I fear I have rather neglected this blog of late. I had so many topics I wanted to write about, such as the recent elections and who Jesus would have voted for (as if that hasn’t been written about enough), Osama Bin Laden’s execution and the crippling debt I’ve gotten myself, and thus my future family, into and how that has effected my studies and faith, but due to time constraints what with course and job hunting I have been unable to. Hopefully in the future I will get a chance to catch up with these topics and many more I will find to write about. Rather then try and catch up on previous topics I decided to write about an article I read today (17/5/11) in the Independent’s sister Newspaper I. In this article, written by Dominic Lawson, the question is raised over what the correct form of justice is. Lawson uses the recent events in Iran where a woman blinded by an acid attack persuaded the courts to sentence her attacker to be blinded by an operation in hospital rather then a jail sentence, to argue the case for “eye for an eye” justice. In the end Amnesty international and the British Foreign Office intervened to get the sentence over ruled and allowed the guilty man to keep his sight in return for a prison sentence however Lawson believes this punishment is not enough and that the victim has been denied justice. He also argues that the British public, as a whole, believes in the concept of like for like justice, which I find incredibly hard to believe partly due to the fact that I don’t believe the British public are that interested but also because I like to think in the west we have evolved a better (though not perfect) justice system and left barbarism behind us. In the article he talks about the concept of an eye for an eye as found in the Bible, which is where the concept originated, however he under plays Jesus’ teaching against it, in favour of the Old Testament teaching where it is promoted and put into force. He seems to suggest that as this country was raised on a Christian tradition then the old Jewish tradition is also our tradition which completely undermines Jesus’ teaching. Jesus made the argument that repaying violence for violence only promotes more violence, after all some one will seek revenge for the punishment that will then in turn have vengeance sought against them and so on and so on. I thought we in this country would have learnt this lesson after two thousand years but evidently not if Lawson is to be believed. Having said that current foreign policy of the US shows us that we in the “civilised” West have not learnt the lesson with the execution, rather then trial, of Bin Laden as a perfect example.
Lawson ends the article by quoting Ghandi (who is in turn quoting Jesus, which is more often then not actually forgotten) as saying “an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” This quote is used, partially due to being hauntingly poignant to the particular case he is talking about but also because Lawson believes Ghandi is wrong and that an eye for an eye would actually cause crime to decrease and is a better deterrent then jail time. I wish he would pay attention to current affairs, particularly those in the Middle East, so he could see how truly wrong he really is and I hope that the world will one day wake up and realise, like men such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King amongst hundreds of other pacifist men and women have, that an eye for an eye true will make the world blind and that the only way to break the cycle is to forgive for an eye.
