Saturday, March 11, 2006

JUSTICE, God style


Slobodan Milosevic was found dead of natural causes in his cell today. A lot of people are upset about this, because they were hoping for justice... meaning that he would be convicted of crimes against humanity and, hopefully, executed. There's no doubt he deserved it. Mass murders, genocide, ethnic cleansing, a war in which rape was a social expectation... and he dies in his cel, apparently of natural causes.

It strikes me that this is the penalty we all face. Milosevic hurt and killed a lot of people, and in the end the worst punishment we could think of was the one God had already decreed for him: death. The same end decreed for me, for you, for all of us. It's just another reminder that we human beings are, all of us, more like than unlike. It's a reminder that Christ's salvation isn't only about being spared from Hell, it's also about salvation in our personal lives, salvation from the destructive presence of sin in our lives here, today.

I've already been tried and found wanting in the greatest court of law in the universe. But the judge has provided another to take my penalty, and I'm in a rehabilitation program now. My hope is to be more like Christ than like Milosevic when my moment comes.

6 comments:

  1. This is big news over here (Croatia) right now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, I was wondering what the upshot would be over there. Everything cool?

    ReplyDelete
  3. So, when you say "My hope is to be more like Christ than like Milosevic when my moment comes" do you mean that you hope you are more Christ-like than Milosevic-like or that you hope you are more Christ-like than Milosevic was?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The former. I believe I am already more Christ-like than Milosevic was. Assuming the reports about him are true, of course. The question is whether I am more like Christ than I am like Milosevic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmmm...

    That, of course, brings up the question of the size of the gap between you and Christ vs. the size of the gap between you and Milosevic.

    I think in one sense you are already more like Christ than Milosevic - you are redeemed, while Milosevic, presumably (I can't know for certain), was not. That makes you more like Christ than like Milosevic automagically.

    However, the gap between Christ's sinless state and your sinful (but redeemed) seems likely to be larger than the gap between your sinful (but redeemed) state and Milosevic's sinful (but unredeemed) state.

    I think there's an interesting theological question hiding in there somewhere...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Riots in the streets...me and the stinters running from the law...just kidding. No real exitement here.

    ReplyDelete