4/13/07

The Unfair Trial of Jesus

Throughout the scriptures we find instances of righteous people facing spurious charges, the most detailed of course being the trial of Christ. Another example is Abinadi - after a ridiculous trial, the king pronounced the following verdict, punishable by death: "For thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men." Here's the kicker. You'd think that if this was the real reason why Abinadi was on trial, then the king might release him if he signed some contract to never preach such things again, right? Get this, the king's next words: "and now, for this cause thou shalt be put to death unless thou wilt recall all the words which thou hast spoken evil concerning me and my people." (Mosiah 17:8) Ah, and thus we see that the king was a bit irked by Abinadi's words against him, not about God coming down.
Christ's trial is similar - the Jewish leaders' positions were threatened by this revolutionary character, so they made up a reason to kill him. They bond Jesus and took him to the high priest. In attempting to find an accusation worthy of death, they threw out things like "Oh, um, he said he'd, like, destroy the temple in 3 days." but none of their testimonies agreed. Finally the high priest, who was on their side anyway, got fed up and just asked Jesus: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" A loaded question, but Christ knew his time had come, so he answered: "I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Now the high priest had a witness, however false it was.
"What need we any further witnesses?" exclaimed the high priest, "Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye?" So on this wise was Christ crucified.
Now this is interesting: I came across a humorous IM conversation of two law students about whether or not Jesus should be held accountable for Judas' suicide. When I first read it I found it quite entertaining, but I got thinking about it and I realized that if that accusation were to play out into a full-blown trial, how identical it would be to the unfair trial that Jesus endured before his death. As spurious as can be, but twisted so as to present it as valid and even just. That's the world we live in - Your legal status as innocent or guilty, regardless of what really happened, depends on how much money you have and your lawyer.

Click here to read IM conversation


(thanks to thesiegeperilous for a great post)

1 comment:

Thuan30 said...

I'm glad you could get some use out of it. Hope everything's going well. Having lots of fun in Vietnam.

travel log
  • 02.13.08 - to the temple with Luan and his mom, good to be back
  • 02.14.08 - Mẫu's alive! and staying for the weekend
  • 02.15.08 - floor hockey and Thái food makes for some strange dreams
  • 02.17.08 - frisbee and swamp monster at the park: fun but I'm pooped!
  • 02.19.08 - just read Triết's response to my last post - game on!
  • 02.20.08 - raining and expected to continue through Sunday - thank goodness!
  • 02.21.08 - 3-hour nap is a bad idea right before bed
  • 02.23.08 - to the beach to watch kites, a baptism @ 5pm, and homemade bulgogi - what a day!
  • 02.25.08 - just gave myself a haircut - woo, cold head!
  • 02.26.08 - 75° and spring cleaning - couldn't feel better
  • 02.27.08 - fed the elders bún đậu tonight - think it's their first time
  • 03.01.08 - working on new background...
  • 03.02.08 - finalized javascript to change background without muffing up my other scripts
  • 03.03.08 - fhe: "In his strength I can do all things" (Alma 26:12)
  • 03.07.08 - some decisions are harder than others, but some are downright excruciating
  • 03.08.08 - there is life after work... i almost forgot
  • 03.11.08 - the distance between good and bad is much shorter than between better and best
  • 03.12.08 - conversion is sometimes a gradual process, so much so that we don't even notice
  • 03.14.08 - for some reason everything was a little harder today, looking forward for bed!
  • 03.15.08 - last night after blog reading, I missed OnlyBlue, today I find she's back
  • 03.16.08 - best day of my life!
  • 03.19.08 - "Pray for the answer that they've been looking for"
release notes v1.0 - FINALLY DONE!
  • 12.07 - first thought of starting a new blog
  • 01.08 - busy with election stuff but blog design still on back burner
  • 01.13.08 - first idea to imitate jk rowling with the "desk" theme
  • 01.28.08 - start sketching current design, breaking down development into phases
  • 02.02.08 - election only days away but still drafting final plans
  • 02.04.08 - v0.6 LAUNCH
    • main components (blog body, sidebar, header, etc) designed and implemented
    • styling for font, links, drop caps, etc. finished
  • 02.07.08 - v0.8 LAUNCH
    • image style to imitate polariod
    • moveability - post-it notes and static clings can be repositioned by drag and drop
    • release notes styled and written
  • 02.16.08 - travel log (beta) added in hopes of catching the mundane
  • 02.22.08 - lightbox 2.03 reinstalled and working fine (hopefully - let me know otherwise)
  • 02.26.08 - v0.9 LAUNCH
    • travel log seems to be working, so I'll keep it
    • lightbox also seems to have passed the test, so it's a keeper
    • some credits/info added to bottom (will expand)
    • keeping old Viet terms in archive for future viewing
  • 03.18.08 - v1.0 LAUNCH
    • installation and testing of time-sensitive background completed (for now)