The problem of justice

Do we want justice? or do we want justice only when it suits us?

When we hear on the news about some serial murderer or child abuser or rapist who butchered his victims, the natural feeling is a desire for justice to be done, for the person who did these evil things to be punished. There is public outrage when it looks like someone who has committed terrible crimes is being let off lightly. We want to see these people pay for what they've done, and we like to feel that the punishment fits the crime, we like to feel that the payment is at an appropriate level.

We have a desire for justice to be done. When we see someone weak being oppressed by someone stronger, we react with moral outrage - whether it's physical or verbal abuse, whether it's big corporations maltreating the poor, wealthy countries treating third world countries unfairly, etc etc etc - we see some kind of behaviour that seems to us unjust, and we get angry.

So, how do you think God feels? He made this world, he made us in his image - which means we have a capacity to love, to show compassion and kindness - but so often we choose a different way, so often we go with our selfish desires and simply don't care how many people we have to tread on in order to get what we want. We look at murderers and rapists and child abusers and see the evil in them, but how often do we look in the mirror and see the evil in ourselves? There was a sad joke I saw recently on Facebook, which said: "Please copy and post this as your status even if just for a few minutes, if you know someone who is alive today because you can't afford a hitman...." The truth is, though most of us do not actually kill people, we do have this attitude within us, we do have those times or situations of really really hating someone and wishing them ill, people who get on our nerves so badly that we wish we could press a button and make them disappear, people who are in our way and we feel our lives could be so much better if only they weren't there, people we hate so much that we actually want to see them suffer - the truth is we are not perfect and wonderful and loving and compassionate people, not all the time. We have both sides - they say Hitler was kind to animals and to children. We like to pigeon-hole people like Hitler and serial murderers and so on into some kind of "evil people" category, distancing ourselves from them as though we are totally different, but if we look at our inner thoughts and feelings, we'll see a much darker picture than we're comfortable with.

God sees that darker picture within us - he knows each of us inside out, he knows our most intimate thoughts and feelings, even the stuff we don't admit to ourselves. And he sees all our evil and selfish behaviour - not just the big things.

Justice - do we really want it? Do we want everyone to pay for the bad things they've done? Everyone - including ourselves?

The Bible says that a day will come when God will judge us - everyone, each and every human being who has ever lived is going to stand in front of God's throne. What will you plead when you stand before him? You are - like each and every human being who has ever lived, apart from Jesus - guilty. You may be guilty of lesser sins than Hitler, but have you led a perfect life, never hurting anyone? If you are human and if you look at your life honestly, you will realise that you are not perfect and that, like the rest of us, you are guilty.

There are two issues to be decided in a courtroom: first there is the question of whether or not the defendant is guilty. Once guilt has been established, there is the issue of sentencing: what will the punishment be?

When the day comes and we all stand before God to be judged, we will be able to do nothing other than plead guilty. But when it comes to sentencing and punishment, there will be two groups: people who will suffer for what they've done, and people who go free despite what they've done.

The difference depends on what you decide now, whilst you're still alive on this earth. The choice is simple: there is someone who has already suffered the punishment for everyone, and it's up to you personally to accept his sacrifice for you. Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice for the whole of humankind, once and for all, and those who believe in him will be able to stand before God's throne on that day and say: yes, I'm guilty, but Jesus' blood was shed to cover my sins.

I made that choice in July 2002, which means if I get hit by a bus tomorrow I know I'm safe. How about you? Have you made that choice yet? God's mercy is available, through Jesus, for everyone - but it's up to you to accept his offer.

rules are so boring and limiting, aren't they...

When I was a child I thought like a child... I looked forward to the time when I would be a grown-up at last and would be able to do whatever I liked. No adults to boss me around, tell me when to go to bed or when to get up, to make me do my homework or tidy up my room or comb my hair...

But looking back now, I can see how important it was that there were adults in my life who set boundaries for me, because a child doesn't know what's good for him and needs to be kept safe, to be protected from his own natural desires - a child wants to run and catch that ball, and needs to be forced to stay back and not get hit by a passing car. a child wants to explore - what would it be like sticking my fingers in those interesting-shaped holes in that plasticky thing on the wall? a child needs to be forced against his instincts not to stick his fingers in the electric socket, not to put his hand in the fire, not to do all sorts of things that seem really attractive but are seriously dangerous. Good parents do this not because they're spoilsports but because they care about their children.

A child also needs the adults to force him against his instincts to refrain from hitting his brothers and sisters, pulling their hair, stomping over their toys and dolls - a child needs to be taught that there are some things that are not acceptable behaviour. We like to think of children as sweet innocent little things, but the truth is that children do not need anyone to teach them to be nasty towards others - that, sadly, is something that comes naturally. So they need to be taught to curb that malicious instinct. Good parents do this not because they're spoilsports but because they want to bring the best out of their children, to discourage negative and destructive behaviour and encourage positive behaviour.

