As I have so frequently addressed, conscience and human laws neither mean that moral obligations exist nor prove what those obligations would be if they do exist, yet these things and consensus or traditions are what so many people think justifies their beliefs about morality one way or another. Since most beliefs about vengeance and justice stem from these false ideas, they are automatically false or unverifiable and only held to because of sheer stupidity. That has never stopped plenty of non-rationalists from believing and doing whatever they subjectively found persuasive even as their persuasions contradict each other so that they cannot possibly all be true at once. Secular people just assume that their personal moral feelings verify whatever moral obligations they want to exist, ignoring the fact that there can be no morality, as opposed to moral feelings or preferences, without a deity with a moral nature, and theists tend to still assume two things--that God has a moral nature and that their conscience actually matches up with this nature. Despite subjectivity intrinsically rendering conscience a part of one's consciousness rather than an indicator of actual moral obligations, it is all desperate non-rationalists have to cling to so they can feel secure in their petty, arbitrary, often conflicting moral beliefs.
Even many Christians hold ideas about justice and revenge that contradict the Bible and/or logic itself, confusing the sharp differences between them and then endorsing either true justice or vengeance as they prefer at the moment. Now, what is an example of something Biblically just and something that is mere revenge? The Bible says to execute people for murder (Exodus 21:12). If a person loses a loved one to murder and wishes to murder the offender in a non-torturous way, then what they want to do happens to align with what the Bible commands to be done to the murderer, but they are still not enacting justice, for they are committing murder themselves if they were to carry out their wishes rather than executing the murderer after a trial upon the testimony of two or three honest witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). They are not interested in any sort of philosophical certainty, consistency, or moral validity, but they are instead bent on doing whatever satisfies their subjective feelings, which are meaningless when it comes to illuminating moral matters or the veracity or knowability of anything at all beyond the presence of emotion. Even someone who killed a murderer without abusing them in the process would still be unjust. That the deserved penalty is killing the murderer does not mean that murder is suddenly permissible because it benefits someone's desires for vengeance, nor would this person be concerned with anything more than emotional gratification of conscience or perhaps not even conscience, just blind rage.
Other examples of vengeance have more factors than just these. Raping a rapist contradicts even the Biblical Lex Talionis ("eye for eye") because it only applies to permanent non-sexual physical injuries and nothing more [1]. Rape is inherently evil whether it is done to a rapist or done with approval from a human legal body and is always given the death penalty, regardless of the gender of either party or the motivations behind the act (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). Sexual assaults, but especially rape, are unjust no matter what, whereas killing people is just or unjust based on a variety of factors, so that even the very same act of killing could be justice or vengeance depending on the context or the motivation, as described with the example of justly executing a murder or murdering them. People who actually care about justice will either realize these things or be open to others who rightly explain them, while someone in favor of revenge has only the ultimate goal of emotionalistic indulgence. Vengeance is about satisfying one's own desires. Whether what one wishes to happen to another person is just is a not a matter of whether one approves of those things, and even then, doing what would be the right thing for emotionalistic reasons or without the investigative and trial functions of a court organized under Mosaic Law is contrary to justice.
This is one reason why vengeance drives so many people to utter hypocrisy, partaking in the same cruelties that they would morally object to if done to them. In some cases, they might even do or intend to carry out the very thing that was done to them as they confuse the concepts of vengeance and justice. Such people might actually be worse than the initial offender they want to hurt, for the person seeking revenge almost always thinks they are doing that which is just, and thus they participate in hypocrisy or cruelty while thinking they are morally right, while the person they want to inflict vengeance on might not have even had the illusion of thinking what they did was rational or just. If someone contradicts themself ideologically or behaviorally and neither realizes this with an independent grasp of reason or when others correct them, they have betrayed by their response that they do not care about morality or reason. When they or someone they love is victimized, they are completely willing to just assume that they were morally mistreated because they feel a certain way, but when they react to this real or alleged offense--and it is not as if anyone beyond a handful of rationalists does not just make selective assumptions about moral epistemology to begin with--they are willing to pretend like the moral ideas they think validate their vengeful response suddenly would not apply to their own actions.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
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