The Judge

by Randy Singer

  And even for Bryce, his one cult-following hit on the big screen seemed like a lifetime ago. These days, he scrounged around with Murphy on the scrap pile of reality TV. What did that one guy call it? “The vast wasteland of television” or something like that.

  There was another thing Bryce needed to get on the table, and this might be his last chance to bring it up. “Murph,” Bryce said softly, “we don’t need any miracles here. We’ve got enough juice without manufacturing anything.”

  He sensed Murphy stiffen. “We’ve been through this,” Murphy replied.

  “It’s not right, Murph. I mean it’s your call. But if it were up to me, I’d play the Muslim guy straight up. And I’m not one to shy away from risks.” Bryce knew the show would receive intensive scrutiny. Why set up a fake healing and risk getting caught?

  “Hasaan needs our help,” Murphy replied. He shifted in his lounger, sitting forward. “We’re just leveling the playing field a little. Americans prejudge all Muslims these days. You know it’s true, Bryce, and that’s why you chose Kareem in the first place—fits the stereotype perfectly. Even though he didn’t meet the sickness criteria.”

  Bryce didn’t bother responding. He’d learned that often the best way to argue with Murphy was to bite his tongue. When Murphy realized he could get his way, he would start feeling bad about pushing too far. Before long, Murphy would start backpedaling on his own.

  But not tonight. “He’s your guy, Bryce. You talked me into putting him on the show,” Murphy continued. “I never liked the idea of the staged medical tests in the first place. Sooner or later, our boy finds out that he’s fine, and then we’re toast. I’m just saying, let’s preempt all those problems by discovering right on the show that he’s been healed.” Murphy paused, perhaps to see how well this was being received. “The show giveth and the show taketh away. Blessed be the name of the show.”

  Murphy lifted his beer in a solitary toast to his own wittiness, then drained it. He set down the empty and burped loudly, as if he were a judge banging his gavel to seal off further debate. Case closed.

  Further argument tonight, Bryce knew, would only cause Murphy to dig in deeper. Instead, Bryce would come back to it later from a different angle.

  His apparent acquiescence allowed the tension to seep out of the air as Jimmy Buffett gave way to Kenny Chesney. The two friends soaked up the night in silence, each lost in his own thoughts.

  “Well,” Murphy said a few minutes later, “better head back to my place. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce said.

  They walked into the condo, and Murphy threw his empty bottle in the trash. “Any predictions?” he asked on the way out.

  “Name-calling, controversy, boycotts, and high ratings,” McCormack replied.

  “No. I mean about who’s going to win.”

  “You know who my favorite is,” Bryce said.

  Murphy turned and looked at him. “Not a chance,” Murphy scoffed. And they both knew he wasn’t talking about the show. “She’s way out of your league.”

  “What about you?” Bryce asked.

  Murphy shrugged his shoulders, turning to leave. “Anybody but Finney.”

  Finney snuffed out his cigar, jotted a few more notes on his yellow legal pad, and looked up a verse of Scripture. He glanced up at the camera on the wall again, feeling conspicuous, ever mindful of the fact that he was being watched. He thought about how boring this would be for the person who had to review the tapes. Finney had watched a few other reality shows, and the characters were always doing something interesting, usually hooking up with a member of the opposite sex. But here he sat. Smoking cigars and reading his Bible.

  This experience was a lot different from what Finney had thought it would be. He wasn’t sure what he had expected; he just knew it wasn’t this. The other contestants were all so much younger, except for Dr. Ando. Only Kareem and Finney appeared to have much courtroom experience. But Finney sensed that courtroom tactics would be a small part of what it would take to win this contest, though he didn’t have the foggiest idea what else might be required.

  For some reason, meeting the other contestants had made him less focused on winning. Yes, he still wanted to represent his faith well. But he didn’t want to embarrass or humiliate the others on national television. Before today, the show was just a fascinating intellectual challenge, one that Finney thought could dramatically advance the Christian message. But now real people were attached to these other faiths. People who, for the most part, Finney already liked.

  He put his Bible down and stood to face the wide-angle bubble camera mounted on the wall. He scratched the back of his neck and frowned. No wonder he had never tried acting. He cleared his throat and got a little cough out of the way before proceeding.

  “This is not going to be easy,” he told the camera. “But I’m not going to attack the advocates for the other faith groups. I’m committed to the truth, so I’ll have to point out where their beliefs are wrong, but I’m going to keep the focus on Jesus and try to act like He would if He were in my shoes. And I don’t really think it serves any useful purpose to attack their faith as opposed to showing them why they should believe in mine.”

  He hesitated for a moment, though he was not sure why. It wasn’t as if the camera was going to respond. “Well, that’s about it. I’m going to pray and then try to get a little rest.”

  Finney returned to his chair, took off his John Deere cap, and placed his elbows on his knees, bowing his head. All he could think about was that blasted camera filming the top of his mostly bald head.

  After a few minutes, he stood and decided to address the camera one more time. “God hears me whether I pray out loud or silently,” Finney lectured. “It’s not like I’ve got to slit my wrists and yell real loud to get His attention.”

