“You shall not be partial to the poor or weak nor defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.”
— Leviticus 19:15
Throughout recorded time, heads of state and religious leaders have been assassinated and places of worship desecrated or destroyed. Some assassinations are etched in history, such as those of Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln. Destruction of significant religious sites is still remembered after centuries.
The Temple of Jerusalem was constructed by King Solomon a thousand years before Christ’s birth, destroyed and twice rebuilt before Christ. It was again destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. At the start of the Islamic Crusades in the 7th century, Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine were built on the Temple Mount. The site was retaken and controlled for a short time by Christian Crusaders at the end of the 11th century. Since then, it has remained under Islamic control, although that control has only been administrative since the 1967 Six-Day War and its formal annexation by Israel in 1980.
Repugnant always and everywhere, the evil seems greater when political murders and desecration of religious shrines take place in America - - a freedom-loving nation blessed by God.
Men who celebrated President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 and Kennedy’s in 1963 shared the same vile hearts. Common too were the hearts of those who celebrated the attempted assassinations of President Reagan in 1981 and Trump in 2024. People gladdened by the murders of Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers, men of faith and conviction who left wives and children who loved them, were evil-hearted in the same way as those elated over the death in 2025 of Charlie Kirk, who also left a wife and children who loved him.
No “moral’’ or political excuses for the cowardly acts of assassins and arsonists are valid. Yet, it seems that these crimes, and the criminals, are being given legal legitimacy by current twisted radical thinking which is made worse by an unholy understanding of justice and forgiveness.
Last year, business owners in Burlington, Vermont, petitioned the city’s leaders to address “a growing crisis” concerning criminal elements and public safety. The city’s response, expressed by its police chief, was to “seize upon the restorative justice aspect” rather than “arrest our way or fine our way out of this crisis.”
By “restorative justice” the officer was referring to an alternative form of law enforcement and court system that differs from traditional criminal justice. The idea has merit when enacted by an elected legislature and its application is for strictly limited purposes. In Mississippi, intervention or “drug courts” are an example. The Alyce Griffin Clarke Intervention Court Act, Miss. Code Ann. § 9-23-1, et seq., was enacted to establish drug courts whose purpose is to reduce crime-related alcoholism and drug abuse and addiction. One of its goals is to “redirect those whose criminal conduct is driven in part by drug and alcohol dependence to intensive supervision and clinical treatment.”
The Restorative Justice Center at the University of California at Berkley gives a broader definition of restorative justice, describing it as “a paradigm shift from forms of justice based on punitive measures such as incarceration and towards community-based measures that address harm for the individual(s) harmed, the individual(s) who did the harm, and the larger community” (rjcenter.berkely.edu). One of its tenets is “victim-offender dialogue.”
To me it seems that community measures that teach its members the moral aspects of respectful and responsible behavior toward others would be a sounder paradigm shift.
The concept of restorative justice originated with the indigenous tribes of North America. It is still practiced by many tribes, including the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians whose ancient Peacemaker Code has been codified under the Tribal Code (Title XXIV). I have been told that the system works well in those settings, just as communism, in the truly liberal sense of the word, worked well within the early Church and still works today for those in religious orders who take vows of poverty. However, what is sustainable in limited systems, such as a federally recognized tribe or a Catholic religious order, fails in larger ones. Communism, not freely chosen by a congregation but imposed by a dictatorial government, brings poverty to all - - with or without a vow.
When legal systems in western government treat evil acts as justifiable and address them with “victim-offender dialogue,” the effect is to deny true justice to victims harmed by those acts. That denial affects every good citizen. It strains their belief in honest government and brings feelings of insecurity to their communities and beyond. It is especially impractical when someone’s sacred place, his home or house of worship, has been destroyed. Gravely impossible when the victim is dead.
On Saturday, January 10, during Shabbat, the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, Jackson’s Beth Israel Temple was attacked by an arsonist. Burning another’s property is an act, like murder, that arises out of anger and hate. When that act destroys a sanctuary, the hatred is twofold: against the sacredness of a place and against the sanctity of those who worship in that place.
I hope that the young murderer who shot Charlie Kirk and the young arsonist who torched Beth Israel come to realize the unjustifiable evilness of their acts and that they receive forgiveness from those whom they have harmed. In justice, I hope that their punishments are swift and severe so as to set examples that will discourage like atrocities by others who carry anger and hatred in their own hearts.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
