An excerpt from True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World If everyone, both citizens and those who govern them, is tempted to misbehave, as a Christian understanding of the justice paradox teaches, we should not be surprised that no human legal system has ever produced a just social order. The human desire to control our own destiny and to assume godlike powers for ourselves explains why men and women have repeatedly convinced themselves that the history of failure does not apply to them—that they will be the ones to prove the past wrong. [Yet] do Christians believe that every attempt to promote justice is therefore pointless? Not at all. A Christian understanding of the limits of law, combined with our obligation to promote the flourishing of others, can give us a vision of justice I call “law with a light touch.” If all of us are sinful, legal systems must play a double game: restraining the worst wrongs by the citizenry without empowering judges and prosecutors to do wrong themselves. The key to playing that double game well is to limit law’s reach. One implication of this, ironically, is that a less ambitious legal system will often be more effective than a more ambitious one. When it comes to justice, less is often more. One positive example of how this can work is the civil rights movement. In law schools, we talk a lot about the two great laws that were enacted thanks to the movement: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But changing the law wasn’t Martin Luther King’s primary objective. He was trying to change hearts. King fought and eventually died for the right to have relationship with those who refused to have relationship with him. He wasn’t trying to put anyone in prison. In fact, he and his ... Continue reading... #Seattle #WA #News
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 14:50:39 +0000
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