Justice, whether civil, criminal or social, is a basic human need. Living in a society where justice is practiced and esteemed makes us feel safe.
This episode is a coversation between host Helen Todd and Matthew Martens, a successful attorney, seminary graduate and the author of "Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal." This conversation shines a light on both the commendable and deeply flawed aspects of the current system. Matthew's unique perspective as someone who has served on both sides of the courtroom provides invaluable insights into how we can align our justice system more closely with biblical principles.
He tackle pressing issues such as racial bias in jury selection, rigid sentencing structures, and the chronic underfunding of defense counsel for the poor. The case of Curtis Flowers serves as a poignant example of how systemic flaws can derail justice. Guided by biblical principles like accuracy, due process, and impartiality, Helen and Matt discuss ways to address these shortcomings and the role Christians can play in this crucial advocacy.
Learn more about Mathew Marthens and pick up his book: https://matthew-martens.com/
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
Justice, whether civil, criminal or social, is a basic human need. Living in a society where justice is practiced and esteemed makes us feel safe.
This episode is a coversation between host Helen Todd and Matthew Martens, a successful attorney, seminary graduate and the author of "Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal." This conversation shines a light on both the commendable and deeply flawed aspects of the current system. Matthew's unique perspective as someone who has served on both sides of the courtroom provides invaluable insights into how we can align our justice system more closely with biblical principles.
He tackle pressing issues such as racial bias in jury selection, rigid sentencing structures, and the chronic underfunding of defense counsel for the poor. The case of Curtis Flowers serves as a poignant example of how systemic flaws can derail justice. Guided by biblical principles like accuracy, due process, and impartiality, Helen and Matt discuss ways to address these shortcomings and the role Christians can play in this crucial advocacy.
Learn more about Mathew Marthens and pick up his book: https://matthew-martens.com/
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
Welcome to Limitless Spirit, a weekly podcast with host Helen Todd, where she interviews guests about pursuing spiritual growth, discovering life's purpose through serving others and developing a deeper faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Limitless Spirit. I'm your host, helen Todd. Today our topic is something that 95% of US citizens agree on, and that is the need for criminal justice reform. After all, don't we all crave stability, safety and fairness in our society? Yet we don't think or care about this matter until it personally concerns us, or care about this matter until it personally concerns us. My interest in criminal justice system was sparked when, a year ago, my son was attacked by a stranger with a knife and almost killed. There hasn't been a trial yet for my son's attacker, but in the meantime I have become more acutely interested in how the criminal justice system works in our country and whether it is fair and just.
Speaker 2:Since Limitless Spirit covers important topics from biblical perspective, I chose for this conversation a guest who is uniquely qualified to address this hot-button issue in a way that a person of faith should think and feel about justice. Matthew Martins is a Washington DC-based attorney and has decades of law experience as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. Plus, he has a seminary degree. So he wrote a book Reforming Criminal Justice A Christian Proposal and Matthew believes that criminal justice system in the US is broken, but not without hope In his book and in this conversation he outlines some ways it should and can be fixed. Good morning, matt. Welcome to the Limitless.
Speaker 3:Spirit, how are you today? We're doing great. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2:I'm very excited about our conversation and very excited about your book Reforming Criminal Justice A Christian Proposal. So first I want to ask you who is your book for?
Speaker 3:I think I'd primarily say my book is for fellow Christians. I've had any number of people who don't identify as Christians read the book and benefit by it, they've told me. But certainly my primary audience is to people who share my Christian commitments. So I'm not trying to convince people in the book about the truth of Christianity. I'm accepting that as a given and accepting that as a baseline as I write the book.
Speaker 2:So then and probably this should be the last question of the interview, but I'm going to start with it Do you believe that the criminal justice can be fixed?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess the way I would say that is what I try to say at the end of the book, which is that there are many features of our criminal justice system which are fantastic, at least in concept.
Speaker 3:Some of the ones that are fantastic in concept we're not living up to, and I do think that there's room and a need for areas in our criminal justice system to change, to reform according to the word of God, as they say.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, I don't want to be overly optimistic, in the sense of utopian, about the, in believing what we can achieve in this fallen world. There is some justice that we can achieve. There is, in fact, I think, more justice that we can achieve. But the danger and I identify this in the book is that we could, in our over-enthusiasm to achieve more than A God has delegated to us and B more than is realistic in a fallen world, that we could commit injustice in the pursuit of justice. So I do think that there's more that can be done and should be done, but I also am realist about the fact that we live in a fallen world and as Christians, we ultimately wait for the day when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will be perfectly, and that kingdom will have no end.
