Under the Microscope

Romans 2:1-4 (New Living Translation)

“1You may be saying, “What terrible people you have been talking about!” But you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you do these very same things. 2And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things. 3Do you think that God will judge and condemn others for doing them and not judge you when you do them, too? 4Don't you realize how kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Or don't you care? Can't you see how kind he has been in giving you time to turn from your sin?”

I’ve come out of hibernation. I just looked at my blog archives and see that this is my first post for 2006. I have two legitimate excuses. First, I was under the weather. I should have known better, but during the holidays I ate a lot of food I shouldn’t have. The end result of my foolishness was a nasty bout of diverticulitis, a condition I would wish on few of my worldly enemies, Osama Bin Laden being one of the principal exceptions. Second, Nancy and I still had things to do in the midst of all of this. We had family visiting, the loft we just purchased to close on, and some medical tests she had to recently undergo. But now that I’m feeling better, as is Nancy, and I don’t feel the pinch of time working against me, I’ll be blogging with my normal frequency.

During my down time I had to chance while I was just moping around to look a bit more closely at the confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. As I watched things progress over the past few days it made me feel a lot better about the pain emanating from my left side. Diverticulitis seems, on balance, to be a fitting reward for my foolishness. For Samuel Alito, however, the grilling and personal attacks he’s getting seem more like punishment for having tried meticulously to perform his duties as an advocate and as a judge over the past twenty-five years than a reward for having done his best to uphold that rule of law.

As I watched yesterday I wanted to scream out a warning to Mr. Alito, letting him know that he had just jumped into a bag of snakes, somewhat like the one who “beguiled” Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or the lawyers who constantly tried to trap Jesus with clever questions as He went about doing good.

For the “grillers” the statements almost always start with some innocuous statement praising the “grillee.” For example, Ted Kennedy, Massacusetts’ paragon of virtue, began with these warm words:

“Judge Alito, I join in welcoming you and your family to this committee.

“I appreciated the opportunity to visit with you and your family to this committee. And I was particularly impressed by your personal story of how you were encouraged to do well and contribute to your community.”

“And I also applaud your dedication to public service throughout your lifetime.”

As I heard Senator Kennedy’s words I felt like I often did when I was a kid occasionally watching an horror movie like “The Wolfman” or “The Mummy.” The filmmakers, knowing what dramatic tension was all about, would place some unsuspecting hero or heroine close to the brink of some terrible fate. As they stood on one side of the door beckoning to be opened, I could see what was going on the other side. There, anxiously lying in wait, was the monster, hoping that the hero or heroine would take the bait and open the door. Each time I’d see the scene played out in front of me I wanted to stand up and scream at the big screen – “Don’t open the door, you fool, there’s a monster on the other side that’s going to eat you alive if you do!”

Of course, nothing I could have said would have helped the celluloid victims of my younger days. Their fates had been sealed by a clever film maker, giving audiences the gore they wanted. And, of course, there’s nothing I can say to help Judge Alito today. He’s opened the door; he’s accepted the President’s nomination. All that’s left now is the gore.

With that door opened, the senior senator from Massachusetts pounced on the opportunity to sink his teeth in:

“To put it plainly, average Americans have a hard time getting a fair shake in his courtroom.”

“In an era when America is still too divided by race and by riches, Judge Alito has not written one single opinion on the merits in favor of a person of color alleging race discrimination on the job: in 15 years on the bench, not one.”

“And when I look at that record in the light of the 1985 job application to the Reagan justice Department, it’s even more troubling. That document lays out an ideological agenda that highlights his pride in belonging to an alumni group at Princeton that opposed the admission of women and proposed to curb the admission of racial minorities.”

“It proclaims his legal opinion that the Constitution does not protect the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions.”

Strip the “senateeze” from the statements, translate them into everyday English and we’re led to believe, if senator Kennedy is right, that Samuel Alito is a bigot, a racist, a sexist, hoping to be confirmed so that he can spend the rest of his life denying minorities, women, and average folks like you and me their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

So, with an extensive judicial track record, Samuel Alito has now placed himself in the unenviable position of sitting in front of inquisitors, some of whom have had the opportunity to burn their bridges, to have their past indiscretions and sins expunged from the record. Could it be, I wonder, that many of the guilty may be sitting in judgment of the innocent here? I suspect that it’s so.

Watching all of this played out should discourage me, but it doesn’t. Holy Writ affirms the notion that there will come a time when the “crooked will be made straight”, a time when justice will roll. I know that, in the end, we’ll have to stand before the eternal bar of justice; we’ll all be under the microscope. It’s an appointment we’ll all keep, be we plumbers, carpenters, schoolteachers, lawyers, preachers, senators, judges, journalists, janitors, kings, queens, garbage collectors, drug dealers, or saints. When that time comes, there will be no questions about the Judge’s right to pronounce judgment. There will be no digging through the files to see if the Judge is qualified. What we’ll all have in the end is pure justice, pronounced by a righteous, un-impeachable Judge. The guilty won’t be able to argue that the Judge is racist, a bigot, sexist, or homophobic. The guilty won’t be able to question the evidence presented. There will be no legal hair splitting. There will be only one opinion rendered in each case, and it will be just and true.

Seeing the spectacle of Samuel Alito being interrogated today in the senate’s bag of snakes makes me long all the more for that day.