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Thursday, July 18, 2013

Messy justice and other problems of a broken world

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us." -2 Corinthians 5:17-20

I've been seeing a lot of posts around the internet on the Zimmerman trial, also known as the Trayvon Martin case. People are pretty heated about this, and with good reason. A series of unfortunate circumstances led to the death of a young man, and that is a tragedy. I don't know if Zimmerman was intentionally profiling and I don't know if Martin was up to no good, but I do know that a child is dead and that is something worth grieving. My prayers go out to his family.

I don't feel qualified to offer any in depth legal analysis of this case, because I don't know the law particularly well and I certainly don't know all the details of the case. I know what has been released by the media and the pictures that have been painted by sources who undoubtedly both have biases. But I do think that given the information we do have, there was no way a jury could have convicted Zimmerman beyond reasonable doubt, because he was unfortunately the only witness. In this country, people on trial are considered innocent until proven guilty, and that's something we should probably be thankful for.

Certainly "justice" was carried out by the law, but as the demonstrations and lengthy post-verdict discussions indicate, this type of justice left something to be desired from most of us. After all, a person died! And the man who perpetrated the act walked away without any tangible consequences (at least so far). Regardless of your feelings on the matter, I think this is an icky trial. Should he have been aquitted? Probably so. My opinion is that while his error was grave, it was still mostly poor judgment at the start that led to the necessity of self defense. Stupid, but not intentional. If we were convicted for acts of stupidity, most of us would be in jail now for something or the other. And yet a person is dead. Should acts of stupidity which lead to the deaths of others, unintentional or not, be punished? The law thinks so in some cases, and not in others. It's about as clear as mud.

This reminds me a little of the movie Les Miserables where two types of justice are represented by the main character, Javert and Valjean, the former representing justice according the letter of the law and the latter representing justice based on the needs of the neighbor, a theme which closely echoes the contentious relationship between the religious leaders in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus and Christ himself. Valjean breaks the law in order to steal a loaf of bread for his sister's family and is imprisoned for years because of it. After he is freed, he can't find work and begins to fall back into desperation, but thanks to a kindly priest he is given mercy and a second chance. With that, he decides to change his identity and become a successful businessman, but when Javert discovers that Valjean has thrown off his identity as a prisoner, he begins a relentless pursuit to convict him under the law. Meanwhile, Valjean takes in a dying prostitute, demonstrating once again his interest in compassion over the letter of the law. We see two types of justice here--one that is straightforward and unmerciful, and one which looks into the hearts of people and sees that the world is not black and white. The point is that there's a difference between justice as we define it and justice as God defines it. That is exactly what Jesus was trying to tell the pharisees as he went about doing awful, heretical things like healing people on the Sabbath and dining with hookers and thieves.

So how to apply this to the current case? Well, we can't. The bottom line is that we are imperfectly trying to apply laws in order to approximate some kind of justice that is punitive and attempts to defer sinfulness in a sinful world. It doesn't work well because situations aren't easy. Stupidity is involved, bias/racism is involved, character issues are involved, and a black and white justice system is applied to these very complicated situations. There was no justice done here, and I think a conviction would not have been entirely just either. Our world is messy! But what we have in the wake of this trial is the knowledge that while our justice fails and has to be applied in ways that sometimes leave us dissatisfied, God's justice is that of love and mercy wherein parents are comforted and communities show love and young men are raised from the dead.

I think it's okay to be angry at this decision, but I think it's better to be angry that this happened at all, and that we live in a broken world. The solution to that anger isn't retribution, but to respond in ways which foster God's justice by protecting the vulnerable through legislative changes, and bringing awareness to the public that racism didn't end in 1963, and raising those in power to show compassion for the less privileged rather than suspicion. It's not a straight forward solution, but it's not a straight forward problem either. And of course, our other response should be to know that however tragic this situation was, and however tragic our world is (because these situations are not new, and there will be more), that God is here in the muck and mess and brokenness, and is calling us to be a part of restoration and reconciliation.


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