What makes a Fair Trial

A Fair Trial.

The idea that people should have a fair trial before being punished is so ingrained that even quite despicable regimes often at least stage a “show trial” to make it look as thought this requirement has been satisfied. Even Pontius Pilate who as Roman procurator had no compunction in massacring protesters wanted to know what the charges against Jesus were, gave him an opportunity to answer them and had the charge on which Jesus was condemned to die: being “King of the Jews”; affixed to the cross.

Some readers may now say: “Aha, so you admit even pre-Christian (and non-Christian) peoples had some accurate ideas on justice and due process.” Well I do! And this is my reason: Justice is part of God's unchanging moral character, he is also depicted in the Bible as “Judge of all the world” and similar titles, so “fair trial” is a reflection in human terms of his character as Judge. Us humans were created in his “image and likeness” and since God is spirit, this must mean something other than looks. We are also fallen creatures, having as a race chosen to rule the world on our own resources rather than as God's viceroys. So the upshot is that all humans may show more or less of God's character and all humans may show lack of or warped versions of God's character.

In English based jurisdictions the Greek and Roman ideals have been much refined over time. On to this base has been laid a carefully constructed edifice by godly men and women whose life's work has been the practice and development of law.

Much of their work has been the practical outworking and application to their field of expertise of a Christian and perhaps Protestant world view. The danger today is that by a combination of ignorance, the reduction of Christian influence and immigration of non-Christians bringing very different world views, Western societies are in danger of losing this treasure.

What are the basic essentials of a due process in the English system?

a) To know who is accusing you and to be able to question them; to know the details of the charge(s), and to be able to answer them.

b) for the prosecutor to set aside their own “need to win”, to release all information to the defence, especially information which would help the defence.

c) for only evidence that is actually relevant to the charge be admitted, and hearsay and gossip to be excluded

d) for the judge to be independent and impartial

e) for some avenue for an appeal

“the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” as the saying goes. So too with due process. There is always temptation for it to be abused. Governments may pressure judges for political reasons. Judges themselves may decide in accordance with their own political ideas, or for all sorts of bribes rather than on the evidence. Prosecutors may be so emotionally (or say in the US career wise) involved that they cross the line, hide inconvenient evidence or the like. Lawyers will try to bring in inadmissible evidence. In every jurisdiction there are historic cases trials which have been a perversion of justice. Unless people see these for what they are and protest then standards will inevitably slide.

Cardinal Wolsey on his deathbed in 1530 is reported to have said “If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king ...” Affairs of state, from real or imagined security of the realm down to prejudices or even vindictiveness of rulers have frequently in the past and down to the present resulted in courts perverting justice.

The Bible denounces such acts as crimes of the highest magnitude. First judges are warned that they are reaching a verdict under God, not a king, president, governor or to appease a public outcry. Then there case histories – I think Ahab and Jezebel is the classic – where God's hatred of perversion of the trial process is played out in real life.

The Bible gives approval to Jehoshophat's admonition to the judges he appointed “Consider carefully what you do because you are not judging for man but for the LORD, who is with you whenever you give a verdict. Now let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Judge carefully, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.”

King Ahab is frustrated that one of his subjects will not sell his family vineyard to him to use as a vegetable garden for the palace. Queen Jezebel, a former princess from Tyre is horrified: this is not how kings in her world act. She secretly writes to the elders of the town where this man Naboth lives instructing them to have Naboth falsely accused of blasphemy and executed. (interestingly also a modern occurrence in Moslem countries! The Christian governor of Jakarta has just been arrested on blasphemy charges ahead of an election, and in Pakistan a Christian woman has been sentenced to death for blasphemy for drinking from the same cup as Moslems). The town elders comply, and Jezebel on receiving their report tells Ahab to go and take possession of the vineyard because Naboth is dead.

God took this injustice so seriously that he sent Elijah the prophet to meet Ahab at the vineyard and deliver God's sentence on him and Jezebel. “where the dogs licked up Naboth's blood they will lick up your blood – yes yours. … (I will) cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel” and “dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel” These all happened, although there was a stay of execution because Ahab repented before God after Elijah confronted him. Someone famous said that although God reserves most judgement till the Day of Judgement, he gives some instances in advance as indications of what is to come. This instance – written in scripture for our instruction leaves no doubt that God really, really hates perversion of justice!

The Oxford Dictionary added a new word “Post truth” this year. It is not just in the realm of politics that truth suffers, and its not new – just more brazen. I know someone who as a barrister some decades ago changed their field of law because they were so sickened by the way so many litigants and witnesses in court lied without the slightest compunction.

