How commendable was Kenneth MacAskill’s freeing of the terminally ill Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pam-Am Flight 203!
The Scottish justice minister, while denouncing the “heinous crime” that killed 270 in the air and on the ground, cited “compassionate release” as the basis for his decision. For, according to experts in oncology, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, will die within three months.
In MacAskill’s words, the terrorist “now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power … that no court, in any jurisdiction, in any land, could revoke or overrule.” He pointed with pride to a sense of “humanity” as “a defining characteristic of Scotland and the Scottish people.”
Right on target! One that certainly lies within the finest tradition of Reformed faith and practice and of the moderate Presbyterian (as opposed to radical, skeptical) leaders of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment, whose ideas largely gave birth to the U.S.A.
It is sad that most Americans totally miss the point! The power of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is revolutionary. Compassion for a dying, convicted criminal, even though his evil deeds may be unpardonable in the courts of human justice, is God’s will.
Calvin, commenting on “Blessed are the merciful,” cites James 2:13, and declares, “There is nothing in St James more fearful, more terrible than the words, judgment without mercy. If we had to appear before God’s judgment seat to receive strict justice, what would become of us? It would have been better if we had been still-born, or had entered the world as fleas or lice or frogs.”
How gratifying that even in a largely secularized Scotland, MacAskill, after most obvious soul-searching, made this decision! The Kirk’s “Church and Society” Convener Ian Galloway rightly praises and takes national pride in this move. And the hostile reaction by so many people in the U.S.A. is sickening!
Who knows but what the freeing of this terrorist to die soon at home won’t be the key to true peace in the Middle East? That region’s leaders seem to live almost solely by the lex talionis (“eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”). A single shell lobbed from Gaza or Syria into a kibbutz can produce the overkill of Israeli bombings of a whole village or destruction of an entire neighborhood in retaliation. But Scotland’s example might make both Israel and the Arab states pause — and perhaps change.
It is true, the world overwhelmingly tends to view such compassion as weakness — and to scorn it in anger and contempt. Hence the thunder by so many Americans about boycotting Scotland! Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and countless others suffered death at the hands of such furious little minds.
And yet only compassion and non-violence are the true answer to achieving and preserving lasting peace in our world.
DWYN M. MOUNGER is interim pastor of Community Presbyterian Church in Deerfield Beach, Fla.
