I guess this continues the theme over the last few days. It is very easy to find places where the assumptions of this day come to the fore. I see the consequences of a fairly low threshold for prosecution — and in NZ a partner (generally the man) can be ordered to quit his house forthwith by the police — but the rate of prosecution has decreased, which offends the violence industry.
Domestic violence agencies have raised the alarm about a sharp decline in police prosecutions for family violence offences over the past four years.
New figures issued by the Family Violence Clearinghouse at Auckland University show that charges for male assaults against female, applications for protection orders and prosecutions for breaches of protection orders all increased up to 2009-10, but have all fallen since then by between 14 per cent and 29 per cent.
The number of police investigations into family violence incidents kept on climbing from 86,800 in 2010 to 95,100 incidents last year.
But the number of investigations that led to an offence being recorded dropped from 45,500 to 37,900 – from 52 per cent of all incidents investigated in 2010 to 40 per cent last year.
Women’s Refuge policy and research officer Kiri Hannifin said the figures were alarming.
“I find it extraordinary,” she said.
Well, the article continues, saying that the threshold for prosecution has not changed in NZ: what has changed is that the police are encouraged to divert to prevention agencies. I’d see this as good news. A court is a place where someone is hurt, and all violence is not equal. The Police have some discretion, and they work according to guidelines from the Crown Prosecution service, but they have not changed.
What is happening, however, is the bureaucrats within the violence industry have become bold, and see this as something where criminal sanctions can cause societal chance, not counting the cost.
But that cost I see: it’s a consequence of my trade. I see the consequences of men breaking when I assess them after they fail to kill themselves: I do not see the ones who succeed. But the number of people dying from suicide is twice that dying in road crashes in my country.
This has very little to do with today’s lectionary, except that the texts talk about trouble. Trouble is inevitable: difficulty is the usual state of men. What matters is not that we are under oppression, or that the state opposes the right, but that we preach right, do right, and trust that God will hold all to account.
The Lord Is in His Holy Temple
To the choirmaster. Of David.
In the LORD I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
“Flee like a bird to your mountain,
for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”The LORD is in his holy temple;
the LORD’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
The LORD tests the righteous,
but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Let him rain coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
For the LORD is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.(Psalm 11 ESV)
God’s Everlasting LoveWhat then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:31-39 ESV)
Please note that Paul does not say that we will be triumphant. He describes us as being akin to stock, trucked to the slaughterhouse. The elite of this world care deeply for their sensitivities, but the pain of the people are but statistics.
We cannot rely on them. We should not listen to their teaching. And we should not follow them, as they preach a way that will lead to perdition. Instead we should live in resistance. In Revelations we are told to leave Babylon, that corrupt and rich city, who accepts all the trade of the world. I am aware that this may have a prophetic meaning, but it also has a principle: let the elite be.
As I think about these things, I recall a comment from the sermon on Sunday. The first Presbyterian minister in Otago was Thomas Burns. He once said that prosperity, without a vital religion, is not a blessing, but a curse.
In times of prosperity those who have habits can indulge them. The booze is cheap, and the detoxification ward full: food is cheap, and a third of the population is obese. Vices are readily available, and most people err.
And the gospel is crowded out by a fair of vanities.
It is high time that we lived in another way. We need to be ignoring the secular cathedral of this time, we need to love each other: we need to live for each other (and yes, I have just repeated myself) and we need to correct and confront each other within the Kirk. The police and courts should be as foreign powers. We need to obey the law of God, for that is our joyful duty, but that is confirmed in two statements: Love the Lord and one’s neighbour (and everything else falls out of that).
And the secular laws we need to work with pragmatically. When we disobey, it should be to confront the oppression and injustice within our society: and this should be the next to final step, after we are silenced. But while we can preach, blog, and live as a witness, that we should do.
