"Hate evil and love good, and establish
justice..."
Delegates to the Conservative Party conference, which met
in Birmingham last week, listened to two proposals from the platform aimed at
establishing justice. Chris Grayling wants to change the law on self-defence to
allow individuals to defend their property instinctively and honestly, even if
the force they use is disproportionate to the threat they face. Theresa May
wants to change the law on sentencing to allow individuals who are victims of
anti-social behaviour to choose the penalty that those convicted receive.
We should be under no illusions: both proposals represent a
change in the way we conceive of society. Both represent substantial shifts in
the balance that we have historically struck between the individual and the
community. The first will, if passed into law, allow an individual to use
inappropriate force upon another as long as he judges that his act is
reasonable. The community will hand that judgement over to the individual and,
as long as the individual judges that his act is reasonable, the community will
not question his exercise of it. The second will, if passed into law, hand to
the individual who has been wronged the authority to select the wrong-doer's
punishment. No longer will this function be exercised by the Crown, acting on
behalf of the wronged individual and on behalf of the whole community out of
the deeply-held belief that a wrong against an individual is a wrong against
the whole community. The wrong suffered by the individual, and the individual's
response to it, will be what determines the wrong-doer's fate.
As I have said, the proposals represent a change in the way
we conceive of society.
In his lecture to the Theos think-tank, delivered not far
from here the week before last, Rowan Williams spoke eloquently about how we
conceive of society - how we will miss him. He suggested that to conceive of
society as a balance between the individual and the community, a balance
exaggerated by these two proposals, is to conceive of it wrongly. The real balance is the balance
between the individual and the person. Williams reminded his audience of Saint
Augustine's observation that a person is in relationship with God before he is
anything else, or before he is in relationship with anything else. None of us
is on our own, and none of us cannot pretend to be - or, at least, we can
pretend to be. We can pretend that human society is a matter of managing the
relationship between a collection of individuals, each of whom has a stockpiled
birthright of liberties and dignities. But for people of faith human society is
a matter of ordering the relationship between a collection of persons, each of
whom is the object of unconditional divine love.
In his encounter with the rich young man and in the
exchanges that follow it Jesus has a lot to say about how we conceive of
society. He has a lot to say about how wealth, property and family all conspire
to distort the loyalty that our primary relationship should command. The young
man is good-hearted and eager to please, but the possessions that he loves mean
that God's claim on him will always have to compete with the business affairs
and commercial anxieties that fill his head. He sees himself as an individual
in a matrix of relationships which he has chosen, just one of which is with
God. Jesus addresses the complexity directly.
"Sell what you own" he advises. In other words, stop trying to
amass an identity for yourself; stop relying on what you own to create your
conception of who you are; stop building yourself up as one individual among
many. Remember instead who you really are: God's beloved. Rely instead on who you really are: God's beloved.
Give away everything else. Don't build up, and you will discover the treasure
of heaven.
The rich young man goes away grieving and we do not hear of
him again. Yet all who respond to the call to follow Jesus are asked to do what
the young man was asked to do. They are asked to give up everything that they
cling to, everything that distorts their loyalty to their primary relationship.
This is what we call Baptism, in which God washes away every trace of present
sin and through which God offers a sure route home from all future sin. Try
hanging on to wealth or position; try hanging onto brothers or sisters, aunts
or uncles when you are plunged into the healing and cleansing water. Baptism is
an assertion of our primary relationship with God; it reminds us of our duty to
it; and it underlines its fundamental significance for everything we are.
So where does this leave last week's proposals?
Perpetrators of anti-social crime offend against the primary relationship,
against the truth of God's eternal regard for every one of us. But a system of
justice that panders to us as individuals, a system of justice that neglects
our common origin in God, in a God who gives each of us equal eternal worth,
offends against that truth as well. We of all people have an interest in the
treatment meted out to alleged offenders. After all, we worship one. Faith
compels us to see ourselves in them, and them in us, too. Amen.
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