I think the problem the Church has in getting this across is that there isn’t any balance and consistancy playing out in the justice we see around us. It should be remembered that it is meant to be played out. All through scripture we are shown examples of just trials of individuals as examples to us. So Justice is to be an open one for us.
The problem is it reveals other anomalies of Justice that are not meant to be evident or obvious. There is an almost predictable justice that we would expect depending on which entity caused the offense, and that should not be the case. If this were evident in a democratic justice system, it would be cause for alarm and a system review, with perhaps a few supreme court judges up for questioning. So far evidence indicates devine justice is similar to fallible human justice in most respects. For the entity man, it is unpredictable, except that it is a probable that some will enter hell, and we have doctrine that states what the probable sentencing would be, (but not a certainty of course).
One will find no urgent corrective advice to collectives in scripture except in brief paragraphical reprimands. This advice is usually directed to an authoritive individual who is king, who makes individual decisions affecting the subjects. Except for fledgling Greece, few nations of that period had the semblance of democratic systems governed by a lessor (elected?) collective body. Ironically, this is an improvement over the previous monarchist systems in that they are more aware of rights and wrongs and their effects, as what comes into play now is a collective conscience rather than individual one. Also, the form is more recognizable as a unital body capable of making “individual” decisions.
For society and nations one is pretty much assured society will go on not feeling the temporal punishments it is due, and it gets to live on through the centuries, proof that God can look aside grave sins against Him regardless of the repentant state of the entity. Individuals have endured and expected that humans would be biased. Societies will ticker-tape their successes for the world to see, and their sins dispersed to it’s subjects in monies due or pressed service of the citizens. Societies will invoke God’s assistance, and pray for collective mercy for wrongs it does, as if there was any threat at all.
Either God ignores the greater scale or immensity of the offenses societies can impart, and the added culpability due to the advantage of more heads to consider, or God is a universal God, where societies are brought down to individual status to publicly receive justice deserved in the form they committed it. An option to restrict individual sentencing to the equivalent of societal sentencing would be an obvious remedy to the imbalance/dbl standard. So far evidence shows it’s the former.
These things are not missed by ever aware individuals, as if it weren’t necessary for him to concern himself with it. As if he should not be phased in seeing genocidic nations receiving lessor punishment, (all factors remaining equal), while he discovers later his loved ones or himself is sentenced to damnation for the equivalent crime.
I take a wait and see attitude on Justice. I consider it yet to be proved and outside the deposit of the Faith, but one things for sure. If what I say shows true, every person can claim this has a defense argument at his celestial trial, and that too would be …Just, and we can count on the Holy Spirit to vouch for us.
AndyF