It took me a long time before I could see the same pattern with God - that he is not some big spoilsport in the sky who seeks to stop our fun, but neither is he a stupid, uncaring, irresponsible parent who would just let his kids poke their hands in the electric sockets and pull their sisters' hair and kick the cat without telling them not to do that.

The fact that we are very good at not listening, or at hearing him but going our own sweet way because we feel we know best or because whatever-it-is seems so attractive that we put our fingers in our ears and say la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you - that's what we humans are like, and God in his amazing love and mercy still goes on loving us, as good parents do when faced with teenage rebellion... the kids that you nurtured suddenly turning against you, yelling "I hate you" and slamming the door in your face, doing all the things you've told them not to do - a good parent carries on loving them despite their appalling behaviour.

A good, responsible and caring and wise parent does not say: do whatever you like, it's ok. Therapists and counsellors in later years pick up the pieces of such parenting - because the message a kid gets through this, even though it isn't at all what the parents intend, is: I'm not valued, they don't care about me enough to keep trying to protect me, they don't care what happens to me.

A good, responsible and caring and wise parent says: the way you are behaving is not ok, but I still love you anyway.

That's the kind of parent God is. He cares. He cares enough to put boundaries round us, even though he knows we will continue breaking them. He cares enough to keep loving us despite our rebellious behaviour. He cares enough to always want us back, no matter what we've done.

He's not the type of parent who will say: oh, what you did doesn't matter. He's not going to beat around the bush, pretend that you hadn't broken his heart by causing so much damage to yourself and to others around you. What he will say is: I'm so glad you've realised and that you've come back - now I can clean you up from all the muck that has stuck to you along the way, I can bind your wounds, I can start work on healing you. Oh, and I've paid your debts, down to the last penny.

*sigh* Where does he get this from???

Apparently the current President of the USA thinks the message of the story of the Exodus is that "wherever we live, there is oppression to be fought and freedom to be won." He further said, "In retelling this story from generation to generation, we are reminded of our ongoing responsibility to fight against all forms of suffering and discrimination." [quoted from this newspaper article]

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not for one minute trying to say that there's anything wrong with fighting against suffering and oppression.

What irks me is the feeling that such an amazing and special story is being hijacked, being used to promote a message that simply is not there in the text. Last night we sat and told the story, and I'm sorry but whichever way I look at it, I do not see how it is about the responsibility of human beings to fight against suffering/oppression/whatever. It is not a story of a rebellion, of a human fight for freedom. It is the story of a bunch of people who were severely oppressed and were amazingly, spectacularly, miraculously, rescued by God himself!

I can certainly see more than one point in this story, more than one message. There is the message about God's faithfulness - he remembers his covenant with Abraham, Issac and Jacob and he comes to rescue his people. There is a message about God's almighty power, which could be paraphrased as: don't mess with God! If he's fighting for you, you're in a very safe place, but if he's fighting against you - you don't stand a chance. (This can be a bit uncomfortable for those who like to think of God as merely a cuddly daddy-type who invites you to sit on his lap and gives you presents and says "there, there" a lot.) And of course I see the theme of being saved through the blood of a faultless lamb - a theme which was pointing to what was then the future, to the coming of the Messiah who was to be sacrificed so that all may go free through his blood.

And it is because I see such important themes in this story that I got so cross when I read about Obama's interpretation. It devalues the whole thing. It takes a story of God's awesomeness and turns it into a speech about human values. Yes, these are good values - and I believe God does want to see everyone set free. But that's not what Passover is about - it's not about human beings fighting for freedom, it is about human beings receiving freedom, won by God himself and handed to them on a plate. For the Israelites at the time it was freedom from the Egyptians - won for them by God and all they had to do was accept it, by smearing the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. And the clues about what was then the future arrival of the Messiah - again, they are about God himself winning freedom for humankind (this time for all humankind, not just the Israelites), and all we have to do is accept the blood sacrifice of the faultless Lamb of God, the Messiah, Jesus.

Please, let's not confuse freedom fighters (commendable as they may be) with freedom-receivers.

Oh give thanks to the LORD.

Is it just me?

Like everyone else, I get these emails now and again - words of wisdom on pretty backgrounds, sometimes even a powerpoint presentation with beautiful music... but are these really words of wisdom? is it just me that picks the nits, that wants to edit before passing it on, and often doesn't pass it on?

is it just me that wonders: would these words seem so wise and profound if they didn't come with beautiful pictures? if this is really true, does it need to be packaged like this?

I'm not saying it's all wrong. Far from it - a lot of it is good and true. But I feel it's presented in a way that is meant to distract us from thinking about whether or not it's true. I feel the pictures and the music are there to lull us into a kind of passive listening and absorbing, unquestioning, unthinking. I feel we're being discouraged from thinking critically about what is on the screen in front of us, from weighing up the words and seeing for ourselves whether we agree with them or not.

