Several weeks ago two small girls, who were close friends and playmates, were brutally shot to death on a country road in the small town of Weleetka, Oklahoma. To this day there have been no clues and no leads as to whom carried out this murder. Since different guns were used, it is believed that two people were involved. There have been sketches of a "person of interest", but even there, this person has not been identified and tracked down. The medical examiner report said there were a total of thirteen shots fired at close range. As time goes along, there is this nagging fear on the part of the families of these children, the law enforcement agencies, and the residents and friends in this small town, that whoever did this will be able to escape justice from the hands of men.
This is just one case among so many cold unsolved cases nationwide. Why do we want justice in this life, and when we don't get it, we are supremely dissatisfied? Why is it that when we are able to get some sort of justice in this life--what if the perpetrators of the crime mentioned above are caught, imprisoned, tried, found guilty and receive the death penalty--that even then we are not completely satisfied, but that we deep down in the secret chambers of our heart wish they would face even a greater, long-lasting justice? Our quick, easy lethal injections after a relatively comfortable stay in a prison system seems so tame compared to the crimes they committed and the level of suffering they inflicted upon their victims. Man wants more. Now why is that?
We have in downtown Oklahoma City a Survivor Tree. I have heard some relatives and friends of those who died in that 1995 bomb blast testify in front of a camera and in print that they would not be totally pleased when Timothy McVeigh would be executed for his crime. They probably wished they could have hanged McVeigh a thousand times on that Survivor Tree. Even when we get "perfect justice" in this life, it seems so imperfect. From where does that feeling emerge?
In the first two articles in this series, we have examined the argument from history, the argument from language and the argument from evolution as to why people really believe in the concept of hell, even when they say they don't. Now we come to the next argument--the argument from justice.
We moan when people "get away with murder", literally or otherwise. Sometimes crime does pay, and the victims end up paying for it, and that is simply not right on all fronts. Even the most conniving person on earth who loves to bend the rules and walk all over people to accomplish his personal aims, if he were on the receiving end of such wicked scheming by someone else, he would want that person to get "what is coming to him." Why does man demand justice?
So when people complain that certain laws are unjust, they are only helping to prove the existence of an external law that is permanent, fixed and perfect. Even in his fallen state, man has an internal moral mechanism that screams for fairness and justice. Where does that sense of right and wrong, or justice and injustice, originate, especially if man is nothing more than the blind choices of natural causes (see last week's article)?
So when people conclude correctly that there is no remedy in this life for the present triumph of evil over good in so many instances, then what they are really saying is the only logical remedy to the injustices in this life is perfect justice in the next one. No one will get away with anything then. Good will not remain unrewarded and evil will not remain unpunished. No matter how much indoctrination a person receives from our government-controlled system of higher learning, what can not be educated out of a man is the sense that there must be a place, a time, and a person who will see to it that all moral accounts will be settled somehow. All injustices will be rectified.
The opposite of this is accept the idea that nothing really matters in this life. If death leads to the end of everything, then this life is everything, and the smart thing to do then is to get as much pleasure out of this life as possible, regardless how it hurts others in the process. We should not complain then if injustice wins out at the end of the day. We should not be upset when others take advantage of us and get away with it. We should congratulate them instead for using their wits, and we should turn around and do likewise. The very fact that man will pound his fist for justice when something adverse affects him personally, only proves that "this-life- is-everything" worldview does not provide any help or hope to struggling man.
Expect man in his sinful state to come up with his own notions of what perfect justice is, and how he will escape the perfect justice in the life to come. For now, though, this ingrained longing for justice is only another argument in favor of a day of reckoning or judgment by someone who has all the facts at his disposal. Only a Perfect Judge can render perfect justice.
I heard it said by someone after the verdict was announced and after family and friends had gathered outside the courthouse, "I am so glad of the verdict from the jury. Justice has been served, but what he did to our family has caused so much pain, that he deserves the hottest part in hell."
People really believe in hell even when they say they don't. Justice demands it.
Yours in Christ,
Chris
