One of the posts yesterday on justice generated a really fruitful discussion, and here is a follow up to some of those issues. When Peter and Susan go to the old professor about Lucy’s weird behavior, he gives them a basic lesson. Edmund was saying sane things, but his character was problematic. Lucy was saying …
DeeplyGrieved.com
In this series, I was planning on addressing a rule of thumb approach for sorting out situations from a distance. You are not the judge, jury, or executioner, but you do read various blogs, and you see scandals and gaffes processed on the evening news, and you read the newspaper. What are you to do …
Me or Your Lying Eyes?
In dealing with charges made against anyone, one of the first thing that judicious elders should do is divide the witnesses into two categories. Why is this? The scriptural requirement is two or three witnesses. Now, think for a moment. What is meant by or? Two or three? Which is it? Does God want us …
Glory, Greed, and Girls
The fact that they don’t have a foundation for it has not prevented philosophers from trying to come up with improvements on the Golden Rule that Jesus gave us. And without granting that they are in fact improvements, we might still benefit from looking at the ancient problem of selfishness from new angles. Kant’s form …
Protections for the Accuser
We have been talking about the rights of the accused in matters of justice. But in the tangled web of human experience, in many cases the accuser can rapidly become the accused. Then what do we do? The first thing to do, especially for all internet observers, is to maintain a heart check, a heart …
Two and Three Witnesses
It has been rightly pointed out that Matthew 18 is not talking about what many people assume it is talking about. Jesus is talking about one application of the biblical principles of justice; He is not talking about all of them. Not even close. For example, the situation He describes is limited to someone who …
You Can Climb Out of a Hole, But You Can’t Dig Out
We live in a day when few people, including many Christians, understand what justice really is. In this series, we are not talking about a conversation between friends, or between a husband and wife. If a wife were to ask her husband if he would mind not interrupting when their youngest daughter is trying to …
Victims and Justice
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Edmund betrayed his sisters and brother, he did so because he felt that he was the victim. This is how the world of rationalization, revenge, and treachery work. And this, of course, has a profound effect on perceptions of justice. In his book The Scapegoat, Rene …
A Second Opinion
No situation is so clear cut that it cannot be “murkified” by those who have a motivation to do so. But motivation is not all that is needed. In order to get away with this kind of thing, there usually has to be some kind of support group, some kind of amen corner. This serves …
The Creep Who Shoots Dogs
One of the reasons why pious sentiment is so popular is that it makes a great substitute for obedience. And while we are disobeying what the Bible says to do, the disobedience can be carried off in the glow of self-approprobation. The Bible has some very clear instructions about the handling of charges against someone, …