THE LAW OF THE LORD AND CRIME
by Bertrand L. Comparet, courtesy Covenant Message

God's laws are simple and direct, and nobody can mistake the reason for the penalty and the justice of it. First, let us consider God's laws concerning theft. If the amount stolen is big enough, the thief may be willing to spend a few months or years in prison for it. But God's Law takes the profit out of theft: the thief loses, not gains. One who wrongfully withholds from the owner property entrusted to him for safekeeping, or property he has found, must not only restore the thing to the owner, but must also pay him one-fifth of the value of the thing (Lev. 6:1-5). But a true thief, one who got the property wrongfully in the first place, really takes a loss: if the stolen thing is recovered intact in his hands, he must restore double the amount of his theft. (Ex. 22: 4,9); while, if he has consumed the stolen thing, or has sold or otherwise disposed of it, he must restore from 4 to 5 times the amount he stole (Ex. 22:1). That really takes all the fun out of it, doesn't it?

But suppose the thief is defiant: he says, "Well, I can't pay it; so what are you going to do about it?" God's law can do something about it: the defiant thief is sold into slavery for enough to pay what he owes. Suppose he owes $100.00. He is auctioned off after this fashion: "Who will bid $100 for 1 week of this man's labour?" If the thief is repentant and really wants to make amends for the wrong he has done, he probably will be a good worker and possibly someone will bid $100 for a week of his labour. But suppose he is still sullen and defiant; it will take a lot more than one week to get $100 worth of work out of him; there will be no bidders for one week, maybe none for a month's time, or even several months. The thief's own attitude can make it either easier or harder on himself, and the degree of punishment is proportioned to what he needs. Also, the injured party receives some compensation for all his trouble and the time he lost the use of his property.

Again, consider the crimes of Assault and Battery, and mayhem ... inflicting serious bodily injury on another. Today, the law shows no connection between the crime and the punishment. Courts get in the habit of using the same routine penalty for all cases, even though there is a great difference between the injury inflicted in the different cases.

But God's Law proportions the punishment to the offence: the wrongdoer receives the same injury he inflicted on his victim: if he knocked out a tooth, he loses his own; if he broke an arm, his own is broken; and so on. The moral is clear: if you value your own hide, leave your neighbour's alone; if you don't want your own arm broken, don't wrongfully attack someone and break his arm. Even the dullest criminal can understand this. People of very philosophical mind, able to understand the connection between a violation of the California Penal Code and a corresponding fine imposed by court some weeks later, aren't usually the ones who do violate it. The ones who are dull of wit but sharp of temper, and who need some restraint, can get the point of God's law much better; that is why God provided the same injury as the penalty, in Exodus 21: 22-25, and Leviticus 24: 19-20.

Once in a while there is a case of a man who seeks to injure his enemy by making false accusation against him, trying to get the law to punish his enemy for something he never did. Again, God's law provides the right answer, in Deuteronomy 19: 16:20. The false accuser receives the same punishment he tried to have wrongfully inflicted on his enemy. If he falsely accused his enemy of a crime punishable by a flogging, he himself was flogged; and so forth. Our California Penal Code, at least at one time adopted a part of this rule: it provided that anyone who by perjury, causes the execution of an innocent person, is punishable by death.

There are many other crimes, very serious crimes, which are very frequently committed, under our modern law - and which are becoming more common every year. I will not bore you with the statistics on how many murders, rapes and robberies are committed each hour of every day, in this country - besides, they would be last year's statistics, and not as bad as this year's record. But these vast numbers of crimes are not committed by a large number of people: on the contrary, a comparatively few people, most of them habitual criminals, commit this great number of crimes. Our modern law has become so distorted that its purpose no longer seems to be to protect society against the criminal, but just to furnish high-paid-jobs for a lot of fuzzy-minded dogooder social workers to coddle the professional criminal: God's law doesn't make this mistake: its purpose is to protect the innocent from the wrongdoer. For wilful murder, the penalty is death: see Leviticus 24:17, Numbers 35:16-21; and Deuteronomy 19:11-13: One who killed by accident, however, without any wrongful act, was not punished, and was protected from any revenge on the part of the dead person's relatives (Num. 35:10-15, 22-25, and Deut. 19:4-6).

Adultery also was punished with death (how this would depopulate Hollywood!). Various minor crimes could be punished by flogging: but not more than 40 lashes. The State of Delaware had a statute authorising flogging of robbers and burglars, but it had 'not been used for a long time.

Under God's law, habitual criminals, who could not be reformed by such penalties, were not allowed to continue to harm the innocent, nor were they supported at public expense for life: death was the penalty for habitual crime. This, alone, would take care of most of our crime problem today, for most of our serious crimes are the work of habitual criminals. We still see large gangs of criminals running free in every large city, while our law must wait until after they have committed the robberies and murders they are planning: we must always sacrifice innocent victims on the altar of crime. God's law would not do that: these criminal gangs would all be destroyed because they are habitual criminals, and the honest people of the community would have peace and safety.

For kidnapping, also for rape, the punishment was death (Deut. 22: 25-27; 24:7). It was intended that these vicious and loathsome crimes should be stamped out. Under God's law, we could not have seen the spectacle of a man guilty of these crimes delaying his punishment for many years until he exhausted the long-suffering patience of the courts. The penalty is to be death, swift and certain; and the Bible says: "so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and henceforth commit no more any such evil among you."

The Bible records that, when our ancestors enforced and obeyed God's laws, they had peace and prosperity, and were respected by the other nations. But Israel was-condemned to captivity and exile because they abandoned the Laws of God and followed the Statutes of Omri, as the 6th chapter of Micah records. Today, we, too, are keeping the Statutes of Omri and we suffer the penalty in a frightful rate of crime, which is steadily getting worse. We have the record of 3,000 years of experience: man's laws always fail; but God's Laws alone will bring peace, prosperity and safety. When will we learn to. make God's Laws the law of the land, and reap the benefits thereof?