Forgiveness, Crime And Punishment in The Covid Era

Today is Holy Saturday - and on Easter’s eve and life everlasting and the conquest of death, I write with an utter sense of inadequacy to comment upon so weighty a matter as forgiveness. If St. Paul considered himself “the chief of sinners,” I must consider myself several rungs lower (or higher?) in the ladder of iniquity.

But the judgement against evil is never in doubt. Wrongs may be righted but evil cannot be confronted and overcome without judgement.

The primitive urge of revenge and retribution and “an eye for an eye” may have been popularized by Hollywood - but our civilization has for many centuries provided the law rather than the sword as the immediate means of judgment. It would appear that the judgment of life and the judgement of the courts do agree and that as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out, “an eye for an eye” would indeed make “the whole world go blind.”  If raw revenge were allowed to run unbridled, “the blind would then be leading the blind” and even the learned judge would “fall into the ditch.”

And yet, the absence of revenge does not preclude the presence of judgment. Indeed the absence of judgment will unleash the dogs of war and the world would soon become a cauldron of revenge, retribution and unpredictable violence ruled by “tooth and claw.”

We cannot confuse sin and forgiveness - with crime and punishment. The former is infinitely more consequential in the destinies of men and women, for “the wages of sin is death but the Gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Even the vilest murderer may receive forgiveness and eternal life at the foot of the Cross. But that does not excuse the criminal from punishment, from judgement in a mortal court of law. For the law must indeed take its course.

The law does not “move on.” And it dare not confuse sin and forgiveness - with crime and punishment.

As E. Stanley Jones has said, “we are free to choose our actions - but not the consequences of those actions.”

In the myopic short term, it is in fact much more difficult to bring about judgment than to “move on.” The family unit is a good example. A parent who ignores a child stealing candy from the storefront and decides to “move on” is avoiding the confrontation and judgment and punishment that ought to follow and may even feel a passing sense of “relief.” But there will only be a “moving on” in this case, to much bigger problems in the future of this child. The parent may forgive - but must still demand accountability.

“Moving on” from crime and evil stores up, magnifies and multiplies society’s problems for the future. Some of you may have read about the (apparently true) story of a grown man awaiting the death penalty who was paid a visit by his mother in jail and asked to whisper something in her ear - instead, as she drew sufficiently near, he sank his teeth into her ear and face! As he let go, he is supposed to have cried, “why did you not stop me from stealing when I was a little lad?”

In my recent essay, “right and wrong - vs good and evil,” I pointed out how such things as approving and injecting healthy children, even babies, with the covid injection is evil - and not just “wrong.” So was forcing two year old children to wear the useless mask and weep behind it. These were crimes. The wanton suppression of safe, effective early treatment of covid was also a crime. Many crimes have been committed. There must be judgement. The law must take its course.

Many of the foot-soldiers of the tyranny that was unleashed in the name of covid will say “we were just following orders.” In the case of the medical profession, these orders were the ubiquitous “guidelines” that have corrupted medicine for decades. At the level of the doctor, the nurse, perhaps even the policeman, there is undoubtedly a discussion to be had about culpability and guilt. Many of these foot-soldiers still believe they are doing good - they are dangerous and ignorant and stupid, but it would be much more difficult to prove criminal liability.

But the leaders of the totalitarian covid tyranny are guilty as hell. The ghouls at the FDA who knew the data but ignored it (one ghoul on the vaccine approval committee even said on record that starting to inject healthy children on a mass scale with the covid injection would be the only way they would know its adverse effects), the leaders of our nations who became apologists for global organizations and salespeople for big-Pharma, the public health chiefs who became consumed with a sense of their own importance and unleashed unscientific misery upon the people, the CEOs of vaccine companies who knew the harms of the covid injection but knowingly played havoc upon the lives of the people - these movers and shakers of the tyranny must be brought before a court of law. There must be judgement - and the law must take its course.

Judgement and the meting out of justice is the only way that society can be protected from future, even more serious harm. And if the harm is repeated, there must be further judgment for crimes, further punishment - and thus it is that justice keeps watch over our broken world and is constantly mitigating and controlling harm.

Forgiveness has present and eternal consequences for us. We are instructed to ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness frees us from the burden of bitterness but it does not abolish judgment for the trespasser.

The fair administration of justice is part of the command to “love your enemy” and  punishment for crime is part of “doing good to those who hate you.”