Read this during this morning's Bible reading and I had to share it with people because there is such a difference between this justice and the alleged justice of the courts today. There is one major key difference, but I'm not going to point it out to you as I think it makes more of an impact if you find it for yourself.
(Deuteronomy 19:15-21) 15 “No single witness should rise up against a man respecting any error or any sin, in the case of any sin that he may commit. At the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses the matter should stand good.
16 In case a witness scheming violence should rise up against a man to bring a charge of revolt against him,
17 the two men who have the dispute must also stand before Jehovah, before the priests and the judges who will be acting in those days.
18 And the judges must search thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and has brought a false charge against his brother,
19 YOU must also do to him just as he had schemed to do to his brother, and you must clear away what is bad from your midst.
20 So those who remain will hear and be afraid, and they will never again do anything bad like this in your midst.
21 And your eye should not feel sorry: soul will be for soul, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Mind you, I don't hold by the death penalty and even more so would I not want to have one hanging over my head if this were the justice employed by our courts. But, take the death penalty out of the equation and I think this would guarantee a lot more honesty in the justice system of any country.
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| This is awesome: this is justice as it should be. |
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conny90045
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Jun 3 @ 11:50AM
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   Very very good 
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Monsterboy
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Jun 3 @ 2:04PM
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I don't know. It can be difficult enough to get people to testify as it is. Imagine if, in addition to the normal dangers of, say, bearing witness against the mob, you add legal penalties if he gets off. Might have been a lesser risk back when it was basically preponderance of evidence rather than presumption of innocence. You kind of have to choose between the benefits of the above system, and the benefits of presumption of innocence. Personally, I'll stick with the latter, absent further considerations.
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HopelesslyHopeful
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Jun 3 @ 2:27PM
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Yeah, but that was in regards to bearing false witness against a person, not about testifying against an organization.
I think our neighbor wouldn't have tried to steal our land if he was aware that if he lost he would lose as many feet of his land as he was trying to take of ours. And I don't think so many people would have lied on his behalf if they knew they could be severely punished for making a false statement.
And remember that is only if they are found to be bearing false witness, not just if they are not found to be absolutely right in all details.
There are people put in jail and later exonnerated who never get their life back and who are the victims of other people lying about them, planting evidence, etc. and often those people are never punished for their crimes! That's just wrong.
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tyme_gypsy
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Jun 3 @ 2:49PM
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As long as there are lawyers involved, there is precious little likelihood of justice in criminal courts.
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IntellectAndPassion
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Jun 3 @ 3:22PM
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Thought provoking but has its scary aspect. History is filled with men who believed they had a mandate from God when they dealt out judgment: some sickening results. Of course, religious people can reason that the Biblical situation REALLY did involve God's mandate to judge and thus the results in that case would be okay. But your comment seems to straddle the fence. According to vs. 19, the idea was to give the bad guy the SAME treatment he schemed to give the innocent party. If the bad guy schemed death for the innocent party, then the SAME treatment would be death. Also, if God's mandate were real (not just an arrogant human presumption), then death in the Biblical case should be okay with you. Of course, I guess we can imagine that somehow in another context (such as in the Biblical narrative) God really was at work. But it's scary enough right now, when our leaders imagine they too have the backing of their God. Oops, wandering I am. Back to the courts: yes, death in the context of our world in which we are right to doubt Divine intervention is a capricious thing. The death penalty in a truly just and inerrant system would be okay with me. Thanks to Henry II, we (the western, anglophonic world) are heirs to a legal system devoid of trial by battle and trial by ordeal -- thank God?
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Monsterboy
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Jun 3 @ 3:36PM
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Ah, as in penalty for perjury. Well, sounds reasonable.
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sparechange64
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Jun 3 @ 4:44PM
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sounds reasonable to me
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HopelesslyHopeful
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Jun 3 @ 7:33PM
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On a personal note, that would mean, right now, my ex-husband would be in jail for a significant portion of his life for trying to falsely have me arrested for kidnapping. My children would be safe from him and I could move without having to tell him where I was and therefore I could possibly get away from him, myself, where he would not know my address and where to send people to harass me or to try to kill me. And I wouldn't have to prove anything except that he did try to falsely have me arrested and jailed!
