Is This Really the Kind of Judge You Want God to Be?

By now, you’ve probably heard of Brock Turner, a Stanford student who sexually assaulted an unconscious girl and received a ridiculously light sentence. People aren’t happy with the judge:

A recall effort against a California judge was announced on Monday in a sexual assault case at Stanford University that ignited public outrage after the defendant was sentenced to a mere six months in jail and his father complained that his son’s life had been ruined for “20 minutes of action” fueled by alcohol and promiscuity.

When we see this kind of miscarriage of justice, we’re rightly appalled. A light sentence is a slap in the face to the victim. It denies the seriousness of the crime. It allows evil to win. Everyone can see this but Turner’s friends and family who argued on his behalf. Hearing their statements, I couldn’t help but notice a parallel between the arguments they made against jail time for Brock Turner and the arguments people make against Hell.

1. The crime only took 20 minutes.

Why, his father asked, should something that took only 20 minutes ruin the rest of his son’s life? But it’s obvious here that the seriousness of a crime and the length of its punishment are not determined by how long it took the person to commit it. The same is true for Hell.

2. All of his other accomplishments will even things out.

Turner argued that receiving probation rather than a jail sentence would enable him to do a lot of good by teaching others to avoid the “drinking and partying college lifestyle.” But neither his past accomplishments as a student and a swimmer, nor his future good deeds, erase the justice due for his evil act. The same is true for our actions.

3. It was the fault of his society.

Turner blamed the party culture that led to his drinking, but the fact that others influenced him to commit an evil act does not lessen the objective evil of the act and the punishment it requires. Neither will the excuse “everyone was doing it” serve to lessen our punishment.

4. The crime wasn’t bad enough to deserve a serious punishment.

Turner lost his scholarship, job opportunities, and his chance to swim in the Olympics. Wasn’t that enough? Turner’s friend wrote: “I think this is all a huge misunderstanding…. This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgment.”

I think anyone looking at this impartially can see that what happened was a serious evil. Those close to Turner, however, are unable to see this. The same is true for our delusion about our own sins.

5. Turner isn’t really bad like the other people who are in jail.

The judge was concerned that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” implying that Turner, unlike others who commit sexual assault, doesn’t belong there. Again, Turner’s friend wrote, “Brock is such a sweetheart and a very smart kid…. It’s pretty frustrating to see the light that people are putting him in now. It used to be ‘swim star’ and now it’s like he is the face of rape on campuses. It’s such a false way to put it…. Brock is not a monster. He is the furthest thing from anything like that….”

Yet Turner did sexually assault someone. Ordinary people are capable of great evil, and evil actions come from bad people. The fact that a person is ordinary does nothing to mitigate the objective evil of his actions and the punishment those actions deserve. I suspect that those who know Brock Turner feared his receiving a level of punishment that would confirm the true seriousness of his crime because they know he’s ordinary. If he’s more like us than our image of a monster, then that means anyone can do evil—they can, you can, I can. And maybe that means we’re all bad.

People want this judge recalled because he’s not a good judge. He did not uphold justice. The arguments for leniency were not good ones, and now people are angry because Turner’s lack of punishment was an injustice and injustice is evil.

Why, then, do people make these same arguments against the rightness of Hell? It’s because we have as much interest in downplaying our sins as Turner does. Justice is so much easier to see when we’re talking about someone else—just look at the difference in reaction between those who know and care about Brock and those who are impartial. Could it be that we, like Turner’s family and friends, are not seeing things clearly when it comes to our own guilt and what it deserves?

Would God be a good Judge if He indulged our argument that Hell is unjust because our crimes took a short amount of time to commit, because we’ve also done good, because everyone else was doing it, because we’re not really all that bad? No, He would not. And the outrage over this story reveals that we all know it. There is nothing but mockery for these arguments out there. And in the end, they will not hold up for us either.

And here is where Christians should stand amazed, because our sins, down to the very last bit of objective evil that we won’t even allow ourselves to see, received full and complete justice through Jesus on the cross. He chose to take it for us. As frantically as we try to get out of our deserved punishment, He deliberately pressed into it. The thing we most fear, He walked right into. For us. Since we’re now joined to Him, everything He accomplished is credited to us. He stands in our place. We should stand amazed.

[We] were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:3–7)

Brock Turner’s reputation is ruined. His life as he’s known it is over. But he has the advantage over others of truly seeing the horror of his moral situation now, before it’s too late. I pray that his guilt and shattered life drives him to Christ, because unlike his previous judge, God is a good Judge, and in the end, there will be no protestations, no excuses, and no leniency. Christ, whose perfection requires no excuses or leniency, has volunteered to stand in our place, and He is our only hope.

