How Christians should respond when senior public figures are arrested

It is all the time striking how quickly the main focus of the news media changes. As I write this text the main focus is on the war within the Middle East. At the tip of last week, the main focus was on the victory by the Green Party within the Gorton and Denton by-election and what this is able to mean for the longer term of the Prime Minister and British politics on the whole.

Before that the main focus of the media’s attention was on the fallout from the discharge of the US Justice Department’s files on the American millionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and specifically on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Lord Peter Mandelson on suspicion of committing the offence of misconduct in public office. It was also revealed that in a completely unrelated case the Bishop of Lincoln, Stephen Conway, had been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.

In this text I need to return to the news of the three arrests of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Lord Peter Mandelson and the Bishop of Lincoln and consider how we must always respond as Christians to the news coverage of the arrests of senior public figures. 

The very first thing I believe we want to do as Christians shouldn’t be assume that the people concerned are guilty of the offences of which they’ve been accused. Proverbs 17:15 declares that ‘He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are each alike an abomination to the Lord’. The principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is a very important safeguard against the second of the sins mentioned on this verse.

For someone to be rightly punished by the law or within the court of public opinion it must be established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that they’ve committed the act of wrongdoing of which they’ve been accused and until that time they’ve the best to be treated as innocent not only by the legal system but additionally by anyone commenting on, and even fascinated with, their case. The discipline of regarding someone as innocent until their guilt has been properly established is usually a hard one to watch due to the temptation to think that ‘there isn’t any smoke without fire’ but it surely is one to which Christians have to strictly adhere. 

The second thing we want to do as Christians is to avoid publicly (or secretly) rejoicing when a outstanding public figure is brought low. What the Germans call schadenfreude – the enjoyment that results from beholding the misfortune of one other – could also be a natural human response, but it surely is a natural response consequent upon the Fall. In other words, it’s a sin. Proverbs 17:5 tells us that ‘he who’s glad at calamity won’t go unpunished’ and as Thomas Scott comments, what this verse tells us is that ‘everyone, who rejoiceth, when he seeth others fall into calamities, might be condemned as guilty of envy, spite and selfishness.’  

Rather than engaging in schadenfreude what we want to do as a substitute is to follow Paul’s injunction to ‘rejoice with those that rejoice, weep with those that weep’ (Romans 12:15). Just at it’s mistaken to take a curmudgeonly attitude that refuses to rejoice with others because we’re jealous of their happiness or success, so also it’s mistaken to harden our hearts and refuse to feel sadness over other people’s misfortunes – irrespective of how much we could also be tempted to feel they’re deserved.

This implies that we must always feel sorrow when a outstanding public figure is brought low and remember to hope for them, that the Lord will bring them to repentance if needed, comfort them of their affliction and even bring good out of their troubles, knowing that he’s capable of achieve this. Two classic examples of this last point are the stories of the outstanding British and American politicians Jonathan Aitken and Charles Colson, each of whom went to prison following convictions for criminal activity and each of whom got here to Christ in consequence and engaged in fruitful Christian ministries thereafter. 

The third thing I believe we want to do is avoid the temptation to think about ourselves more highly than others, even in the event that they are eventually found guilty of wrongdoing and punished in consequence. We must not think that their wrongdoing gives us the best to take a seat in censorious judgement over them. Jesus was specific on this point, warning us: 

‘Judge not, that you just be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you might be judged, and the measure you give might be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that’s in your brother’s eye, but don’t notice the log that’s in your individual eye? Or how will you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there’s the log in your individual eye? You hypocrite, first take the log off of your individual eye, and then you definately will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.’ (Matthew 7:1-5) 

As John Stott helpfully explains in his book The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, the explanation Jesus warns us against censorious judgement is since it is ‘to set oneself up as a censor and so to assert the competence and authority to take a seat in judgment upon one’s fellow men’.

He explains, ‘But if I do that, I’m casting each myself and my fellows within the mistaken role. Since when have they been my servants responsible to me? And since when have I been their lord and judge. As Paul wrote to the Romans, applying the reality of Matthew 7:1 to their situation: “Who are you to evaluate the servant of one other? It is before his own master that he stands or falls” (14:4). Paul also applied the identical truth to himself when he found himself surrounded by hostile detractors. “It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, don’t pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and can disclose the needs of the guts” (1 Corinthians 4:4-5). The easy but vital point that Paul is making in these verses is that man shouldn’t be God. No human being is qualified to be the judge of his fellow humans. We cannot read one another’s hearts or assess one another’s motives. To be censorious is to presume arrogantly to know the judgement of the day of Judgement, to usurp the prerogative of the divine Judge, the truth is to play God.’

