Tag Archive for 'criminal justice'

Osama bin Laden is Dead

Published by bcg on 2 May 2011 in Current Affairs. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I woke up this morning to the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed and buried at sea by American forces.  He was found in Pakistan, which is not a surprise, but near Islamabad rather than in a cave, which is a surprise.

He is personally responsible for leading terrorist attacks around the world, and deserved to be brought to justice.  Given al Qaeda's tactics, it is probably better he was captured dead rather than alive, to stop reprisal kidnappings of innocent NGO workers.

However, I'm not comfortable with the scenes outside the White House.  I understand the depth of feeling – this man led one of the largest ever terrorist attacks, on American soil, killing over 3000 innocent civilians.  However, the dancing and cheering is no better than the dancing and cheering seen after 9/11.

Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but that doesn't exclude seeking to bring people to justice, and even punishing them for their crimes.  We must protect the innocent, and we must seek justice, especially against those who kill indiscriminately, but we should never gloat over our enemies, and we should not celebrate the death of anyone, even Osama bin Laden.

 

Passing Judgement

Published by bcg on 10 November 2007 in Church. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

At the sermon I heard on Sunday the preacher told a story which effectively made two points:

  1. we should derive our sense of self-worth from the fact that God loves us, not from what other people think of us;
  2. judging others is often hurtful, and usually wrong – we should leave it up to God.

After the service I reflected that the reason we often allow other people's judgements to 'stick' to us, is because we actually deserve judgement. It is of course God's judgement that we deserve, however, not other people's – we have no right to judge each other simply because we all equally deserve judgement ourselves. In judging others we demonstrate our hypocrisy.

I would argue that the place of 'accountability', close friends/family telling you where you are going wrong, is not the same as 'passing judgement', because 'accountability' is only that if it works both ways. Passing judgement is a one-way street from one person to another.

That leaves two reasons why other people's judgements shouldn't stick to us:

  1. only God has the right to judge us – when others do (and when we judge others) it is hypocritical;
  2. God doesn't punish us when he judges others, because Jesus took that punishment on himself, and gave us his righteousness – so although we deserve judgement, actually we don't because Jesus has taken that judgement on himself.

So, given that, is it ever right for humans to pass judgement on other humans? Well, yes actually, in two situations I think:

  1. secular authority, law and order, criminal justic;
  2. Church discipline, where we sometimes have to deal with difficult and damaging situations here and now (as opposed to waiting for God's final perfect judgement).

But when we judge others in these situations, it should always be done with humility, acknowledging that the authority to judge comes only from God, and that ultimately we all deserve judgement. These two situations are God exercising his authority through us – which, again, calls for humility.

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