Speaker 2:And of course, that is very true. And you know, like in every area of life, we don't think about certain things until we are faced with these things, and the same applies to criminal justice system things. And the same applies to criminal justice system. People normally don't think about it a whole lot until they either become a victim of a crime or perhaps they're accused of a crime. And I'm no exception.
Speaker 2:Up until last year, I really haven't given much thought about the criminal justice system in the United States.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not entirely true, because I was actually not born in the United States, I was born in the former Soviet Union, and so I moved to the United States 28 years ago and, to be honest, I had a very rosy perception of the US criminal justice system, because, compared to the criminal justice system that I grew up with, I do believe that US criminal justice system is superior. But last year, our family was faced with a situation where I really had to take a hard look at it and had some thoughts about it, and so when I discovered your book, I felt like this could be an extremely interesting conversation, and so I do believe that people, and especially Christians, should care about the criminal justice system and should give it a good thought. And your experience you know you being a prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, you've worked on both sides and you have a seminary degree it makes you a perfect person to address these issues. So let's talk about what prompted you to write this book.
Speaker 3:Well, friends, prompted me to write the book. Friends prompted me to write this book. Well, friends prompted me to write the book. Friends prompted me to write a book because of what was going on in our culture. The first friend that encouraged me to write the book did so back in the fall of 2014, which, as people may recall, is when the events that summer, the events in Ferguson, missouri, had been happening and it caused an enormous amount of discussion and tension and conflict in our culture. And that kind of continued through a series of other events, culminating in the summer of 2020 with the George Floyd incident. And so another friend in 2020 encouraged me to write for the reasons you said.
Speaker 3:I had been a prosecutor, I had been a defense lawyer, I have a seminary degree, and this friend, this pastor friend, thought that I could be helpful to Christians who are trying to make sense of what's going on and how they should think about it, and maybe I could bring some structure or framework to bear on that. So I didn't spend my life as an aspiring author. This is my first book. Who knows whether it will be my only book? I wasn't the author just waiting to be discovered. I was someone who had some expertise that could be relevant to a particular moment in our country's history, and some people thought I could be useful in speaking to that moment. So that's what prompted writing the book, and I spent the next pretty much two years after 2020 trying to write the book.
Speaker 2:So before we talk about the most pressing issues and problems with the US criminal justice system, were there any specific cases in your career that really made you realize that these problems are prevalent and they need to be fixed?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say so. I don't think. I mean, I think part of the problem is that when you're trained as a lawyer and then practice as a lawyer, including as a criminal lawyer, you to some degree just take the system as a given. It is what it is, as they say, and so you function within it, and I didn't really have anyone who, as a Christian and as a lawyer, wrote anything, at least that I was aware of, or said anything to me that caused me to question any of it, and maybe that's part of what I'm trying to do in writing.
Speaker 3:My book is speak to younger lawyers or other lawyers who are later in their career, to just pause and think about what it is we do as lawyers. I mean, writing this book caused me to think about that more broadly, more than just even criminal law, but just to think about what it is I do as lawyers. I mean, writing this book caused me to think about that more broadly, more than just even criminal law, but just to think about what it is I'm doing as a lawyer and what I should be doing as a lawyer, and a lot of the reading and research I did in the course of writing the book helped me think about that. So I wouldn't say that there was any one case or any two cases. Even that caused me to where it dawned on me that, oh, there's a problem here. I think it was just accumulated experience.
Speaker 2:So you can't name particular examples of complete injustice that took place as a result of these problems.
Speaker 3:Oh well, I certainly do that, but they're not cases that I was involved in personally, so I certainly became aware, so maybe give us an example of one of these cases.
Speaker 3:Well, I cite one. I discuss one at length in the book regarding jury selection. So a case involving a man named Curtis Flowers who was prosecuted by the state of Mississippi charged with capital murder. The state sought the death penalty against him. There were six trials, four of which, in four of which he was sentenced to death, all of which were reversed by the, the first three of which were reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court for various types of prosecutorial misconduct.
