Crime and Punishment

In Northern Ireland yesterday there was a very odd news story the caught my eye, a woman from Strabane was caught shoplifting and sentenced to 3 months in prison. Nothing that unusual there really, if you do the crime you do the time, but when I tell you the value of the jeans was £10 and that this was indeed her first involvement with the law courts something doesn't seem to add up does it? The punishment doesn't quite seem to fit the crime committed.


It later emerged that the same judge who had judged this woman had also judged a drink driving case last year, the offender had committed 54 other motoring offences, but this time the judge decided to show leniency on the driver and not to send him to prison at all.



My sense of justice tells me that the woman committed the crime therefore she should have to take the punishment that her crime warranted, but when we see drug dealers and other people getting much lighter sentencing than this something just doesn't add up.


But what are we going to do about it? I mean it doesn't affect most (or any i suspect) of us directly, so why should we care? Well the public outcry over the event has taught me one thing about humanity, and that's that we all have a desire to see justice done, to see the person who commits a crime paying the appropriate penalty, and in this case the penalty meted out was deemed to be too harsh.



But as Christians how should we respond to injustice? How should we respond when we see people being disproportionately punished? Well as always we look to the Bible and we look to the example of our Saviour Jesus Christ. We read in 1 Peter 2:

"To this you where called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats. Instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly."

Christ is the ultimate example of someone who suffered unjustly, he committed no wrongs, there was never a time when he did not submit himself to his father's will. He never wronged anyone, yet the people of the day where jealous of him, jealous of his power and authority, jealous of the people's response to him and they decided to kill him and how did he react? Did he cry out injustice? Did he seek to have the sentence repealed? Did he claim that the judge was lousy and he needed a retrial? No, he instead entrusted himself to him who judges justly, more than this because he had done no wrong he didn't deserve any punishment, but he took our punishment upon himself, he paid the price for all the wrong things we have done, all the times we have ignored God and run our life our own way. He entrusted himself to his father, trusting his father to judge fairly and justly.