Justice – Pungent or Tasteless?

Here in the US we are a very confused people, confused when it comes to what we call “justice.”  We love it or hate it depending upon the situation at hand and our point of view.  But the problem is not really with justice.  The problem is with the absence of absolute truth. There was a time when a person knew what was true and what wasn’t, what was right and what was wrong.  Those days are long gone, as the bulldozer of a newly defined “tolerance” has pushed truth and justice out to make room for feelings.  Justice, once strong, sometime biting, has become tasteless and worthy only of vomit.  Harsh?  Read on.  I support my case.

First of all, if you don’t know, “tolerance” used to mean accepting that someone has a different view, and politely agree to disagree, without seeing the other person as evil, destructive, or suffering from some kind of phobia.  Now tolerance means if you have a different view than what is politically or socially acceptable, you must change your view or suffer the consequences, often through the courts, the legal courts or the courts of public opinion.  Why the change?  Justice is now based on feelings.  Someone’s feelings have been hurt, so the other person is evil, and must be punished.  Someone is offended, so the other person must be punished, banned, mocked.  (What about their feelings?   Gone!  In the name of social justice and tolerance.)

Please get this… people who do not agree with you will be offended.  When you don’t agree with them you might be offended as well.  That is life.  Try real tolerance for a change.  Agree to disagree, and get on with life, without the name calling and destructive characterizations.

Secondly, we have allowed our feelings to bend the law by allowing personal feelings to affect our understanding of right and wrong.

Most of you would probably consider a murder to be just that, murder, and punishable under the court of law.  This is not always the case, however.   The scales of justice do not always tilt the same way.  Juries are people, and people have feelings, which often overrule the legal system.   Below are some links that demonstrate the differences in criminal cases against a few women who have murdered their husbands and used as their defense, abuse.  (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/25/nyregion/abused-wife-found-guilty-of-murder.html, http://gothamist.com/2011/10/06/abused_wife_found_not_guilty_of_hus.php, http://abcnews.go.com/US/julie-harper-acquitted-degree-murder-husbands-shooting-death/story?id=25914277)

Some of you would consider abortion to be murder, but not all.  Again the scales of justice do not stay balanced…. Here is a link to an interesting conversation about this issue. (http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/1318108-why-death-pregnant-woman-two-deaths-27.html)

Then we have the notorious Clinton email/private server challenge.  The FBI Director, James Comey, claimed that although it was true Hillary had sent classified emails using a personal device, which is against the law, she did not intend any harm.  Therefore, there was no reason to pursue a legal case against her. Others have found themselves prosecuted and sentenced for similar actions.  (http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/justice-department-prosecuted-4-cases-like-hillarys/)  The scales of justice do not stay balanced.  Why? The truth of the law was not convenient in this case.  Justice, once pungent, has now become tasteless and worthless.

Where in the law does it say, if you don’t intend harm, you have not broken the law.  There certainly are many people in prison for deaths and destruction they did not intend to cause.  Say, for example a person drinks at a party, and then leaves to drive home.  His/her goal and purpose is simply to drive home.  However, in the process of driving home in his/her impaired mental state, they hit another car, and the child in the back seat is killed.  Do you think justice is done by dismissing this case because he/she did not intend to kill that child?  I don’t think many of you would.

By justice a king [leader] gives a country stability, but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down. (Proverbs 29:4)

How is it then that a woman, who wanted to be President of the United States of America, could email through her personal devices, and even use her own, not government protected or sanctioned, private server (located in her home), be deemed not chargeable since it was not her intent to harm anyone?  She broke the law.  Justice was not served in her case. Did I want Hillary to go to jail?  No way!   Would that feeling have stopped me, as a member of the jury, from finding her guilty?  No.  Not if the evidence was there, and from what Comey said, it was.   It just was not a convenient truth.

The most inconvenient truth is that as Americans have moved from standards of right and wrong, to making judgments based not on any true right and wrong, but instead by feelings.  Truth has been pushed aside in favor of a determination based on whether the action/comment in question hurt someone or not (banning and/or criminalizing everything that might offend someone). We have lost the rock of justice on which all Americans stood.  We have lost Lady Justice, who held the scales of justice with her eyes blindfolded, so that justice might prevail for all, no matter their race, religious beliefs, their country of origin, or wealth, or their sex.

Will true justice ever been seen in the United States again?

 

And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there. (Ecc 3:16)