Speaker 3:Two other times the jury hung and when he was convicted after the sixth trial and sentenced to death, again the case went to the US Supreme Court where, in an opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that the prosecution had been striking jurors from the juries in those six trials on the basis of race. And I think that's an example of a problem that is not a new problem in the United States, that in fact has a long history, going back for hundreds of at least 100 years, 125, 130 years at least, of striking jurors excluding African-Americans from serving on juries, in particular on the basis of their race. And I discussed the history of that and how it became a practice after the Civil War as a means of really overturning the outcome of the war, so that the criminal justice system could be weaponized in a way to suppress the participation in society of African-Americans. So that's just one example of a case where that problem is shown to continue. That Curtis Flowers case was decided by the US Supreme Court in 2019.
Speaker 2:So this isn't ancient history, it's still very much present day. Family was faced with the situation when my son was attacked and, especially in the very beginning of that, I personally struggled with what would be the. It was pretty clear from the beginning that the person who attacked my son has issues with mental health, you know. And so as a person, as a mother, as a Christian, I struggled with determining what is justice in this case, what would be a fair punishment to the person who attacked my son. And as I was talking to an attorney about it on a personal level, it wasn't a consultation or anything he said well, the criminal justice system in the United States is kind of a formula, so it's not just based on you know what the judge feels like. It's more of a formula. Would you agree with that statement?
Speaker 3:So I think what he's referring to probably referring to there is the fact that the sentencing in the United States is very formulaic, meaning you add up certain points based on various features of the crime, you add up certain points based on the defendant's history of committing crime and you sort of put someone in a particular box on a grid and that box has a certain number of months imprisonment associated with it, and that is in fact how sentencing happens in a lot of different jurisdictions not every jurisdiction, but certainly in the District of Columbia. It's very formulaic under the various sentencing guidelines. So, yes, I think that I assume that's what the attorney was referring to and there is a very much a formula quality to justice as it's currently being practiced in the criminal context in the US.
Speaker 2:So does that ensure the fairness of sentencing then, or is it?
Speaker 3:only if you think that only if you think.
Speaker 3:I mean it's certainly designed to avoid treating people differently based on irrelevant characteristics. So it's well-intentioned. In other words, it's it's designed to say if you commit this particular type of crime, you should get this outcome, whether you're rich or poor, whether you're in front of Judge A or Judge B. You're rich or poor, whether you're in front of judge A or judge B, and so I think it's well intentioned. I think the problem is that just outcomes in cases aren't so reducible to formulas and that not every crime that fits into a particular box is in fact the same, and in fact the boxes might, or the formula might, yield an outcome that is too light or too severe. So even if two cases are the same, the particular formula might add up to a sentence that is not the right sentence for that crime, for any defendant. So I think there's been a lot of criticism of that formulaic guideline approach to sentencing and I think that a lot of those criticisms have validity.
Speaker 2:That he administers justice is very much based on. Well, to a certain degree, are the most pressing issues in the criminal justice reform, and how do you believe that Christian framework can contribute to addressing these challenges?
Speaker 3:I think if I had to highlight two issues that are the most problematic, creating the greatest issues, I think they're related. Two or three issues, I think. The issue of underfunding of defense counsel for the poor, meaning we do not provide enough money to provide a sufficient number of defense lawyers for people who are too poor to afford lawyers. That causes long delays in cases, both because there's not enough lawyers to get to the cases and then when they get to the cases, they don't have enough time to devote to the cases. That's not a criticism of those who serve as public defenders. It's a recognition that those who are supposed to provide the funds for public defenders so that those who are poor receive a fair trial, they're not doing what they should be doing in terms of providing that funding for an adequate number of lawyers.
Speaker 3:You combine that with the fact that the courts have essentially abdicated any responsibility for ensuring that trials are speedy.
Speaker 3:The constitution provides a right to a speedy trial. The courts essentially ignore that right in the state system and so cases don't move quickly. That's to the disadvantage both of crime victims, who wait excessively long time to see a resolution to their case, and it's to the detriment of the criminally accused, who are often detained, jailed prior to any determination of their guilt, prior to any opportunity to establish their guilt or innocence. So in all of that, the lack of sufficient lawyers and the lack of speedy trials is used, ultimately, as leverage by prosecutors to get guilty pleas out of people, either by offering them unjustly lenient sentences or threatening them with unjustly severe sentences if they wait for their not so speedy trial with their overworked public defender. All of that used to coerce guilty pleas that don't actually actually reflect the seriousness of the conduct that was committed. So I think that that, if we're focusing on where we could achieve the most good in reforming the system, that's what I would be focused on.
