many people misunderstand the distinction between equity and equality — is where it states, “Equity differs from equality in a subtle but important way. While equality assumes that all people should be treated the same, equity takes into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal” [emphasis added]. You see, true equity doesn’t “adjust” for anything.

And He will judge the world in righteousness; He will execute judgment for the people with equity. – Ps 9:8 (NASB)
In an August 17, 2022, article published on the website of the management and consulting firm McKinsey & Company, titled What Is diversity, equity, and inclusion?, the word equity is defined as follows:
Equity refers to fair treatment for all people, so that the norms, practices, and policies in place ensure identity is not predictive of opportunities or workplace outcomes. Equity differs from equality in a subtle but important way. While equality assumes that all people should be treated the same, equity takes into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal.[1]
That definition starts off pretty well.
In fact, I wholeheartedly concur with McKinsey & Company insomuch that equity, in practice, refers to “fair treatment for all people, so that the norms, practices, and policies in place ensure identity is not predictive of opportunities or workplace outcomes.” (By the way, another way of saying “ensure identity is not predictive of opportunities or workplace outcomes” is “ensure no individual is discriminated against in order to produce predictive opportunities or manipulate workplace outcomes.”)
That parenthetical comment is important because where McKinsey & Company’s definition of equity goes wrong – and this is also where many people misunderstand the distinction between equity and equality — is where it states, “Equity differs from equality in a subtle but important way.
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We do not have too many OT passages telling us that the death penalty in particular and these ‘eye for eye’ penalties in general were carried out. And it seems monetary compensation may have been a more usual way to proceed, and not tit for tat corporal punishment.

Most folks have heard of the phrase under question, and one need not know Latin to understand that it refers to the law of retaliation. It involves the principle of retributive justice in which the punishment of the criminal should match or correspond to his crime.
While I here deal with this in the context of the Bible, other cultures besides ancient Israel ran with it. It was a basic principle of ancient Babylonian law as well as Roman law for example. In the Old Testament we have at least three clear passages on this:
-Exodus 21:22-25 When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
-Leviticus 24:17-22 Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.
-Deuteronomy 19:21 Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Here I can only give a few short remarks about all this. First, commentators are divided as to how literally one was to have taken the words about “fracture for fracture” and so on. Some, like Kenneth Mathews, argue that we should not take this literally:
Verses 17-22 establish two important principles governing the community’s policy of capital punishment. First, there was a difference between the murder of a human being and the killing of an animal. Although the killing of an animal was important, the killing of a human being was far more egregious….
The second principle to be followed regarding the death sentence was just as important. It must be practiced with evenhanded justice by matching the severity of the punishment with the severity of the crime. When the Bible calls for “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (v. 20; cf. Exodus 21:23-27), the passage is not to be taken literally. It is not calling for the maiming of a person. Rather, it removes personal vendettas (Leviticus 19:18), which inevitably escalate into excessive acts of revenge. The Law was actually designed to restrict the extent and severity of the penalty. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19; cf. Deuteronomy 32:35). It was calling for impartial judges to an equitable penalty that fit the crime, the principle of law known as lex talionis, a Latin phrase meaning “law of retaliation.”
As other commentators have noted, while today we might be able to cleanly and surgically remove a person’s eye or tooth, if it was attempted back then it could have resulted in more than a removed body part – it could have resulted in the person’s death.
Thus something equivalent but not exact may have been used as the punishment, as the tit for tat punishment might have too easily violated the principle of proportionality and fair recompense. 
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I’ve had it easy: my father was distant, not devilish. Either way, we need to realize that we all fall short — in different ways and to different degrees, yes, but all without exception. Fathers often aspire to do better for their children than their fathers did for them, often by giving them what they wanted to get and did not — but the children may want something different from what the fathers provide. The road to reconnection starts with the realization that we’re all sinners, and that we should condemn not, lest we be condemned (Luke 6:37).

If you have strained or broken relationships with parents (even deceased ones), how can you forgive them for their sinful failings and defects? How can you learn to view them through gracious lenses?
I’m not a trained counselor, but I had a strained relationship with my dad (who died in 1984), and over the last few years I have walked a slow journey toward understanding, mercy, and forgiveness. So let me try to answer these two questions by sharing some parts of my story. My story is unique, as is everyone’s. But perhaps, as you consider the path God has led me down, your own next steps will become clearer.
How Can I Forgive?
Let’s start with the question of forgiveness. It’s easier to forgive when we can see some of the benefits a bad experience brought. Since my father did not abuse me or harm me in the ways we sometimes read about in newspapers — others have it tougher — I eventually realized that my father’s defects actually made my life easier in three ways: easier to feel successful, easier to do what I wanted, and easier, through God’s grace, to profess Christ.
Good From the Bad
It was easier to feel successful because, as I grew up, my mother constantly disparaged my father, essentially labeling him a lazy loser. That wasn’t fair: he worked consistently for forty years, didn’t get drunk, and didn’t beat her — but he was also an underachieving Harvard graduate. She didn’t respect him because he didn’t get the respect she thought he deserved.
The other day, half a century after seeing it in a theater, I streamed Love Story, set at Harvard. A successful student-athlete there has an ultra-strained relationship with his father, an old-money, elite lawyer who competed in the 1928 Olympics. The son, who calls his dad “Sir,” has a high bar to leap and feels he can never meet Sir’s expectations. I, on the other hand, could feel successful by leaping over a low bar. That’s not bad.
My dad was not absent, but he was distant. I suffered in some ways as a result, but I also gained independence by not caring much what my father thought. I left Judaism at age fourteen without worrying about his disapproval. Later I could tell him about my coming to faith in Christ and my upcoming marriage to a shicksa, a non-Jew, without concern about his disapproval.
I believe I’d have had the guts and good sense to marry Susan regardless, but a few Jews with good paternal relationships become petrified at that point. More are lassoed by Jesus but keep tugging on the rope — or they at least keep their changed thinking secret to avoid upsetting parents. That’s not sensible, since Yeshua proclaimed his Jewishness as he said he’s the Christ. Either way, I never had that problem.
Unseen Sacrifices
Forgiveness in Christianity, of course, means more than relenting in resenting: it involves sacrifice. God forgives us because of Christ’s supreme expression of love. The famous line in Love Story is “love means never having to say you’re sorry,” but I truly love my father only by sacrificing my pride and being sorry for never thanking him for all he did for me.
His gift started with giving me life, of course, and continued to his material provision for me. I was able to graduate from an expensive college with almost no debt. My father had no car until he was thirty, but I grew up with driving privileges and did not have to pay for them.
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