My Dickensian headmaster sternly looked me up and down, then over to his enormous rack of bamboo canes and picked one just my size. He rolled up the sleeves of his black floor-length gown, told me to bend over and not to scream or cry.
Good luck. Those blows stung sharply with each swing of his powerful arm and it seemed he was never going to stop. Tears came uncontrollably.
After what seemed like forever, he was finally satiated and quickly moved me along. I was only one of 80 students, all of whom were queued single file up a great winding staircase to receive their taste of justice for breaking school rules.
But first, the backstory: When I was 10 years old, in the 1950s, my dad was selected to establish a heavy earth-moving equipment division in Glasgow, Scotland, for his United States-based employer. Our family picked up stakes and moved over there for three years.
My younger sister and I attended private schools in the area. My school’s athletic field was right across the street from my home and was a source of pride for the entire neighborhood.
One infamous New Year’s Eve, as the festivities were in full swing, my dad and a rowdy group of his American co-workers hatched a plan to play a game of U.S.-style “touch” football on the school’s athletic field.
The “brilliance” of this idea was enhanced, in no small part, by the tsunami of scotch whisky that had liberally lubricated the brains of these otherwise common-sense businessmen. Game on.
Sometime later, the wobbly Yankee warriors returned covered in mud, blood and beer, yet were strangely exhilarated and refreshed. Boys will be boys. Trouble was, it was dark and drizzly that night and the school’s carefully tended rugby field ended up looking like a punk rock mosh pit for a Nazi Panzer division strung out on LSD. Someone was going to pay.
The next day, the groundskeepers mournfully reported the devastation to their higher-ups, launching an international incident between former allies. The school administrators immediately made an announcement that if the students responsible for the havoc wreaked on their precious athletic field would come forward, the rest of the school would be spared. Otherwise, everyone would get the cane.
No one came forward. So, we all paid the price.
That “day of tears” finally ended and I returned home in a lot of pain and feeling sorry for myself, having just experienced my first gross injustice at the tender age of 10. My mother was greatly incensed at what the school had done and tenderly calmed me down until my dad got home from work.
As I poured out the day’s happenings to my dad in a wavering voice, I was expecting him to be outraged and to intervene on my behalf. Instead, his reaction was surprisingly sheepish. We kids had gone to bed long before the “deadly doings” of New Year’s Eve, so we knew nothing of my dad and his friend’s shenanigans the night before.
So, instead of my dad heroically marching down to the school to “set things right,” he appeared before the headmaster with his tail between his legs. While unable to prevent 80 already-reddened bottoms, he ended up personally paying for the extensive field repairs and, perhaps worse, reminding the Scots of why they were so glad to finally see the backs of the Yanks after the Big War a few years before.
We’re All Highly Sensitive to Injustice
We humans seem to be born with a high sensitivity to injustice, especially when it involves the innocent having to pay for the guilty. These past few weeks we’ve celebrated Good Friday, Passover and Easter Sunday, commemorating the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Some critics of Christianity see in this episode a gross injustice, holding an innocent man responsible for the collective sins of an entire nation, indeed, an entire world — like the way we children had to pay for the “sins of our fathers” at my school that day. In a poignant verse in scripture, the Apostle Peter writes:
“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”1
This giving up of Christ’s life (the just) in exchange for the collective lives of the guilty (the unjust) would seem to be the most horrific act of cosmic injustice ever committed, were it not for one critical fact: Christ did so voluntarily. In fact, he was in on the planning all along.
Peter goes on to say:
“It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately — at the end of the ages — become public knowledge, God always knew He was going to do this for you (lit. “since before the foundation of the world”). It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.”2
Believe me, if we schoolchildren could have gotten out of being punished, we would have. We were in no sense heroic volunteers. On the other hand, in full knowledge of all the evil that we humans had callously perpetrated throughout our lives, Jesus willingly stepped into the gap, and set things right with God, at great personal cost:
“We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put His love on the line for us by offering His Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him.”3
Aren’t you glad that he did so proactively and without preconditions upon us? Now it’s your turn. Are you willing to humbly accept Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for what it is — a free gift? Otherwise, it’s off to the headmaster’s office.
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and Internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
1. 1 Peter 3:18 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
2. 1 Peter 1:18-21 The Message (MSG)
3. Romans 5:7-8 The Message (MSG)