And I feel even more strongly about the video being circulated now, titled "The Interview With God" - how dare anyone put words into God's mouth in this way? Yes, some of the words are good. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that most of them are true. But dressing it up as though God himself would say this - sorry, that's unbelievably presumptuous! and to suggest that when God is asked at the end of the interview what else he would like his children to know, that all God says is, "Just know that I am here. Always." - sorry, is that really it? God as our loving, gracious father who just smiles and wants us to know he's always here? Is this why he bothered to give us, for example, the Ten Commandments? Is this why there's all that stuff in the Bible about God's wrath, about the need to repent and turn to Jesus so we can escape God's just punishment? I'm sorry, I don't buy into this. It's nice, it's pretty, but it's not the whole picture. It's a sanitised and heavily-edited version of what the real interview would be like.

Okay, I've got it off my chest now.

Faith in humankind?

I had an online dialogue recently with my cousin in Israel who was questioning the apparent discrepancy between the teachings of Jesus and the way Christians live. I tried to draw his attention to the difference between those who call themselves Christians and those who really are followers of Jesus. I tried to explain that following the teachings of Jesus is humanly impossible and that it is only through being born again of God's Spirit that we are given the ability to do this.

It felt like a bit of a ping pong match. He kept saying: look at all those awful murderers who were Christians (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition etc), and I kept saying: just because these people called themselves Christians, that doesn't mean anything. He kept giving me more and more examples of people who did awful things whilst calling themselves Christians, and I kept saying: just because people call themselves Christians that doesn't mean they've been born again. People who really love Jesus wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing.

The other side of the coin was him saying: there aren't any Christians who do live up to the teachings of Jesus about love and about turning the other cheek. At some point he accepted that maybe there are a few, but he reckons they are very few. I said: I don't know the numbers, nobody does except for God, but my point is, if you want to see the teachings of Jesus lived out, don't look at the nominal Christians, look at born-again believers.

He suggested that even Christians who do good works, even they only help fellow Christians. At this point I was outraged. How dare he write off all the works of charity being done all over the world, Christians who go out to live in all sorts of difficult conditions to help the poor and needy simply out of the love that Jesus has put in their hearts!

But this is where we run into the stumbling block of humanism - faith in the goodness of humankind. For a humanist, all the examples I could bring of Christians showing kindness would be of no value, because to him the kindness of human beings is taken for granted - he believes we are naturally good. To him the aberration is when we do evil.

Whereas I look at the old me, the natural, sinful me, and I know how much evil there was in there. I know that I was not born good - far from it. I was born selfish and self-centred, and consideration for others is something I had to be taught. We like to think of babies as sweet and innocent but the truth is we are born completely self-centred, not yet aware of other people and only aware of our own needs and wants. When a baby is hungry, it cries. When it's uncomfortable, it cries. When it cries and doesn't get what it needs quickly enough, it screams. It takes us time to grow and learn to appreciate other people as separate human beings with their own needs and feelings, to learn that other people can be hurt by what we do or say - and once we've learned that, we have choices: do we use the power that we have to hurt others, or do we withhold that power? Sadly for many people the answer is: depends if you'd get caught or not. Through being punished we learn not to do things that we shouldn't. We are taught certain ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable by society. I remember at school when someone in my class had upset another pupil, the teacher made him stand in front of everyone and apologise. The teacher could make him say the words, but was he really sorry? Was he sorry that he had upset the other pupil? Or was he just sorry that he had got caught and that he had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the whole class and apologising?

It would be nice to think that human beings are nice and good and loving. But open the newspaper, turn on the television, check out the news any given day and you will see plenty of examples of people being far from good. Are all of these examples really the exceptions? We like to think so. We like to hear about some particularly awful murder and think: look at him, he's evil. Because then we can allow ourselves the comfort of believing that we, in comparison, are good. But are we really so good? Are our hearts full of love for everyone? Even my humanistic cousin, who believes in the goodness of humankind, says of course he doesn't love his enemies - but what sort of goodness is it that is kept only for those who are nice to you? (Yes, Jesus said something like this.) Being kind to your friends is relatively easy, being nice to those who are nice to you is relatively easy. If you're nice to your friends, that doesn't make you good, it makes you pretty normal and sensible - very early on in life we learn about the value of friendships, the value of belonging to a group, and for the sake of this belonging we sacrifice some of our self-centredness, because it's worthwhile to us. And even doing good to those who aren't our friends (I don't mean our enemies, I mean just strangers) is something we sometimes do for selfish reasons - for the nice warm feeling it will give us, or for a chance to do something interesting, to get out of the house, to have a sense of purpose. (I speak as one who in December 1994 went to help prepare and serve Christmas Dinner to homeless people simply because I'd split up from someone after a very long relationship and was suddenly faced with the prospect of spending Christmas Day on my own. Good deeds? yes. Unselfish motives? not quite.)

What I find odd is how easy people find it to believe in the goodness of humanity despite all the evidence to the contrary, whilst at the same time they seem to find it so difficult to believe in the goodness of God. Which of these demands a greater amount of irrational faith?