Day 95-9/3/2016

God's law is different to Man's law

If you break man's law

(commit a crime),

you may go Jail

If you break God's law

(commit a sin)

you MaY go to Hell

The Bible teaches us to respect all authorities including the Laws of Man

God in his Grace

and Mercy decided to send his Son Jesus Christ

to die on the Cross in our place.

JoHN 3:16

This was just another example.

Continue on…..

As the great Roman lawyer and orator Cicero said,

"The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil."

Things must have been a lot simpler back in Cicero's day because he skipped that in-between area where much of life resides,

that area where rules are broken

but where behavior stops short of being evil.

It is the difference between breaking man's rules and breaking God's rules.

Violation of man's rules is surely lawbreaking that might require punishment.

But that punishment can be adjusted according to a number of human factors,

including the good that a person has done throughout a lifetime.

This aspect of criminal sentencing is more art than science.

When former state Sen. Vince Fumo, D-Philadelphia,

was convicted of public corruption

and sentenced to 55 months in prison and ordered to pay $2 million in restitution,

U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter took the brunt of public outrage.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for a sentence between 11

and 14 years but,

hey,

that's why they are called guidelines.

Buckwalter, who was appointed by

Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990,

has pulled the trigger on tough sentences

when it was required in the past.

This time,

however,

after presiding over a five-month trial,

Buckwalter said of Fumo's crimes:

"It's not murder, it's not robbery."

And, surely, it was not evil.

While Fumo had broken man's rules,

there was no evidence of the grievous harm

that society points to when requiring

maximum penalties for breaking God's rules.

And if you think that the sentence is a slap on the wrist,

try spending 4 ¹⁄₂ days in any prison instead of 4 ¹⁄₂ years.

In Luzerne County,

another federal judge is dealing with a situation

that might show the evil flip side of human nature

and criminal sentencing.

There,

former Common Pleas Court Judges Michael T. Conahan

and Mark A. Ciavarella are accused of crimes that are certain violations of God's law since they involve harming children in exchange for money.

Conahan and Ciavarella allegedly received more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner of a private juvenile detention center that one judge arranged to be the sole facility for delinquent kids in Luzerne County and to which the other judge sentenced kids for violations

that otherwise might not have warranted detention.

If you are a lawyer or a judge,

this could be the worst thing you have ever heard,

the mere description of which is sure to bring tears to your eyes.

While the public might not hold lawyers in the highest regard,

those who walk the lonely courthouse halls cannot bear the thought of children's lives being squandered in exchange for money.

When Conahan,

Ciavarella

and the prosecutors agreed

that a guilty plea would result in sentences of 87 months

in prison for each defendant,

U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik had to

determine if those were sufficient sentences.