Stott goes on, ‘Not only are we not the judge, but we’re among the many judged, and shall be judged with the greater strictness ourselves if we dare to evaluate others. Judge not that you just be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you might be judged, and the measure  you give might be the measure you get. The rationale needs to be clear. If we pose as judges we cannot plead ignorance of the law we claim to give you the chance to manage. If we enjoy occupying the bench, we must not be surprised if to search out ourselves within the dock. As Paul put it, “Therefore, you have got no excuse, O man, whoever you might be, once you judge one other; for in passing judgement upon him you condemn yourself, since you the judge are doing the exact same things”‘ (Romans 2:1).

There have been those reminiscent of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy who’ve argued that Jesus’ warning against judging implies that law courts shouldn’t exist, since after all they exist precisely with the intention to enable judgement to be passed. However, this argument, plausible though it’d initially seem, overlooks the undeniable fact that when judges in court pass judgement they achieve this not in a private capability but as those acting on God’s behalf to restrain the results of sin by administering interim human justice on God’s behalf (Romans 13:5). I say ‘interim justice’ because final and comprehensive justice will only happen when Jesus returns to evaluate humanity at the tip of time (Revelation 21:11-15).  

The fourth thing is that we must always not be surprised if and when senior public figures are found to have committed wrongdoing (which, I repeat, has been alleged but not proven within the cases of Mountbatten-Windsor, Mandelson and Conway). The reason we must always not be surprised is identical reason we must always not sit in judgement on others, namely, that each one human beings, ourselves included, are affected by original sin, what the Church of England’s Thirty Nine Articles call ‘the fault and corruption of the character of each man, that naturally is ingendered of the offspring of Adam’. Therefore all of us have an inherent tendency to commit sin, including those serious types of sin which we label as crimes, and if it were we who were within the dock would we not be crying out to God for mercy? If we’re honest with ourselves, we all know that all of us need to say the words of the prayer of general confession within the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer: 

‘Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed an excessive amount of the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we must have done, And we’ve got done those things which we ought to not have done, And there isn’t any health in us.’ 

Belief within the doctrine of original sin implies that Christians must be pessimists relating to the query of the perfectibility of human endeavours and institutions. Everything that humans do is completed by sinners and due to this fact will fall wanting perfection in a roundabout way and will very likely develop into corrupt and oppressive. 

GK Chesterton made some perceptive comments in his book Orthodoxy, written in the beginning of the 20th century in response to those in his day who challenged existing institutions as corrupt within the name of a doctrine of human progress: 

‘I even have all the time maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I even have all the time said that human beings as such go mistaken, especially completely happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This everlasting revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher, you’d call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you want; I call it what it’s – the Fall.’ 

The fifth and final thing we want to do shouldn’t be to let a recognition of inherent human sinfulness lead us to take an ultimately pessimistic view of the world. This is because within the words of Paul: 

‘For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many might be made righteous. Law got here in, to extend the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all of the more, in order that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 5:19-21). 

Because of the primal disobedience of Adam we’re all sinners, and codes of ethical instruction (the ‘law’) merely underline our sinfulness. This shouldn’t be to say that due legal process shouldn’t run its course or that folks should never be held accountable in the event that they have done mistaken – they need to. But it’s to do not forget that God’s grace within the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ gives each of us the opportunity of a recent start with God which initiates a technique of healing from sin (‘sanctification’) which might be concluded on the earth to come back. In addition, as Paul insists in Romans 8, after we are healed all creation might be healed with us, as we rule over the world in righteousness as God intended all along. 

Furthermore, although the monarchy, parliamentary government, and the Church are, like all human institutions, run by sinners and able to becoming corrupt and oppressive as previously noted, they’re nonetheless God-given institutions called into being by him to serve our temporal and spiritual good on this world. Therefore we must always not be cynical about these institutions – nor the people involved in them, even when, as at present, they develop into enmeshed in scandal, but we must always proceed to honour such institutions and people involved in them, pray for them and act in obedience to what they determine in every situation except when to achieve this could be to disobey what we all know to be the need of God.