Speaker 2:So what would be the solution to this in your opinion?
Speaker 3:on. So what would be the solution to this in your opinion? Well, the real issue is that we're unwilling. We want to prosecute crime as a society, but we don't want to devote the resources to doing it. So we need more judges and more prosecutors and more defense lawyers public defenders so that the cases can be prosecuted. And instead of offering unjustly lenient sentences to get people to plead or threatening them with unjustly severe sentences if they exercise their right to a jury trial, we could actually try the cases and determine what actually happened and then punish people in accordance with what they actually did, as opposed to the reduced charges that people plead to.
Speaker 3:And then, essentially, we tell lies as a society about the seriousness of what people did and don't actually punish them. That's not good for crime victims. That's not good for those who committed crimes. It doesn't teach them the lesson that they need to learn about the seriousness of what they did. So it's really a matter of devoting the resources. It's not a mystery how to solve the problem. It's just a lack of political will to do it.
Speaker 2:And what was the second issue?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the three that I identified the lack of sufficient funding, the lack of a speedy trial, and then all of that results in a plea bargaining system that doesn't actually reflect just outcomes.
Speaker 2:And so what are some of the common misconceptions do you think that people have about the relationship between Christianity and the criminal justice reform, and does your book address these?
Speaker 3:book address these. I think that a lot of people, at least who I know who would identify as Christian would have some version of criminal justice. That's something like tough on crime, and I'm not against being tough on people who actually committed crime, as St Augustine said that there's a harsh benevolence that we as Christians should observe, or what we call sort of a tough love. But I think that people who have a tough on crime mentality can at times run roughshod over the procedural protections that are necessary to ensure that the people we're punishing are in fact the guilty people. And that's one of the things that I raise as a serious concern with our system, which is that we have a problem with accuracy. We both at times convict what I think is too many innocent people, and I think we do that for the reasons I identified about that underfunding of defense counsel, because we primarily prosecute the poor, and if you don't provide the poor with adequate representation, you're going to end up convicting innocent people no-transcript serve. So I think it's too easy to just say tough on crime and have an overconfidence in how the system actually functions. What I'm suggesting is that if we're going to be tough on crime, we need to be tough on ourselves in terms of ensuring that we're going to provide the funding as a society to get accurate outcomes and that we're not going to punish people in a way that's out of line with what they did. So I think that there's just an overconfidence.
Speaker 3:When people say tough on crime, I think they have an overconfidence on how well the system is functioning. I don't think it's functioning particularly well. As you noted at the beginning of the show, it's better than many, many systems around the world today, and so I don't want to pretend that there's nothing to commend our system. I think our system has, at least in concept, some fantastic guarantees that, on paper, are designed to ensure that we get accurate outcomes. My concern is that, in practice, we're not really adhering to those protections in a robust way, and so the system is not as accurate as we would hope, and it is punishing people not in alignment with what they actually did.
Speaker 2:So, as we're discussing the negatives, while we're on the subject, why don't we also highlight the positives? So how does the US criminal justice system compare to the systems in other countries?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not really the person to talk about that. I'm not a comparative law scholar, so I have not examined the systems around the world. I mean, certainly, in comparison to authoritarian regimes around the world, we are not them. Whatever shortcomings there are in our system, there is, at least in theory, a real commitment and I think even in practice, a real commitment by our country to provide people with fairness. But I think we're dropping the ball in some significant respects. But I don't want to be heard to suggest that we're you know, it's just like Russia here. It's not, it's not, it's obviously not just like Russia.
Speaker 3:The Russian justice system is a joke, not designed to actually implement justice but to maintain the power of those who rule the country in what is a, you know, a farce of a democracy. And so I don't want to suggest that we're that. We're obviously not that. But there are some significant shortcomings in the way we're operating our justice system and the question isn't are we better than Russia? The question is are we doing all that we could realistically do, that we could reasonably do with the resources we have at this particular moment in history to operate a system that is more like God's righteousness and justice?
Speaker 2:So what is the difference between the federal and state criminal justice system?
