Why do we demand justice?
(This is from a Facebook note I wrote a while back)
One more article in a string of a hundred. Was Mubarak's life sentence justice, or did he get off too easy? After so many lives have been destroyed, is it justice to allow him to live? Whether it is John Edwards, Dharun Ravi, George Zimmerman, Casey Anthony, or OJ Simpson, we scream out for justice to be served. We see people we know to be guilty walk away with minimal punishment, and we want more. We want to see them locked away forever, hurt, destroyed, for them to feel what they made their victims feel. And we see the most terrible men alive fall, broken or dead, and we rejoice. Osama Bin Laden, Mubarak, Hitler. We rejoice that justice is finally served.
So let me say this as strongly as I can. We are not asking for justice. We are a lynch mob demanding the death of the guilty and innocent alike. It cruelty, barbarism, and the ultimate form of injustice.
First, let me say: we do not know who is guilty. Let me repeat that. We do not know who is guilty. We build the narrative in our minds of how things must have played out. We take into account the evidence... perhaps. But we aren't involved. We do not have the information that the police have. We do not see through the eyes of the victim. We do not enter the mind of the perpetrator to see his motives, his fears, his desires. We simply build a worst case scenario in our minds and demand justice for the victim by attacking the person who we decided must be guilty of the crime.
We say we punish to give justice to the victim. There is no justice for the victim. Whether through murder, rape, or abuse, the person has been forever altered. There is no way to balance the scales. There is only destruction. We cannot punish the accused however the victim or the victim's family want, we need impartiality. We need sobriety. Not revenge. And we should have the utmost respect for the person we give the job of passing judgment. It is a horrible responsibility. We should never be frivolous. We should sentence people to life or death as a last resort: if we find the person so much a danger to society that the only way to prevent another tragedy is to ensure the person no longer has access to society. And we should weep every time this happens. It is a statement of the human condition, our own failings, the failings of our society, that we see no way for another human being to be redeemed.
Osama Bin Laden was such a case. He was actively involved in trying to kill Americans. He had to be killed to prevent more deaths, I do not doubt that for a second. However, when I saw Americans gathering at the capitol, cheering, rejoicing, partying... my heart sank. To watch people delight in death, for any reason, is horrid. It brought to mind the meditation by John Donne:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.Osama Bin Laden's death diminished me. The hope for his redemption was gone. His ability to turn himself and his followers to peace was abandoned. Those who loved him (and there are those that truly loved him, for right or wrong reasons) are left to suffer. Death is chaos, destruction, evil. It is not something to celebrate as though the world is suddenly a brighter place. The world is darker. Destruction and death took the place of mercy and life.
Matthew 7 says, "“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." This should scare the crap out of all of us. If you claim to be a Christian, if you claim that Christ's blood was shed for you to be purified from your sins, to bring you from death to life, from darkness to light, from justice to grace, you should have a 7 word mantra that you repeat to yourself over and over through every moment of your life: Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace.