Comments

[Francesco]

As the father of three daughters and one son, I'm not one to condone rape or to rejoice in the ruined life of a promising young man..

Brock is certainly responsible for what he did, but let's not forget that it takes a village to raise a child, and if the village is schizophrenically hedonistic in its values and Christian in its moral repugnance of the consequences of those values, we can't be surprised if it pumps out college rape cases by the dozens.

Perhaps both Brock and the village should consider a solution that would bring honor to Brock without ruining his life; he could do what Shechem, son of Hamor, was willing to do in Genesis 34 after he raped Dinah, daughter of Jacob; marry the girl to restore her honor (and his).

[dave]

Some of the reports say the victim drank herself unconscious. If true, wouldn't this make the crime even more terrible. Something like child rape or the rape of any other unconscious patient unable to will resistance?

[Francesco]

You mean, like abortion?

[Eliavy]

Francesco, your analogy to Shechem leaves out the context:

Genesis 34:7 "The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done."

After this, Jacob's sons convince the entire community to circumcise the men, then kill all the males and plunder the city. Shechem wanting to marry Dinah was not sufficiently honorable to counter the evil of what he'd done.

A better comparison to Shechem would be some of the Native Americans who treated the settlers the way they treated each other: raids and stealing women. The settlers responded with overwhelming force, unlike the Native Americans' prior experience with each other.

[Sam Harper]

Good post, Amy!

[Bruce Hall]

Amy, this is a great post! In fact, I really enjoy reading what you write! Nice job!

[scbrownlhrm]

Beautiful post....

"....full and complete justice through Jesus on the cross. He chose to take it for us. As frantically as we try to get out of our deserved punishment, He deliberately pressed into it..."

[Amy]

Thanks, Sam, Bruce, and SCB!

[Andrew W]

I have a completely different concern with respect to this case, one that the (admittedly little) media coverage I've read hasn't covered: at what point did the woman involved fall unconscious?

(1) if she was unconscious somewhere else, and he carried her outside and initiated sex, then she's guilty of being bloody unwise, and he's guilty of exploitative rape.

(2) Similarly if he discovered her unconscious and undressed her (but how did she get there?).

(3) If they were outside making out when she fell unconscious, then he's crossed a line in escalating a sexual encounter into sex.

(4) If they were already heading towards sex (e.g. caressing under clothing, removing clothing) at the point she fell unconscious, then what we have is a sexist double-standard. Both were engaging in sexual behaviour while too drunk to consider the consequences, but he's a rapist (see "male") and she's an innocent victim (see "female").

It's possible the judge is being soft on inexcusable behaviour (see #1) out of sympathy for the accused. It's also possible that the judge is trying to achieve justice while restrained by laws that apply an extreme sexual double-standard (see #4). Without the unreported facts it's impossible to tell.

[Amy]

If they were already heading towards sex (e.g. caressing under clothing, removing clothing) at the point she fell unconscious, then what we have is a sexist double-standard. Both were engaging in sexual behaviour while too drunk to consider the consequences, but he's a rapist (see "male") and she's an innocent victim (see "female")

Andrew, did you read the letter from the victim explaining what he did to her? (It's linked above under "what happened was a serious evil.")

[Damian]

As Rob Bell would say Love won.
How shameful.

[Francesco]

@ Eliavy,

Correct, my comparison to Shechem leaves out the context of the revengeful brothers (especially Simeon and Levi). In light of what Dinah's brothers later did to their own brother Joseph, I would not take them as a paragon of virtue, especially Simeon (see Gen. 42), or as a model of how to deal with rapists (exterminate all the males of an unsuspecting city for the sin of one).

There's a lot of responsibility in this case, from Brock, who did a despicable thing while drunk, and who, when sober, did not fess up to it, to a society that promotes a culture of unsupervised college drunken parties, pornography as art, hyper sexuality and sexual promiscuity, even to girls who drink themselves into stupor and then expect their equally-drunk male party-goers, 90% of whom are addicted to pornography, to suddenly behave like gentlemanly Mr. Darcys.

And then we have the eMob justice taking to social media and venting their easily-typed, hypocritical, 140 character-long self-righteousness, ready to cast the first stone as if they were without sin.

Wasn't it the mob that crucified Jesus?

It takes a village to raise a Brock. The village is rotten.

Only a few decades ago, even atheists understood the importance of sexual restraint:

“A youth boiling over with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.” --Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant (Simon & Shuster, NY), 1975

[Make Fascism Great Again, 2016]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/campus-drunk-confidential-rape/