Speaker 3:Well, the most crime in the United States is published at the state level. The federal government, if people remember back to their civics classes, is a government of limited powers, enumerated powers, and so not everything can be regulated by the federal government. It's limited to certain powers, like the Commerce Clause or otherwise, and so 95% or more of crime in the United States is punished at the federal level and prosecuted at the federal level. So I mean that's the main difference. The other main difference is that the federal government has devotes much more resources to the crime it does prosecute, and so the system, the federal system, operates much, much, much better than most state systems operate.
Speaker 2:So you were inspired to write this book by the idea of justice that is modeled to us by the Word of God. So let's talk about some of the elements that you discuss in your book, of how God and how the Bible models justice to us and what it expects of human justice.
Speaker 3:Fundamentally, what justice means in the Christian realm is giving to every man his due. That's been a definition that's been accepted by Christians at least since the time of Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries, and what scripture tells us is that what people are due is our love, and so what I try to do in the book is answer the question well, what does it mean to love in the context of a justice system, in the context of a legal system? And, most fundamentally, what I argue is that it means we should judge people's cases accurately, and so that's what I argue is that means we should judge people's cases accurately, and so that's what I'm suggesting. Most fundamentally is biblical justice is accurate, it's true, meaning it rightly defines what is right and wrong, and that it punishes the people who in fact did the wrongs and protects the people who are innocent. I mean the way it does that, because we're fallible human beings. The way we rightly identify, accurately identify right and wrong, is through a process what we call due process that surfaces and tests the relevant evidence, and so it's a commitment to process that evidences our commitment to accuracy. In other words, I don't have a time machine, I can't read minds, I'm not clairvoyant, and so if we're going to accurately identify who committed a wrong, we're going to have to do that through a process that surfaces and tests the relevant evidence.
Speaker 3:It doesn't prevent evidence from coming forward. It doesn't disregard people's allegations. We want to surface the allegations, but that means committed to a process. It also means committed to impartiality that we judge cases based on what was done, based on the events that occurred, not based on the personalities involved. We don't have one rule for the people who are important and in power and a different rule for the down and out. We're impartial. That justice is blind, as they say. The rules apply no matter who you are. So I think, most fundamentally, that's what it means to have a system that operates according to God's justice.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the first murder case in the. The way that God performs justice in this case models to us essentially the criminal justice system.
Speaker 3:I think it models to us God's justice. I don't know that I would say that that is the totality of how, what God has to tell us about how we should address crime. Obviously, what God does with Cain is different than, for example, what God commands in the Pentateuch and the law given to the Israelites. It's different than what God said to Noah in the Noahic covenant. So I don't think we can take any one incident in the Bible and say, well, that's the totality of it. I mean David, King David, in effect, commits a murder and God deals with him differently. So I think each story has to be taken on its own terms and understand and we have to ask what it tells us about how to operate a justice system. But no one story is the totality of God's revelation to us about justice.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking that. You know the idea that God pronounces a punishment over Cain, but he also provides protection for him from the human justice, in a sense, because he banishes Cain to this life of transience, but Cain appeals to God and says, well, I'm completely unprotected in this case. And so God establishes this clause of protection for Cain. So I think that it in a sense models this fairness to us, at least calls us towards fairness towards the accused, even though he's guilty and even though the punishment that God pronounced for him was a lifelong punishment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that.
Speaker 2:honestly, I'm talking to a lawyer.
Speaker 3:You're looking at it from an entirely different perspective.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm looking at it as a Christian. In the Pentateuch, god doesn't protect people who commit murder. He directs that they be executed. There's no protection of them. He directs to Noah, not that you should protect those who commit murder, but that you should kill them. And so that's why I say I don't think you can take from any one story the notion that that says that's how we should operate a criminal justice system. I don't think the story of Cain and Abel is a story meant to teach us about how to operate a criminal justice system. There's other passages that I think speak to that more directly. God showed mercy to Cain, and there's certainly a lesson to be had there, which is that justice should be tempered with mercy. In fact, I would argue that mercy is part of justice, but I'm not sure that I would draw the same conclusion about from Cain maybe, as you articulated there.
Speaker 2:So what are your thoughts on capital punishment, and do you address that in your book?
Speaker 3:Well, I do, and I think my views are somewhat nuanced. So I believe that scripture does authorize the implementation of capital punishment. I believe that scripture does authorize the implementation of capital punishment and I think that scripture is actually clear on that in multiple passages, including in Genesis 9, 6, where God says to Noah whoever sheds man's blood by man, shall his blood be shed. I think it's clear from Romans 13, where God says that the authorities, the governing authorities, bear the sword against evildoers. A sword is an instrument of death. That's discussed in Luke that at that time the sword was the means by which capital punishment was carried out.