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HopelesslyHopeful
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Jun 3 @ 7:56PM
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Thought provoking but has its scary aspect. History is filled with men who believed they had a mandate from God when they dealt out judgment: some sickening results. Of course, religious people can reason that the Biblical situation REALLY did involve God's mandate to judge and thus the results in that case would be okay. But your comment seems to straddle the fence. According to vs. 19, the idea was to give the bad guy the SAME treatment he schemed to give the innocent party. If the bad guy schemed death for the innocent party, then the SAME treatment would be death. Also, if God's mandate were real (not just an arrogant human presumption), then death in the Biblical case should be okay with you.
I was not talking about God, I was talking about justice. To me it is just to say that if a person falsely accuses someone of murder to try to get themselves a lighter sentence or because they don't like them, or whatever, then they should, for their trying to get a particular kind of punishment for the accused, be subject to that same punishment should they be found to bear false witness. After all, they were wrongly trying to give it to the person they accused!
Death in the Biblical sense is okay with me, for me, if I choose to risk my life. There is no part of the Christian standards of forgiveness and loving the sinner but hating the sin that mandates death for the sinner. That is in the past, that was Mosaic Law, to ready a people for receiving the Messiah and moving on to higher, more spiritual, standards.
If someone gives their life to save another, more than likely they will be back so it's no great loss. But they still give it, even if the other is also likely to return. They do it out of love and faith and it is not wrong. If someone accidentally kills another in protection of themselves or another, then it is only self protection and while it is unpleasant, it is not wrong. But to actively seek the death of another, even if they actively sought your death, is wrong and is murder because of it's willful nature. And if it's wrong to hunt them down and kill them in cold blood then so much worse is it to hunt them down, argue the point for weeks or even years, and then have someone else kill them.
I would not willingly kill anyone on purpose. That is why I am not a soldier, I am not in the mob, I do not rob liquor stores, I am not a police officer, I would never join a gang, and I do not own a gun.
I was speaking of justice as it should be applied in the context of the American justice system. This is an example of perfect justice by fleshly/temporal standards. But since I believe there are also spiritual standards, the possibility of change of personality, of forgiveness, I could never agree to a person being killed because they sought to have me killed. Jailed, yes; treated for mental health issues if they had any, oh yes. Killed, never!
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HopelesslyHopeful
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Jun 3 @ 7:57PM
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Of course, I guess we can imagine that somehow in another context (such as in the Biblical narrative) God really was at work. But it's scary enough right now, when our leaders imagine they too have the backing of their God. Oops, wandering I am. Back to the courts: yes, death in the context of our world in which we are right to doubt Divine intervention is a capricious thing. The death penalty in a truly just and inerrant system would be okay with me. Thanks to Henry II, we (the western, anglophonic world) are heirs to a legal system devoid of trial by battle and trial by ordeal -- thank God?
Yes, because, as we all know, the American legal and justice system was built by Henry II and had nothing based on Biblical standards or borrowed from other standards or made up more wholesale to fit the American people. That's why it all revolves around, amongst other things, the King still being allowed to pardon gross offenders. No wait! It doesn't. Hmm .. I wonder why!
News flash for you: much of the world has come under the influence of American idealisms and much of English law, etc was rewritten to the standards of the Constitution, not the other way around. The Western legal systems and their current functioning are based on the American Justics System and not the other way around. Yes, they still have some of their old laws and old ways but they were also a very sensible people who saw something that worked and incorporated more of it into their systems. That's an absolute fact of history. And yes, the American system did already bear a bit of a resemblance to the older ways, since they were all based on the same book in originality and since persons were used to authority dressing up to look a certain way but the laws were vastly different in so many ways. So no, we do not thank Henry II for what he did not do.. unless you mean to thank him for helping to screw things up so awfully, him and all others like him, that America was created. But I'd just as soon no one had screwed it up to begin with and no one was ever at war, if it's all the same to you and we must go back in history giving credit where it is due.
Let us not have further misunderstanding: I do have complete faith in God and his ability to intervene. I do not believe he does it capriciously, however. But I did not say I wouldn't want the death penalty hanging over my head in regards to the possibility of my receiving it; but it was with the thought that I have an ex-husband who does his best to seek my death and for some crimes he has accused me of, where I brought to trial, death would be the penalty in some States and were I proved as innocent as I am innocent, then it could very well be his death then that would be the sentence. And it would make it very hard to fight a court battle for your innocence knowing that your innocence would bring about the death of your children's father!
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HopelesslyHopeful
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Jun 3 @ 8:07PM
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Yes, lovely Monsterboy, a penalty for perjury and a real penalty for the sort of perjury that may result in real harm to the defendant.
Other persons who were perjuring themselves but in trying to protect someone else, not in bearing false witness against another, would receive the usual sort of punishments for it.
At least, that's what I think!
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