A robber breaks into your house; he takes your life savings from the security

box.  This was the savings for your children’s future.  He steals your furniture.  He strikes a match to your home.  You and your children are left homeless.  Your children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.  In the aftermath, one child starts using drugs to medicate his depression due to years of poverty and neglect.  One day, this same child who was healthy and respectful before the robbery, decides that the only way he can survive in poverty is to sell drugs.  Eventually, he breaks into someone’s house; takes their life savings; steals the furniture and strikes a match to the home.   

         A newly minted seminarian, ordained and sanctified pastor, visits your child in jail and begins to discuss restorative justice.  The pastor explains to your child that he must “repair the harm caused by his criminal behavior” and he must “consider the plight of his victims and own up to his criminal actions.”  To this your child responds, “Where were you when a robber broke into my home?”

         Our constitution, the Bible, considers the neglect of the poor and needy an act of disobedience toward God (Lev. 23:22; Lev. 25:39; Deut. 15:11; Isa. 58; Amos 2:6; Matt. 19:21; Luke 4:18; James 2:2-10); disobedience toward God is sin; the wages of sin is death.  Our neglect of the poor and struggling has earned us the death penalty before a holy and righteous God.  The psalmist says “there is forgiveness with you,” yet, there can be no forgiveness until we have atoned.  Jesus died because forgiveness requires atonement.  We have some restoring to do ourselves. Until we begin to atone for the way we have created an economy where the poor cannot glean from the bountiful fields (Lev. 25:39) of capitalism and corporate profits, we have no business requesting that “criminals” participate in the mockery of justice called “restoration.”  

         To the offender, the target for indoctrination on restorative justice, the concept is empty unless the very same Christians who promote it are also addressing their own criminal behavior.  Until we address the criminal behavior of Christians, until we address our blatant disregard for the poor and our culpability in the desperate choices that they make, we make a mockery of the term justice.  We fail in our own duty to restore what we have wrongfully taken or allowed to be taken.

         When we promote restorative justice by examining only the criminal behavior of others, we have less in common with Jesus and more in common with his accusers.  Before we ask another drug user to pay for the window he broke, before we ask another youth to paint over her graffiti, before we ask a father who sold drugs to mentor a drug-selling gang-banger, perhaps we ought to look more closely at the criminal proceedings for a felon that we all praise (John 18:28-30).  The behavior of Jesus’ accusers sheds light on how we should re-conceptualize restorative justice.

         If there were such a thing as a six o’clock news cast in the first century, Jesus the felon would appear walking down the street escorted by the police of his day—handcuffed—if you will.  The announcer would tell us that the vandal who destroyed

Temple property and repeatedly broke Jewish laws; the welfare king who relied on the generosity of unsuspecting middle class women to promote his suspicious doctrine; the man known to frequent the establishments of tax collectors and prostitutes—and claimed to be God, had finally been apprehended and was awaiting sentencing.  Yes, in the minds of this 1st century felon’s accusers, he was little more than a common criminal.  Jesus’ accusers have three characteristics in common: they were ignorant

about the truth; they were privileged stone throwers; and they were mobsters looking for easy answers.  Whatever could be said about this first century felon, he was a threat to civilized Jewish existence and had to be dealt with to the maximum extent of the law.

         Likewise, too often, those of us who promote the concept of restorative justice sit from lofty and high principled seats.  We are ignorant of how and why our culture has outpaced Russia and South Africa in incarcerating its very own citizens.  We

discuss the sins of criminals from positions of privilege, and we react to crime like a crazed mob.  We have less in common with Jesus and more in common with his accusers.  The fingers that point at this 1st century felon point back at us saying “we’re no different than you.”  Likewise, the fingers that point at 21st century felons point back at us as well.  There would be far fewer window-breaking drug users, graffiti-writing youth and drug sellers, if we honored our baptism by the Holy Spirit and voted for policies not in our own best interest--but in the best interest of the least of these among us.  

         Indeed there is forgiveness with God, and this requires that we repent, before we ask others to repent.  I hear our Lord saying “first cast out the log in your own eye…” (Matt. 7:5).  Casting out logs from our own eyes may require discontinuing our support of elected officials who slash funding for schools and extra-curricular activities thereby increasing the number of unsupervised youth who chose graffiti writing as an outlet.  This may require spending less time at home during prime-time and more time mentoring someone who threw a rock into a window while he was intoxicated because drug treatment was not available.  This may require denouncing decision makers who give incentives to corporations to offer child care, but reduce the legal pathways for poor men to pay for child care and thus in desperation—they choose to sell drugs.   

         Before we say another word to a 21st century felon about restorative justice, the first thing we must say to such a person is “we’re sorry”; and the first thing we must do is change our complicit behavior.  This change must be evident in the use of our votes, our  disposable income and our disposable time.   Then, when we visit a 21st century felon in jail and he says to us “Where were you when my family was robbed?”  the more Christ-like response would be “You know, you’re right. I’m sounding pretty judgmental and hypocritical.  How can I help?  I was missing in action when you were injured.  I’m so sorry. What do you need now?”  Anyone who experiences this kind of restorative justice acting in love cannot help but pass it forward to those he or she has harmed as well.

 

BY REV. DR. MADELINE GAY MCCLENNEY-SADLER, FOUNDER &
PRESIDENT, EXODUS FOUNDATION.ORG, CHARLOTTE