Jury Duty

I figured that most everyone that I know would want to hear about the three days that I spent on jury duty this week so I thought starting my own blog would be a good way to share it.
From the moment I arrived at the court house I was hoping for an early exit in order to get back to the routine of my daily life, but it didn't take long for me to realize that from the nature of the case and the average age of the fifty possible juror's that there was a high probability of me being chosen.
Before getting into the details of the case I must admit that I did learn at least a couple of things during the experience. If you enjoy reading but sometimes find it hard to get time to enjoy your favorite books, get called in for jury duty. I was able to knock out Mark Dever's book "The Gospel & Personal Evangelism". I do recommend it and it's an easy read with only 115pgs or so.
The other thing I learned was that if serving on a jury was the most difficult thing I had to do in order to live in the greatest country in the world then I was going to take it seriously. I know personally that I a lot of times forget about the troops that put their lives on the line daily in order to keep us safe. God bless our troops and their families!!
While going through the process of answering questions and waiting on the attorney's I became even more convinced of how society has become so relative that flat out right and wrong almost don't exist anymore. The DA would read the law and someone would disagree with it because of some circumstance that in their mind made the law void. Like in this case, a thirty-something year old man was accused of having sex with a child. In Texas the law says that a child is anyone that is seventeen years of age and younger. The defendant had already admitted to the crime in another county and received a three year prison term for it. He was now pleading double jeopardy because he was being brought to trial for the same thing and because of the same fourteen year old victim. The reason double jeopardy didn't work was because the victim was claiming the offense happened in two different counties. The defendant was claiming that he didn't know how old the girl was so that should give him the right to not be punished for it.
Well folks, a lack of knowledge doesn't get anyone off the hook when it comes to the law. It might lower the punishment some, but it doesn't make the law void.
While listening to the above example and many others that different people offered, I couldn't help but realize that when we continue to make the law void in our society the easier it becomes to try and explain it away. Then the thought that followed was how can people think they can continually break God's law and not ultimately be punished for it? If we can't trivialize civil law enough to get off the hook then how much more demanding is the law of God?
Civil law says that in order for someone to be found guilty the state must prove its case beyond a shadow of a doubt. In cases like the one I sat on a lot of it comes down to "he said/she said". We weren't there when it did or didn't happen. We don't know 100% if that person on the stand is telling the truth or not, especially when the attorney's do such a good job dis-crediting them. In this case everyone was using drugs during the time of the events and they all had lied at some point in their testimony's. It again brought me back to how we all will stand in judgment before a Holy God one day and the only jury will be Him. He will know 100% of the facts in all of our cases without us even having to say a single word.
So even though the state didn't prove its case beyond a shadow of a doubt and we returned a not guilty verdict, I have a feeling that there will still be hell to pay for our defendant. Our county DA has five other cases going to trial in the coming months against this same man.
The bigger question is, who is your defense attorney and how much stock do you put in him to save you from a guilty verdict on your judgment day?

In Christ alone,
Mr. V.