Sunday, March 11, 2012

 

Sunday Reflection: Forgiveness, process, and faith


At the lenten retreat this week, Susan Stabile and I had an interesting exchange (which she has described already on her blog). She had mentioned that lawyers sometimes have a problem with forgiveness because we are focused on justice; in response, I noted that the problem might actually be our focus on process. That is, we think that there should be a process, a dialogue, which creates an outcome, but forgiveness, at least as Jesus modeled on the cross, doesn't have that. For him, the first step was forgiveness, and there was no repentance first by those who were killing him.

Part of what I was saying was that we should not assume that process is the same as justice. It can create justice, certainly-- but often does the opposite, while giving injustice the appearance of evolved civilization.

I probably could describe this as another false proxy-- that we often view process as a proxy for justice. We should not be so quick to do so. For example, what I have worked on so hard, the federal sentencing guidelines, is a process which has created injustice.

One reason that process can be so amoral is that it serves to remove the powerful force of individual morality from the way we address moral conflicts. Instead of engaging with a problem with our own heart and mind, we hand it over to a machinery that is already in place, an assembly line of decision making.

There is tragedy in that. In sentencing, it results in judges telling a man how many years he will be locked away with her eyes down, doing math calculations. How wrong is that? Plucking out the humanity from the process of judging is like plucking the eyes from a bird-- it does not create blind justice, but a moral blindness that denies the very presence and imperative of God in our midst.

Comments:
Not surprising, in everyday life the absence of humanity often begets judging.

How easily another individual can be culled, categorized, labeled and dismissed by the inner workings (blind adherence) of personal process developed (attitudes and beliefs).

Oh, to simply listen and be open to "The Hospitality of God" before a sound is uttered.

- A wonderful complimentary reflection at St. Stephen's this morning...
 
It took me a few times to go over your reflection today, partly because I got lost on tangential trains of thought prompted by some of your points. I'm not sure I can see forgiveness, process and faith as a harmonious unit integrated in a jurisprudence curriculum. If that [future] judge sat now in your class, how would you teach her the need to take her eyes off sentencing formulas? And if she did, get her to gauge a moral compass gone astray or perhaps non existent with her own?? What makes her moral compass a fair measure? I understand that discretion cannot be taught, that it is gained along the way, if heed is payed in truth. After all blind birds still fly, but can they soar? Justice is blind, but it still hears and hearing doesn't always mean it listens... to faith, process and forgiveness (or some form of absolution anyway)all at the same time. I think that takes a form of discretion few judges would take upon themselves to apply. It is also a form of discretion sabotaged by the system itself.
Anyway, wish I could listen to "the hospitality of God"
 
Romans 5.8
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

#