Palm Sunday Justice

It's Palm Sunday in the Catholic church. The reading of the Passion has always been frustrating for me. I tend to imagine being there and stepping in to help Jesus when he was in trouble. Of course, Peter thought the same. The story tells us it's easier said than done.

One thing that struck me this time around is the decision making process that led up to Pilate's verdict. Pilate is usually painted as the bad guy as he was the one who passed judgement. But he wasn't alone. Although Pilate was the ultimate 'judge' who rendered the sentence, essentially he was merely following thru on the jury's verdict. The jury was the people.

Based on his review of the evidence, Pilate proclaimed that Jesus had not broken the law, that no 'capital crime' had been committed. But the people didn't care about the law. They didn't like Jesus and wanted him dead.

So Pilate caved. He 'washed his hands' to symbolize that he was merely executing the Will of the People.

It struck me today how the closely this situation resembles modern government process. The Founders understood the dangers of democracy, of majority rule. Perhaps they even studied the Passion for how extremely wrong things can go when large groups exact their brand of justice thru the instrument of State power. The Founders knew government is full of Pilates more than willing to cater to these interest groups.

This is why the Founders designed our country as a republic rather than a democracy. The word democracy, btw, appears in none of America's founding documents. Instead, the point of reference for right and wrong, for justice, was The Law. The Constitution provided the general framework and idea for the law and what it should represent. Their idea was that law would rule, not people's desires or wishes as expressed by majority vote.

It's interesting that Rome was the first republic. As the Founders knew, Rome collapsed when they quit following the law, when they quit being a republic. The Passion demonstrates the consequences.

Today, we seem much like that angry mob in Jerusalem, demanding bread, circuses, and our own brand of arbitrary 'justice' from the government. We have our modern-day Pilates and Roman soldiers, acting as compliant agents on behalf of their principals with coercive force.

A moral of the Passion story that I hadn't considered before: the dangers of government driven by majority rule rather than The Law. Mix majority rule with State power and you get a situation that produced the single worst event in the history of the world.