What is evil, and where is justice?

Newsletter article, January 2025

On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the federal death sentences of 37 death-row inmates in a politically motivated move against incoming President Trump. What actually happened was that President Biden changed the death sentences to life in prison without parole, so those convicted will not be released from prison, ever. For those 37 people, their sentences have become similar to sentences given in Western European countries for the same crimes. For many Americans, this may have seemed like an absolution of the crimes committed that led to the sentence. For murder and other serious crimes, Leviticus 24:19-20 is interpreted by us to build laws of equal retribution, and Jesus’ call for non-violence in Matthew 5:38-41 is ignored. We have heard the anguish of families of murder or manslaughter victims when the verdict on the perpetrator is handed down, and it is not death. Even if a death sentence is carried out, I have to wonder if the pain of a tragic and unjust death is at all affected by capital punishment. Are families left with impotent rage from a lack of justice, or from the grief they experience? Can we tell them apart?

Meanwhile in Texas, Robert Robeson awaits death in the state most committed to handing down and carrying out death sentences. He was convicted of murdering his two tear-old daughter Nikki Curtis, based on the junk science that defines a dubious condition called shaken-baby syndrome (SBS). To add to Mr. Robeson’s troubles, he is autistic and has not responded with the remorse expected of him by those who believe in his conviction. He does not experience or express emotions that most other people do in such circumstances. Despite the Texas state legislature supporting Mr. Robeson’s innocence, and the medical community’s rejection of SBS, the prosecuting district attorney is committed to carrying out justice for Nikki by any means.

In both cases above, there is a drive for justice, a response to that drive, and the perception of justice denied. Yet among all of the legal and political maneuvering, the victims and any sense of closure for their lives is buried under the violence of virtue signaling and moral outrage for personal gain. President Trump is denied the opportunity to show those hungry for justice that he is “tough on crime,” and the district attorney is denied an  opportunity to demonstrate her protection of Texans. It is hard for me to find where justice truly lies when politics and cherry-picking scripture drive our conversations around it and addressing the deeper causes of violence.

We don’t want our reactions of outrage to be tempered by discussions of what exactly justice looks like, or what Jesus said about violence. We experience intense frustration at the contradiction of a world created by a loving God who declared it good, but where preventable evil continues to happen. We don’t want anything getting in the way because we’ve never found a constructive way to express our emotions and recognize them as part of the human experience of senseless, random, and uncontrollable violence. Instead of recognizing and talking about that frustration and separating it from finding justice, we jump to punishing those we declare, in God’s name, to have perpetrated evil. We take  God’s name in vain because we find excuses for defining justice on our terms rather than in God’s terms, and not recognizing how our emotions distort our definition of justice.

News links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/texas-robert-roberson-execution.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/us/death-row-biden-commutation.html

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