  Not long afterward, Finney turned off the lights and crawled into bed. He was dog-tired but knew he would have a hard time falling asleep with the bedroom camera focused on him, its red light reminding Finney that the entire nation might enjoy watching him snore. He rolled over so that his back was to the camera and began to pray in earnest. Before long, he had forgotten about the one-eyed monster. The bravado was gone now too. Finney had learned a long time ago that false fronts don’t work well with God.

  “Please don’t let me embarrass Your name tomorrow,” he prayed.

  14

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Finney began. He thought it was clever that the show’s producers had asked the set extras to sit in the jury box along with some employees of the Paradise Island resort. It gave him somebody to focus on, somebody to think about other than the four contestants shooting daggers at him from their counsel tables. Finney had drawn the short straw. Somebody had to go first. “I could talk to you today about the contrasting philosophies of the various religions. Or I could explain the historic tenets and doctrines of the Christian faith. Or argue about ways that Christianity has made the world better. But this occasion is too important and my time is too short to spend it that way.”

  Finney leaned forward on the podium that separated him from the jury. Judge Javitts had said the advocates could pace the courtroom if they liked, but Finney believed in protocol. If the jury wanted flamboyant, they would be hearing from the Swami soon enough.

  “Instead, I want to talk to you about a man named Jesus. Because to accept Him is to accept the Christian faith, and to reject Him is to reject the Christian faith. And because He is, with all due respect to the other religions represented here today, the single-most-important figure in world history.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Finney could see Kareem bristle, but he couldn’t worry about hurt feelings. Eight minutes was not a lot of time.

  “Nobody taught like Jesus,” Finney said. And he waited a few seconds for that to sink in. “Two thousand years ago, in a chauvinistic and intolerant society, Jesus broke down long-standing barriers based on sex, nationality, and occupation. His followers included
a tax collector and a former harlot. He ministered to the ‘untouchables’ of His day, those with leprosy. A few years after His death, the leading advocate for the early church, a man named Paul, summed it up this way: ‘There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

  “But that’s not all. In a society characterized by ‘might makes right,’ at a time when His own people expected Him to lead a military revolt against the Roman Empire, Jesus taught His disciples to turn the other cheek. He told them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them. He told them that great leaders must first be humble servants. And He washed the feet of His disciples.”

  Finney turned and walked to the counsel table where Skyler Hadji sat between Drs. Ando and Kline. He gestured toward Hadji, the only one who seemed to be enjoying the judge’s performance. “Even one of this man’s icons, Mahatma Gandhi, recognized the inspired nature of Jesus’s teaching. ‘It is the Sermon on the Mount that endeared Jesus to me,’ Gandhi once said. And on another occasion, speaking about the Christian religion, he said, ‘I like their Christ; I don’t like their Christians.’

  “And many times, Mr. Hadji, I have to agree with him.” Finney thought he noticed a slight nod from Hadji. Could it be this easy?

  Emboldened, the judge made a sweeping gesture toward the others. “What man or woman here would say that Jesus was not an inspired teacher, an enlightened prophet, light-years ahead of His time both morally and ethically?” Finney waited in silence, each second driving home his point, until finally he turned back to the jury.

  And then it hit. The worst timing possible. He reached for the glass on his counsel table and took a quick drink of water, but nothing could stop it. Finney had been finding it increasingly hard to catch his breath during these coughing spells, and today was no exception. He coughed and hacked for a moment, his face flushing with the effort, until at last he regained his composure and smiled at the jury.

  “Sometimes I even choke myself up,” he said, but only one or two even gave him a token smile. How many times had he told lawyers that the courtroom was no place for humor?

  “Where was I? Oh yeah—nobody taught like Jesus. Nobody lived like Him, either. Jesus was a prophet who backed up His teaching with His life. But there’s more to Him than that. Because nobody died like Him.”

  Finney settled in behind the podium again as he talked about the suffering and death of Jesus. He briefly explained the horrible Roman practice of crucifixion and the reason that Jesus willingly took His place on the cross.

  “What other founder of a world religion died so that His followers might live? Others died in a state of meditation or from an unexpected sickness, but who else allowed Himself to be nailed to a tree so that His followers might find favor with God?”

  “Four minutes, Mr. Finney,” said the voice of God from the judge’s bench.

  That guy needs to go to judge school—learn a little courtroom decorum.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Finney said.

  “And nobody rose like Jesus,” Finney continued, gathering steam as he approached his final point. This would be his strength—his specialty, if he had one. Finney had always believed that the one thing that distinguished Christianity was the ironclad proof of the Resurrection. He had devoted a whole chapter to it in The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ. “It all rises or falls with the third day,” Finney sometimes said, though he knew better than to use anything that hokey in this setting.

  He mentioned a few factors supporting the reliability of the gospel witnesses—the archaeology that confirmed the Gospel accounts and the twenty-four thousand ancient manuscripts, including more than fifty-five hundred Greek manuscripts, that contained and verified various portions of the New Testament records. Plus, Finney said, the Gospel accounts have the “ring of truth—the ragged edges that reflect the way things happen in real life.”

