Some ask “What would Jesus do?” when they seek justice. When standing in front of Pontius Pilate after a kangaroo court had passed sentence, Jesus did not look for justice.
He could have asked His Father for legions of angels to insure that justice would be done. He didn’t.
He didn’t expect justice. There’s no reason we should, either. We can expect judges and juries to make decisions, but if we expect them to be just, we delude ourselves. To be sure, sometimes justice is done. Sometimes, it isn’t. Justice is random.
What passes for justice is more consistent in tyrannies. To tyrants, everyone is always guilty. When long-time, faithful communists were sent to the death camps, they were unanimous in crying out: “If only Stalin knew. If Stalin knew, he would set us free. Stalin would be sure that we were treated justly.”
Older prisoners snickered. Some had been judges who were suddenly turned into criminals and sentenced to the camps. There, they met the people, some of whom had been judges, whom they had sentenced to the camps. Some would live to see the people who’d sentenced them show up in chains. They knew Stalin knew exactly what was going on, and, in fact he did.
Stalin ruled by terror. His terror would be stronger if it fell randomly, but it had to operate in a system that looked like its random nature was validated by an operating court system. Simply assassinating people on the street wasn’t enough. It had to look good, it had to be inescapable. No one could have any hope. Soon, no one did.
Every ever-strengthening state rules by fear. Property is confiscated by governments and by political favorites; people are jailed for using the same drugs their grandparents could buy freely at drug stores; children are taken from parents to give the foster-care system more access to funds; students are sentenced to “special” education to provide funding for those who sentence them; prison populations rise; sentences for non-violent crime increase; new crimes are invented; more policemen are hired; more jails are built.
Businesses worry that OSHA, whose hunger for fines can drive its inspectors to find something wrong with anything, will destroy them with a random inspection. Medical practitioners worry that their records will land them in jail. Property owners are haunted by the fact that any environmental, developmental, or government agency can find reasons for confiscation.
Everyone with something to lose worries that the power of the state will descend upon them. Most are deluded by the notion that they can expect fair treatment.
The ways to be hurt by justice:
1. To expect it.
2. To be angry when you don’t get it.
3. To try to hurt those who deny it to you.
To profit from a lack of consistent justice:
1. Don’t expect it.
2. Be happy when you don’t get it, for you are being treated as Jesus was.
3. Pray for the strength to love those who denied it to you.
Catholic fundamentalists try to live in God’s Kingdom, Christ’s proclamation of which is Thursday’s Third Luminous Mystery of the Rosary.
