Crime and Punishment

In the American legal system we have two primary categories of crimes. There are misdemeanors and there are felonies. What's the difference between these two categories? The difference is in their seriousness. And what makes one crime more serious than another? The primary difference is the level of the value.

Take, for instance, theft. Theft is acquiring someone else's property. There is "petty theft" and there is "grand theft". The difference? The value of the property. So, while the theft of something less than, say, $500 might be "petty theft", stealing something worth $10,000 is "grand theft". It's not only about value. A person sneaking a $500 ring out of a jewelry store is not charged with the same crime as a person who obtains the same ring with a weapon. Now we've moved into robbery. The value of the item stolen factors in, but so does the fact that a person was threatened in the process. A person, you see, is more valuable than a ring.

And so it goes. Murder is murder, but there are degrees of murder. Typically, murder requires malice. Thus, a person that commits homicide (the killing of a human being) while defending himself is not charged with a crime because it is self-defense. And there are other forms of homicide that are considered justifiable. But most homicide is classified as murder. There is manslaughter which is an accidental death -- murder in the 3rd degree -- which is not as serious as murder in the 2nd degree, a murder that is not premeditated. The worst case, murder in the 1st degree, is willful and premeditated. Each of these carry increasing levels of corresponding punishment.

Various crimes -- misdemeanors and felonies, petty theft and grand theft, manslaughter and premeditated murder, and all the rest -- carry various penalties. These penalties range from paying a fine or doing community service all the way up to life in prison or the death penalty. The penalty for a crime is determined by the severity of the crime. The severity of the crime is dependent on the value the crime entails. The theft of a candy bar will not have the same penalty as the theft of a car. The killing of a cat will not have the same penalty as the killing of a person. And we know it's supposed to be this way. We know that the penalty has to fit the crime. The original method for this was "an eye for an eye", but we're more sophisticated today. Still, the penalty must fit the crime. That's what is called "justice".

It is, therefore, God's justice that is called to task when the Bible claims that the wages of sin is death, and that the penalty is not merely physical death, but eternal, living death, where "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt 13:50), "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48). Now, how does that make sense? How is that fair? How is that just? The question arises because we fail to grasp the value included in the crime. We think in terms of doing a bad thing and especially in terms of limited sinning. We don't do these things forever. Why should we pay forever? It's a failure to grasp the object of the crimes in question. Sin is not the same as theft or robbery or murder. These are crimes against humanity. Sin is a crime against God. So our problem with understanding the justice of eternal punishment is due to our problem to grasp the incalculable worth of God. We understand that murdering a person is bad, and we understand that murdering five people is worse, and we are pretty clear that murdering 10 children is horrible. What we miss is that telling the Master of the Universe "No" is vastly beyond the horror of a child slayer because the value of the Creator of all is so far beyond anything temporal so as to be infinite. When that is grasped, we can start to see the sheer justice of eternal punishment.

I would suggest that when we do not see the justice of eternal punishment, it is not due to a failure of God's justice, but a symptom of our ongoing criminal activity of obscuring the infinite worth of God. Now, I know there are lots of people who would say, "So? What's the big deal?" As for me, even though my sins are paid for, I want to continually align my thinking with God's viewpoint. On this, I'm not there yet. That's something I need to work on. You guys go ahead and talk among yourselves.