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On
Christmas Eve just past I received a letter calling me up for jury
service to the court here in Derry.
I
thought that it was an interesting coincidence that the greatest insult
that I have ever received as a human being would be received on
Christmas Eve. It was like it was a message from God.
I call it an insult because I believe in Christ and I feel that taking
part in this charade they call a justice system would be to defame and
insult Christ. That is my opinion and I hold dearly to it.
Jesus said, “Do not judge or you too will be judged.” Yet our society
continues on a tradition of judging its citizens when they are perceived
to have done wrong. In fact it is so thought to be an honour to sit in
judgement of other people that solicitors queue up to volunteer as
judges, and jurors are expected to receive no payment for their
services.
The least they could do is pay jurors for selling their soul to the
devil that is man’s justice. For it is man’s justice and not God’s. I
suggest the payment they should receive is thirty pieces of silver for
their betrayal of Jesus and their defiance of God.
I may sound intemperate, even angry, at those who partake in this jury
system but it has gone on for too long now and God in my opinion must be
chomping at the bit to get even with those who would judge other human
beings.
But what else is there to do? The system surely works or else it
wouldn’t have lasted since before Christ was conceived.
Anyone who thinks that the system works would do well to concentrate on
the detail of the cases that are covered by the newspapers day and
daily. It is mostly a system that caters for punishing the mentally ill.
If you look at the majority or at least a sizeable minority of the cases
that come before the judge you will find that there are mental health
issues for most of those accused of crimes.
But they have done wrong and they must be punished, I hear you say. What
you’re really saying is that they bring down the tone of society and,
now that we have an excuse for putting them away, we should use it.
Isn’t that part of your reasoning?
Most of these sinners have done little more than be ill and exhibit the
symptoms of their illnesses such as depression. Sometimes that means
that they are violent or aggressive. Surely then they deserve to be
locked up, you say.
I would answer that by saying that you made them that way. You caused
their illnesses and you destroyed them as participating, loving human
beings. You have created and continue to maintain this monstrosity you
call civilisation and you continue to create and encourage criminals to
evolve from it.
Then you have the audacity to sit in judgement of those who fell by the
wayside, those who cannot cope without alcohol and drugs and those who
become aggressive and destructive.
You then appoint judges – the lowest form of human life – to oversee a
system that had no justice built into it and which would be better
ditched at the earliest opportunity.
Let me make no bones about it: this system will one day be ditched and
we will look back on this era as we now look back at the era of black
slavery, and we will say that our ancestors were not Christian but less
than fulsome people who listened to the wrong voices on some important
matters.
There has been a marked increase in the calling for “revenge sentences”
by the victims of crime, as if that serves some purpose. The only
purpose it serves is that it may prevent certain victims from going
after the perpetrators of crimes. The courts then justify their
existence by suggesting that they’re preventing chaos developing on our
streets.
The suggestion is that they provide an umbrella of civility in our
society that prevents us all from killing ourselves. They are our last
line of defence. And yet as a Christian society are we not supposed to
believe that Christ provides that umbrella of safety in that we are
supposed to believe that there is no threat because man is essentially
good and society isn’t under threat.
The truth is that judicial systems have evolved from times when the
elite of society – living fat while everyone else was impoverished –
felt under threat. Isn’t it time that we got rid of this Satanic system
that encourages us to break faith with Christ and sit in judgement of
our fellow man?
Isn’t it time that the feminisation of our planet, which is Christ’s
way, took precedence of this masculine paradigm that is called justice
but is simply a way of punishing those not able to cope with life?
Isn’t it time to try to heal the sinner of his problems rather than
demonstrate that we can be just as brutal as he can? There is nothing
more brutal than putting someone in a prison and labelling them a
criminal. It demonstrates that the institutions of our society know
nothing about Christ because we have failed to have sufficient faith to
tell them about Him.
It’s time we let the legal system into a secret: there is a God who
knows a better way. It’s time the Court system in this city stopped
asking people to compromise themselves and sell their souls to the
devil.
To the Court Service in Derry I reply that they should stick their
letter where the sun doesn’t shine. In any case, I have a depressive
illness and I am excluded from serving as a juror. So much for the
mentally ill being judged by their peers.
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