False witnesses and false accusations have been around a long time – Potiphar's wife accusing Joseph of molesting her because he had rejected her advances – the false witnesses testifying against Jesus and so on. The Bible is once again absolutely clear on God's abhorrence of such things. The Biblical injunction was that false witnesses should suffer the exact punishment which would had befallen the accused person.

There is a brilliant story in the Apocrypha (Daniel, Bel & Suzanna) about this. Susanna, a virtuous married woman rejects the advances of two men who have been stalking her. In revenge they accuse her of adultery and testify that they saw her in the very act under a tree. She is condemned and about to be dragged out and stoned to death when one Daniel steps forward and demands to be allowed to cross examine the witnesses. He has one sent out and asks the other “what type of tree was it” and then sends him out, brings in the other and repeats the question. Of course without opportunity to get their stories straight they give conflicting answers. The lie is exposed, Susanna vindicated, and the two lying witnesses deservedly stoned to death.

I am not for a moment suggesting the rule of OT times should be in modern laws. However when perjury is rarely punished at all, and less and less of the population fear God's judgement on them if they lie in court, our justice system is in trouble.

Just one more item: Rules of Evidence

They have been developed over millennia (even a Roman emperor persecuting Christians ordered that anonymous denunciations were not to be accepted) to help achieve fair trials.

Humans are fallible, so even the best run trials may give the wrong verdict. One Judge Blackwood is famed for saying “I would rather release ten guilty murderers than hang one innocent man” People are right to be angry when a guilty person gets acquitted. But they often blame the rules of evidence saying things like “But if the jury had bee allowed to hear such and such piece of evidence they would have convicted ...” Possibly they would, but in another instance had they heard such and such a piece of evidence they would have convicted an innocent person! Nothing human is perfect but remember, it is God who said “Justice is mine: I will repay” the acquitted guilty person will not escape punishment! But to punish an innocent person is a great evil.

PS I have not been citing chapter and verse for scripture reference lately because with the Internet, particularly search engines like “Bible Gateway” it is simple to bring up the text on screen and then look at it in any other translations you wish. I am using the TNIV version

My Adventures with God Ch 44 - Season Break

Ch 44 Season Break

Don't you hate it when your favourite TV serials stop for a break between seasons. But of course they can't film them as fast as they are shown, so breaks are necessary. So too with this story, there has been a 'season break' but for a quite different reason.

In order to make sure I have my facts straight for the next part of the story I have to delve back into the documents I have kept filed away all these years. I have simply found this prospect too painful to face up till now. But it must be done, so I expect posts to resume shortly.

In the meantime I want to say some things I believe are really important about forgiveness.

First: in this world bad things do happen to good people.

This was famously summarised in the motto : “shit happens”. Nevertheless we want to blame someone when it does. If we fail to find an obvious culprit we often fall to blaming ourselves or God. Hence there is a common line in good fiction where someone is urged to forgive themselves. This is excellent advice. It also illustrates one of the (many) tremendous kindnesses of God. The guilt the person is racked by is generally misplaced – that is to say if we knew all the facts we would not judge them “guilty”. Yet self-forgiveness here brings healing. I look on this as God rewarding the act of forgiving even when there was actually nothing to forgive.

Of course sometimes it is not ourselves but some other person we mistakenly blame. Here too God seems to me to reward the act of forgiveness of that person with healing even though there was in his eyes either little or nothing to forgive.

Blaming God? Getting angry with God is, I believe, often a healthy sign. All parents know occasions when a child turns hurt or frustration into an angry attack on a parent. The normal human response is to see through the anger to the pain and take our child in our arms to comfort them. How much more will our Heavenly Father understand us, his children! However maintaining that anger and letting it become a settled accusation we level against God is of course quite another matter and a sin that may destroy us.

Secondly in this world there is human evil.

This is a more difficult, but I believe still soluble problem.

On one hand we are all sinners.

From thoughtless or simply inconsiderate unkindnesses to calculated mean or spiteful words and deeds we are all sinners. For us Christians, we have entered a new world – a realm of the grace and favour of God. We humbly accept that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”. We have the dawning of a bitter-sweet realisation of God's implacable hatred of sin but love for us sinners. We have the Holy Spirit living in our innermost being. Under the Spirit's tutelage we are learning to fight sin in ourselves and to long for heaven where there will be no sin or any kind of evil.

But we are a work in progress. We understand only too well how our continued relationship with God depends on His continual forgiveness of our continual sins, failings and deliberate disobediences. On the flip side we know our continued relationship with God depends on our continual repentance of these thoughts words and deeds and our turning back to him and his ways. But we also know that even this repentance is a response to the firmness and discipline of God and when we look back at times when we have stubbornly disobeyed God we see so plainly how it was his amazing kindness patience and perseverance that drew us back.