Speaker 3:Paul refers in Acts, is quoted as referring in Acts to a crime, crimes worthy of death. So I think the biblical evidence, the biblical data is overwhelming that capital punishment can be and in fact is, in certain circumstances delegated to humans by God, but under certain circumstances. There's limitations around that delegation, including, again, our obligation to be accurate, including our obligation to be impartial. And my concern is that the United States system is not sufficiently attentive to accuracy or impartiality, meaning racial impartiality, in the implementation of the death penalty. And so, while I agree that scripture teaches that the death penalty can be and is just if rendered accurately and impartially. I don't think that that's the way we're operating the system in the United States, and so, ultimately, I oppose the system of capital punishment as operated currently in the United States, but I do not oppose the idea of capital punishment.
Speaker 2:So my final question is you raise very important questions and awareness about these issues of unfairness and injustice in our criminal justice system. At the same time, in the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that it would be utopian to think that they all can be resolved until Christ's kingdom is established. So what can we do as individuals, as Christians, to champion justice and perhaps improve some of those problems?
Speaker 3:Well, I certainly think that there's some issues, as I said, that we can address. We're not going to achieve 100% accuracy, but we know that some of our inaccuracy, for example, results from the fact that we're not providing people with sufficient defense counsel, particularly when they're poor, to defend them against charges that are inaccurate. We know that our system of plea bargaining coerces innocent people into pleading guilty. We have data on that, and so those are changes that we could make that would improve accuracy.
Speaker 3:But we also have to accept that we will not be perfect in the implementation of a human run justice system in this life, and there's a danger that, in a desire to get every crime punished, we can end up sweeping innocent people in the process.
Speaker 3:And that's where I think the humility of our limitation and our willingness to accept that God will set every wrong right is what should distinguish our thinking about this as a Christian. Wrong right is what should distinguish our thinking about this as a Christian that we not be utopian in our belief that if we're just tougher on crime, we can stamp it all out. We won't stamp it all out, and if we're too quote tough on crime, we will sweep up innocent people in the process. And so we have to recognize that God's put limitations on our ability to administer justice limitations, as I discussed, like due process and being impartial and that we should observe those. And if that means that some crime goes unpunished, we as Christians trust that there is nothing that is hidden from his eyes and that he will ultimately set all wrongs right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for this conversation and, most importantly, thank you for writing this book, because I do believe that it's extremely timely and I think it's one of a kind book that does not take political sides and tries to be impartial and hopeful towards improving our criminal justice system. So, thank you, and we're going to post a link to the book and Matt's website as well for those of you who are listening, and I hope it will be a big blessing to you.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. Thank you for those kind remarks and I hope that people find the book useful.
Speaker 2:And I hope that people find the book useful. On a personal level, while waiting for my son's attacker's trial, I have evolved from desiring a purely human justice for my son's attacker to wanting to see God work in his life and perform his justice. This does not mean that he should be exempt from the consequences of the crime he committed, but my prayer is that he is tried in a fair and just court and that the punishment he receives creates a path for redemption in his life. Whether you have a heart for prison ministry or desire to influence legal system politically, matthew's book is an interesting and hopeful read. Reforming Criminal Justice A Christian Proposal. Pick it up on Amazon and check out his website, matthew-martinscom.
Speaker 2:Loving your neighbor means loving the victims, but also the guilty, loving the unlovely, loving the lost. At World Missions Alliance, we believe that changed lives change lives. If your life was transformed by Jesus, you are equipped to share his hope, peace, justice with others, and we want to help you to connect with your greater purpose in Christ through short-term missions. Visit our website, rfwmaorg to find opportunities for you to become involved. Until next time, I'm Helen Todd.
Speaker 1:Limitless Spirit Podcast is produced by World Missions Alliance. We believe that changed lives change lives. If your life was transformed by Christ, you are equipped to help others experience this transformation. Christ called his followers to make disciples across the world. World Missions Alliance gives you an opportunity to do this through short-term missions in over 32 countries across the globe. If you want to help those who are hurting and hopeless and discover your greater purpose in serving, check out our website, rfwmaorg, and find out how to get involved.