  “Why else, at a time when women were prohibited from testifying in a court of law, would the Gospel writers say women first discovered the empty tomb? Why else would they paint the disciples as scared and skeptical followers of Christ—men who returned to their jobs after Christ died, not believing that He would actually come back from the dead?”

  Finney’s questions started flowing faster as he noticed the judge glance down at his watch. “Did you know that for more than sixteen hundred years nobody even suggested the tomb was not empty? How could the early church have started in Jerusalem, just a stone’s throw from the tomb, if Christ’s body were lying in the grave? Peter’s powerful sermon on the day of Pentecost, when three thousand souls were saved in one day, would have been categorically refuted by the decaying body of Jesus Christ in a nearby tomb.”

  Finney stopped and caught his breath, moved out from behind the podium, and lowered his tone. “Those who contest His resurrection today tend to gravitate toward one of two theories. Some say the whole Resurrection thing is a legend, cooked up by the church years after the life of Christ. Others say it is a conspiracy or fraud, cobbled together by the disciples so they could take their place at the head of a major world religion.

  “The legend theory is easy to refute. Some distinguished scholars have spent their entire lives studying things like the length of time that it takes for a legend to develop. According to their research, it takes a minimum of two generations, with no written documentation in existence, for a legend to develop that will supersede the actual facts.

  “Think about it in a context we can more readily understand. Let’s say I’ve never argued a case in front of the Supreme Court. If somebody wanted to create a legend about me, saying I won twenty straight cases there, would they be able to do it within thirty years of my death, at a time when thousands of people who knew me were still alive?

  “The first Gospel account was written within thirty years of the life of Christ. When that account was written, many witnesses to the death and resurrection of Jesus were still living. According to the experts, there is no example of a legendary tale in ancient history that developed in so short a period of time. None. Ever.”

  “Two minutes.”

  Finney shot the judge an annoyed look before turning back to the jury. “And this theory that it was just a conspiracy by the disciples . . .” Finney shook his head, hoping the jury was with him. “I’ve tried enough cases to see every kind of conspiracy imaginable. I’ve seen men and women lie to make money, to further their own reputations, to gain political power, or to save their own skins. But I’ve never seen men and women lie so they could be tortured and burned at the stake. I’ve never seen them conspire so they could be crucified like their leader. Death has a way of revealing truth. Why would the disciples die for a lie?”

  Finney surveyed the jury and noticed a woman in the back row fighting to keep her eyes open. How could she sleep through this? He was discussing the most significant event in the history of the planet. He wanted to throw something at her.

  He decided against it.

  “Imagine for a moment that you are the apostle Peter. You’ve either seen a resurrected Jesus or you’re making it all up—one big practical joke on all mankind. You are hauled before the Jewish rulers—the Sanhedrin—and ordered not to talk about Jesus and the Resurrection. But you keep preaching. You see your friends stoned, whipped, and jailed for the faith. But you keep preaching. Emperor Nero of Rome declares himself the ‘enemy of God,’ and you see Christians tied to posts, covered in wax, and set ablaze to light the Roman roads at night. But you go out and convert others to take their places, telling everyone you see about the Resurrection.

  “You are arrested and thrown in the Mamertine prison in Rome—a death cell where you are chained upright to a post and made to stand in your own urine and excrement for nine long months. Your only exposure to light comes when the guards haul you out of prison to torture you. Renounce Christ and you will go free. But you refuse to become a traitor to your faith.

  “Finally you are hauled before Nero to face ex
ecution. There you see your beloved wife, whom you have not seen since the day of your arrest nine months ago. If you renounce the Resurrection now, she will be spared. And you will be released.”

  Finney paused and studied the jury. They were all with him, all except one . . . and as long as she didn’t snore.

  “But you hold firm and Nero announces your penalty—crucifixion for you and your wife. Do you renounce now, at the last possible moment?

  “No!” Finney slapped the jury rail, and the lady in the back snapped to attention, a possible whiplash victim. “Your resolve strengthens. You insist on being crucified upside down because you are not worthy to die like your Savior. And as you are being led away, you look over your shoulder and make eye contact with your trembling wife. ‘O thou,’ you say, ‘remember the Lord.’

  “Can anyone seriously believe that Peter did this for a hoax? For a conspiracy? Or had he seen the resurrected Christ with his own eyes and felt Christ’s power in every sinew of his body?

  “Peter didn’t ask to be crucified upside down because he was a ringleader in some plot to deceive. He asked because he had heard Christ teach and he had watched Christ die and then he had seen Christ come back from the dead. It was the most important event in history, with the most important Man who ever lived at the center of it.

  “And Peter had seen it all with his own eyes.”

  “Your time is up, Judge Finney.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Finney said. He felt almost breathless, but he was satisfied that he had given it his best shot. He turned to sit back down.

  “Not so fast,” the big, booming voice said.

  Huh?

  “I do have two quick questions for you.”

  Finney faced the judge. “Okay.”

  Javitts looked down at his notes. “In your understanding, is it ever permissible for a Christian to kill another human being?”

  Finney thought about this for a long moment. Where did that come from?