Once we have experienced this new realm we can see two things: First in any human relationships this side of heaven there are going to be both real and imagined slights, hurts grievances and so on which will poison that relationship unless they can be dealt with. Secondly we not only know how God restored us to relationship with himself by dealing with our sins, but we have experienced the liberation of his forgiveness and the power of his love.

So in our human relationships we have both the knowledge and more importantly the power to deal with the things that would poison them. We can have relationships where there is forgiveness and redemption.

This theme runs like a flouro thread through the scriptures and every time we say the Lord's Prayer we pray “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”.

It remains a big problem that there are so many people who say they are Christians and yet have their lives dominated, and often what should be close relationships destroyed by their refusal to forgive. It is also a problem that preachers do not give this anything like the stress Jesus gave it. Jesus went so far as to say that such people would not get into heaven! This makes it a very pressing problem.

But on the other hand there is a deep end to the pool of human sin.

We all know only too well that there is no depth of “unimaginable evil” that somewhere sometime someone has not only imagined but done.

As I wrote in my posts on morals, to react with anger against evil is not only right but essential if one is not to be evil oneself. Aristotle said it in in the fourth century BC. The Bible said it many centuries before that. The Bible is also really strong on the punishing of evil doers. Even to injunctions like “Do not let your eye pity nor your hand spare (the evildoer)” to the ancient Israelites and in Romans the observation “It is not for nothing the one in authority bears the sword, he is God's agent in punishing evil.”

God has moral character. He has revealed enough of this character in the Bible that we can be certain about many aspects of it. “I the Lord love Justice, I hate robbery and wrong” and “But those who do violence the Lord hates with a passion.” are not even the tip of the iceberg. My point is just the we do know plenty about God's moral character and his hatred of evil. We can say for certain that there exist some occasions where humans are required to exemplify God's hatred of evil by punishing evil doers.

There is a simple solution to this apparent paradox of Forgiveness Vs Punishment

Individual humans have to forgive as Christ forgave them: but God is free to pardon or condemn. Human authorities should see themselves as God's agents and administer justice, punishing evil and rewarding good.

So for individuals forgiveness in the face of evil means nothing like denying or minimising the evil of what was done to them. It is handing over their “right” to vengeance to the proper authority.

God is the ultimate authority:

Revelation says “Vengeance is mine says the Lord: I will repay”. As Christians “ransomed, healed , restored, forgiven” we above all must willingly hand over to God every sin against us which cries out for vengeance. At the judgement, with our own sins paid for, we should feel equally vindicated whether the evil done us is forgiven by the blood of Jesus, or by the evil doer being cast into hell.

Here are also human authorities:

We benefit greatly from living in a society under the rule of law. The law does allow individuals to sue others for recompense in some instances (“civil” cases). But in a society under the rule of law, for everything we call “criminal” individuals must hand over their “rights” of vengeance to the proper authorities. We don't allow people “to take the law into their own hands”. In this instance “forgiveness” is simply accepting that this is as it should be and emotionally giving over the punishment of the wrongdoer to the authorities.

As to the authorities, one theme exploited by writers is the innate sense of betrayal when the authorities fail to punish evil. Think about the plot lines in popular TV cop shows! The Bible also comes down really hard on judges who do not punish evil: “Punishing the innocent and acquitting the guilty: the Lord hates them both” So “forgiveness” does not apply to judges, juries, prosecutors and police in their civic duties! They are there to administer justice and punish crime – so help them God!

Morals blog: Telling the Truth

Truth, Liars & God

Truth

I found an interesting section on 'Truth' in Leon Morris's commentary on John's Gospel. Here is the gist of what he said:

In Greek writings the basic idea of truth is the mathematical one (ie “1+1=2” is true) plus the idea of reality as opposed to mere appearance. The Old Testament concept is similar but richer. It includes faithfulness, reliability, trustworthiness, sureness and the like.

This enriched concept comes from OT descriptions of God. So truth is characteristic of God e.g. Ps.31;5 and Isaiah.65:16 “the God of truth”. Truth includes the complete reliability and complete integrity of God, so he will act in accordance with the highest conceivable morality. So the psalmist can offer a prayer in Ps.54:5 which older translations render “destroy (my enemies) in your truth” which newer translations render “in your faithfulness”.

