Innocent until Proven Guilty: A Modern (and Un-Biblical Notion of Justice)

Are people truly "innocent until proven guilty?" This concept of justice is a modern innovation -- one that contradicts most of the Bible.

In many of the earlier parts of the Old Testament, God is said to take out his wrath on people by punishing their children. A prime example is the punishment God gave to David for his adultery with Bathsheba and his consequent scheming to have her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. David repents, and so his own life is spared, but to punish David, God takes the child's life:

[II Samuel 12:9] 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
[10] 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
[11] "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; (M)I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
[12] 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
[13] Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD " And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
[14] "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
[15] So Nathan went to his house.
[16] David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
[17] The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
[18] Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!"
[19] But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David perceived that the child was dead; so David said to his servants, "Is the child dead?" And they said, "He is dead."

This principle extended also to the people of Israel, who could also be punished by God for David's sins. After Satan misled David into conducting a census of Israel (I Chronicles 21:1-8 -- a census which may also have been incited by the Lord's anger, cf. II Samuel 24:1), the Lord again spares David personally for his repentance but takes out his anger on the people:

[I Chronicles 21:9] The LORD spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying,
[10] "Go and speak to David, saying, 'Thus says the LORD, "I offer you three things; choose for yourself one of them, which I will do to you."'"
[11] So Gad came to David and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Take for yourself
[12] either three years of famine, or three months to be swept away before your foes, while the sword of your enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of the LORD, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.' Now, therefore, consider what answer I shall return to Him who sent me."
[13] David said to Gad, "I am in great distress; please let me fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are very great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man."
[14] So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel; 70,000 men of Israel fell.

Thus the Old Testament demonstrates a clear belief in collective, rather than individual, salvation. And, along with that, collective, rather than individual, punishment for transgression. See also Exodus 15:26, Deuteronomy 9:4-8, Deuteronomy 13:12-18, and I Kings 11:31-33.

One could argue that the story of Adam and Eve, if interpreted literally as the Fundamentalists insist, suggests that all people are punished because of two people's sins. For millenia, many believed that the curse of Noah on Ham's son Canaan and Canaan's descendents in Genesis 9 constituted God's blessing for the forced servitude of Africans in Europe and North America.

This attitude carries among Fundamentalists even to this day. On September 13, 2001, two days after al-Qaida's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, this conversation took place on air, on the TV show The 700 Club:

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters - the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats - what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact - if, in fact - God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

Other Fundamentalists like Fred Phelps (the infamous perveyor of hatred against gays and lesbians) represent the bottom of the slippery slope -- Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church has picketed the funerals of fallen American soldiers, claiming that their deaths in Iraq are punishment from God for American tolerance towards homosexuality.

However, the Fundamentalists err when they draw from the Bible the idea that God punishes the individuals of a nation for the mistakes of its leaders, or the sons for the sins of their father. In the Bible there is a progression of belief that shows that the Jews' beliefs on this matter changed over time. By the time of Ezekiel, it had changed considerably:

[Ezekiel 18:19] "Yet you ask, 'Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?' Since the son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live.
[20] The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.

While there are some statements attributed to Jesus which may confuse the matter (cf. Matthew 11:20-24), overall both Jesus and Paul seem to hold Ezekiel's conception of guilt and of salvation. So for Fundamentalists like Falwell, Robertson, and Phelps to quote the ancient attitude of collective punishment as "the Lord's righteousness" is not compatible with the more modern thought of Ezekiel, Jesus, and Paul.

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