Unjustly arrested in a night raid by the authorities of his time, Jesus Christ met his captors with an objection whose reasoning is almost poetic.
“Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me,” he said, referring to his very public career as a teacher. “But this hour belongs to you and to the power of darkness.”
Even outside the immediate context of the story of his passion and resurrection, Jesus is stating a clear truth about the unique characteristics of good and evil. He rightly accused his captors of acting in secret because they knew they were doing something wrong. They wanted to arrest him, but they didn’t want to do it in a way that would draw public attention and turn public opinion against them.
This could be justly applied to most situations involving all functions of government. When officials try to hide their actions, it is usually a bad sign. And this year, voters are awakening to a great deal of government secrecy hiding acts most foul.
Federal prosecutors, betraying the public trust, are effectively throwing cases, pleading with judges to let people off the hook. District and state attorneys are cutting breaks for violent felons so they can prey upon the most vulnerable among us. Morally corrupt public school officials are employing classic abuser behavior, telling children to keep secrets from their parents. Taking cues from deeply misguided activists, they are attempting to sexualize younger children with topics completely inappropriate for their ages. The older children they have attempted to transition their genders behind their parents’ backs, on the taxpayers’ dime.
All of these acts have been committed in secret, and the officials involved have, in many cases, expressed anger when their behavior has been exposed.
Meanwhile, social media platforms are flagrantly suppressing news and free speech by using vague, opaque, and inconsistently enforced rules. They do this to make others live in fear of expressing their views or expressing the truth. They do this in order to keep people isolated and afraid — and less likely to resist the evils they support.
There is much wickedness being done in the name of the common good. But there is also an answer to this and all other injustices.
“The time is coming,” he said, “when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear.”
In the hour of darkness, hatred, and division, just when everything seems most hopeless, and unfixable, at least remember: The situation must have seemed considerably worse to Jesus’s friends upon his arrest. Yet Jesus, having sacrificed himself for humanity in an act of generosity and restorative justice for the sins of all, did indeed rise from the dead.
It will not take nearly as great a miracle as that to fix what ails this nation today.
Opinion from The Washington Examiner.