The New Testament, Morris continues, blends the Greek and enriched OT meanings of “truth”. So in Romans 1:25 truth is seen as close to God's essential nature: idolatry is characterised as exchanging the truth of God for a lie. Elsewhere the NT speaks of truth frequently, such as Eph.4:21 where Morris insists the correct translation is “as truth is in Jesus”. “The truth of the Gospel” (Gal.2:5) and the requirement for truth to be exemplified in believers in many passages, e.g. 1 Cor.5.8 believers must keep a real festival “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”

John's Gospel excels in depicting Jesus as truth. According to Bultman for John 'truth = God's reality', which since God is the creator is the only true reality.

John uses “truth some some 25 times in his gospel. He describes Jesus as “full of grace and truth” (1:14) and Jesus says “I am the truth” (14:6) to pick two. Bultman concludes: “So truth is not the teaching about God transmitted by Jesus but is God's very reality revealing itself – occurring! - in Jesus.”

Pilate famously asked Jesus “What is truth?”. Jesus gave no answer in words. The narrative of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection gave the answer in actions. Truth as Jesus thus portrayed it was a very costly affair.

So when Jesus said “the truth will set you free” (8:31) he did not mean mean mere intellectual freedom. He meant the liberating experience of being his person – freedom from sin and guilt, adoption as sons and daughters of God and a future and a hope that liberates from the fear of death.

Morris concludes: “The connection with Jesus is essential to the idea of truth as we see it in this gospel. It starts from the essential nature of God, it finds its expression in the gospel whereby God saves humans and it issues in lives founded on truth and showing forth truth.”

Lies

Jesus set out the Dichotomy neatly when he said “(the devil) was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is not truth in him. When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell you the truth you do not believe me!”

So as truth is part if God's moral character, so lies are of the devil's. We can take this a step further with a working hypothesis that truth and truth telling are an integral part of a whole behaviour set we call “virtue” whilst lies and lying ring together with evil character traits.

We might also abstract from Jesus' experience with his contemporaries that there is some fault in human nature that makes lies seem attractive, believable almost while the truth seems unattractive and so truth tellers are not believed and even branded as “liars”.

Going on from Jesus' comments, the Genesis narrative is instructive. God says basically: “eat the forbidden fruit and you die”. The serpent says: “you won't die”. Then sweetens it with “you will become like God knowing good and evil”.

The genealogy in Gen.5 says over and over “… lived so many years and he died” hammering home the point that God told the truth but the serpent lied.

The serpent's sweetener was a more devious species of lie: it was true except at the vital point. Our progenitors did get to know good and evil. They did in an empty way become like God. But in all that mattered they had become totally unlike and separated from God. God knew what evil was, but remained totally good: they had actually done evil and had thereby been irreversibly tainted by it.

I have just been doing a bit of a word search (the site: www.biblegateway.com is helpful for this) on truth and lies. One gets the strong message that truth and truth telling are integral to God's moral character, and essential in people who wish to live to please him. The idea of lies and lying seems to have two particular emphases: the perversion of justice in the law courts and people who claim to speak for God misrepresenting him – to the ruin of their listeners.

The perversion of justice appears as something God hates with a passion. It is instructive that God is really in favour of the “secular” law courts and gets very angry when they become corrupt.

Isaiah 59 is a beautiful and poetic example: “… because of your sins God has hidden his face from you … No one calls for justice, no one pleads a case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies. … So justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.”

The other focus is on people who claim to speak for God telling lies. This seems to be in the Bible almost the constant state of the religious establishment – a sad fact that should make us critically examine our current churches.

One example is Jeremiah where this theme runs right through the book. The overview is that God is warning the nation that it will be destroyed if it maintains its current moral, religious and geopolitical stance. The religious establishment refute this message and claim that God is pleased with the nation and will protect it. The king and people follow the (lying) advice of the “church”. The nation is destroyed, the temple burned, and the populace deported in chains by the enraged Babylonians.

So God's warnings depicted reality. The “church”'s lies did not correspond to reality. Finally reality bit with a vengeance!

Just one quote, Jeremiah 27.14ff “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who say to you, 'You will not serve the king of Babylon' for they are prophesying lies to you. 'I have not sent them' declares Jehovah. 'They are prophesying lies in my name ...”

To sum up: Truth is what corresponds to reality, including God's reality: lies are denying reality. The truth may be unpalatable or even inconvenient. Lies may sound sweet – but following them leads to harm or even ruin. Telling lies may seem to offer an easy way out – but it is morally wrong. People who want to take God's moral character as a guide must learn to be truth tellers.

Next week we will debunk the “hard cases” sceptics use to try to make us doubt the general rule of truth telling.