Does Your Justice of the Peace Have a Theology?

How do we, as a society, avoid the mistake dramatized in Les Miserables and in The Crucible, which has been repeated in history wherever legalistic secularists or legalistic churches have exercised political power?  (Les Miserables refers us to hypocritical French who simply substituted one form of tyranny for another when they turned hostile to religion). But I'll focus here on legalism in theology.  I think we see legalism in Judaism and Islam more than in Christianity.  But still, the propensity to be just the same is there if we don't get our theology right.  We might be totally orthodox in our thinking about grace which militates against a form of legalism by which people try to earn their salvation; but we can still be veritable heretics in failing to stipulate what militates against state legalism. How would we treat criminals or those who we perceive as criminal--the homosexuals, the adulterers, the prostitutes or even unbelievers?  How would we treat them if we weren't secular?  (And I don't think Christians should want to be secular unless they are using the word "secular" the way Luther did). Obviously, law enforcement by hypocrites would not be justice.  But a righteous judge doesn't err towards mercy out of a fear of hypocrisy does he?  Ideally, he wouldn't err at all, but if leniency is the right policy, on what basis does he decide?  When does his use of law become abuse?

Obviously, judging how justice could be done can be more difficult than judging guilt.  But if God's will is to be done on earth as in heaven, how are we to understand that?  If God's final judgment is, as often taught, a kind of black and white decision moment--faith, no faith; left, right, then judges have no example there to follow.  And yet there are scriptures which indicate that more is on trial than just that.  Our hearts will be judged in all degrees of gradation along with every thought and word and deed. I get the impression that while there will be a basic separation, not all who are saved will be equal in the kingdom of God because justice for us will still be something God will mete out.  If we are not to expect punishment, then perhaps we are to expect shame through a comparative lack of rewards.  

Still our question is, how do earthly judges justify mercy or leniency?  Doesn't our theology have any implications for this?  Whose role is a judge’s role analogous to—that of God the father or God the son or is that a false dichotomy?  A judge isn’t deciding how much abuse he will tolerate from those under prosecution the way Christ did; but he is potentially deciding how much abuse society can tolerate from criminals he is lenient with.  Understandably, he will have sympathy for the juvenile delinquent with a history of living under abusive parents.  The thought will be, “hasn’t this kid suffered enough?”  But he still has to judge whether the kid is a threat to society—whether, because of that background, he or she is even capable of sorrow, repentance and humility.   

Christ’s warning against making, “one of these little one’s stumble,” (the millstone around the neck!) makes me think that the final judgment must entail some kind of grand re-balancing of the scales which mitigates the culpability of such delinquents for the crimes they are guilty of precisely because they were caused to stumble. Earthly judges, sadly, do not have the power to throw parents into jail instead of their children--the standards of evidence are usually too high to make that possible.

But I do think justice systems have made progress in some places. I think societies, (not Nevada) which seek to capture and prosecute men who patronize the illegal sex industry show a little more sophistication or improvement over the ones that just go after the women.  Recall the gospel story of how the Jews wanted to stone the woman--not the man.  Even today, in some Muslim countries, the raped women who complains is first imprisoned and then forced to marry her rapist.  Christians have made mistakes--but not that bad. 

My last word here comes down to this.  I think society generally, and judges specifically simply need to be more creative in their sentencing. The analogy between an earthly judge and God as a judge may thus be broadly defined by the fact that like God, judges need to be wise in dealing with evil.  Solomon’s judgment will suffice as the paradigm example.