I recently looked up some Bible verses about obstructing justice, and I found this one from Proverbs:
“Whoever says to the guilty, ‘You are innocent,’ will be cursed by peoples and denounced by nations.”
Proverbs 24:24
It’s so blunt and to the point. I love it!
After all, isn’t it a reasonable and perfectly human reaction to get disgusted when we see injustice being condoned?
Justice!
One of my favorite scenes from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the following. I love watching Esmeralda defy Judge Claude Frollo!
As she says to the Judge, decrying his hypocrisy and cruelty in front of all gathered, it’s despicable to speak of “justice” only when it suits a personal agenda.
Despite being the “Minister of Justice”, the Judge had no qualms about tolerating a blatant instance of injustice before him. Frollo prevented his captain of the guard, Phoebus, from intervening when the crowd assaulted his adopted son, Quasimodo.
The reason? He smugly stated that there was “a lesson to be learned here”. He wanted Quasimodo to feel humiliated simply for innocently wanting to leave Notre Dame despite Frollo’s order otherwise.
No Sin is Hidden
Now that I think about it, there’s a slight parallel between this scene and one of the movie’s beginning scenes, when the Archdeacon calls out Frollo for his crimes:
Frollo had the nerve to tell the Archdeacon that he’d supposedly “done nothing wrong” after murdering Quasimodo’s mother on the Cathedral’s steps. Not only that, but he saw no issue with potentially murdering a baby just because of Quasimodo’s physical deformities.
The Archdeacon rips into the Judge and reminds him that no matter how much Frollo denies his own sins, nothing he can do will hide them from “the very eyes of Notre Dame!”
What I especially love about this moment is how it can be interpreted. By “the very eyes of Notre Dame”, the Archdeacon could be implying/saying one of the following:
- Notre Dame (the Cathedral and the people within, especially the Archdeacon) will never forget Frollo’s sins.
- The Blessed Mother Mary, the true Notre Dame (which means “Our Lady” in English), has witnessed Frollo’s sins as the Queen of Heaven.
The animation gives the audience plenty of reason to believe the 2nd possibility. After Frollo hears the Archdeacon’s warning, either by his imagination or a supernatural occurrence, the statues on the Cathedral’s exterior look down upon him with baleful gazes.
But out of all of them, the statue of Mary with her Child on the very top of the Cathedral terrifies Frollo the most. With a flash of lightning, it looks as if her statue’s eyes suddenly open to glare down at him with righteous contempt.
Hell No, Frollo!
Later in the movie, Frollo takes his spiritual narcissism a step further in his (in)famous song, “Hellfire”. Instead of acknowledging that he’s inflamed with selfish lust toward Esmeralda, he projects the burden of sin onto her, blaming Esmeralda for his anguish.
Not once does this Judge, who arrogantly describes himself as “so much better than the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd!” admit to his wrongdoings. Nor does he ever express any semblance of remorse or regret.
(Well, now that I think about it, he does say, “God have mercy on her…God have mercy on me…” at the end of the song. But unfortunately, Frollo doesn’t stick with his plea.)
I believe it’s quite fair to suggest that God was not impressed with his attitude. Can you blame Him?
Judge Claude Frollo is a self-serving example of the guilty being called innocent. In the real world, we’ve seen Proverbs 24:24 come into play when people vehemently defend corrupt leaders, despite seeing blatant proof of unrepented sins.
King David and Nathan, His Viciously Blunt Prophet
We must remember that the prophets of Biblical times would never tolerate the transgressions we’ve seen and heard some of our modern leaders commit.
The entirety of 2 Samuel 12 is a reminder that nobody is above consequences. Nathan, the King’s prophet, verbally eviscerated King David after he guaranteed that Uriah, an honorable man, would die in battle. King David had lusted after Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, and wanted to claim her for himself.
When Nathan confronted David, he first gave the King an analogy. In this analogy, a rich man with an abundance of livestock cruelly snatches away the one and only lamb belonging to a poor man. King David was rightfully angered by this story and declared that the culprit deserved to die.
He was quite horrified when Nathan responded by declaring:
“You are the man!”
2 Samuel 12:7
Nathan proceeded to lay David’s sin bare. He spelled out the consequences God would give him. David repented on the spot and didn’t contest what he’d done.
If God didn’t hold back when confronting David for his sins, why do we think He condones the sins of our leaders?
No Exceptions
It’s disconcerting that many Christians in our nation refer to attempts at holding leaders accountable as “witch hunts”. There’s plenty of Biblical evidence that the prophets wouldn’t agree with this mentality.
Corrupt leaders aren’t made martyrs when the rest of the world demands justice for their wrongdoings. Anger at injustice is Biblical, necessary, and absolutely reasonable.
And I’m really not impressed at the ongoing attempts by many to gaslight the rest of us into believing otherwise.
Image by macroworlds from Pixabay
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Quis ut Deus? 