This week, South Africa is abuzz with legal terminology and outright gossip as Oscar Pistorius’ murder trial begins in the North Gauteng High Court. Pistorius, a champion Paralympian who is globally known as the “Blade Runner”, took to court on Monday morning to defend his case. The intricacies of the trial are typical; there is a dead body, there was only one other person in the house, this person had a gun, the person admits to shooting, the state says this person shot to murder, the person however argues that they didn’t mean to murder the deceased. The outcome of the trial however is hard to predict.
As sad as this trial is, particularly for the deceased’s family, one cannot help but imagine the wealth of opportunity the hype around this trial will afford evangelicals, particularly evangelicals plying their trade in secular industries. As one who works in corporate Johannesburg, I am very aware of my need of good opportunities to share Christ with my colleagues, because most of the time it is difficult to proclaim Christ within the business offices because of all the “tolerance” policies governing employees.
To understand the opportunity this particular trial presents, you have to understand the state’s and the defence’s arguments. The state is to make a case that Pistorius had an argument with his girlfriend in the middle of the night, and shot her. The defence argues that he woke up, heard sounds, thought there was an intruder, proceeded to the bathroom and shot four times through the toilet door, one of which was a warning shot, and when he opened the door, to his shock he found his girlfriend dying. The two are fundamentally irreconcilable; one side claims premeditation, the other a tragic incident.
Those who side with the state’s version will be considering questions such as what did she do that made him that mad? Is it ever right to get so angry at a person that you kill them? Those on the defence’s side will be considering the morality of owning a gun, the morality of shooting an intruder with the intent to kill, the morality, intrinsically, of violent defence of one’s own fort. These are all morality questions, and since morality is exclusively a Theistic idea, it offers us an ideal opportunity to deal with three kinds of our collegues that are, in my half-shiling worth of an opinion, some of the hardest to normally proclaim Christ to .
The Moral Atheist
It is a well documented fact, atleast amongst reformed thinkers, that one who holds to no-God must also inherently subscribe to no-law simply because right and wrong for each individual is a matter of social conditioning, not of a transcendant law-giver. The opportunity here to chat to our atheist friends in a manner that is “wise as serpents” is to bring up the trial, chat about some of the detail, and then once the friend has made some moral stance or affirmation, gently help them see the error in their thinking. They simply can’t hold a moral stance on the matter because in their worldview, everything is a free-for-all. Prayerfully, this should get them thinking.
The Religious/ Non-Religious Moralist
Paul Washer once said that “for a man to truly appreciate the bright shine of a star, he has to be in pitch black darkness. A man must see his sins for what they are so that he may appreciate grace for what it truly is.” I can’t help but just sigh at this quote, because it resonates so much with what I see amongst educated “elites” in corporate. Some corporate people are on such moral high horses that to tell them that they’re wrong is to insult their individuality; “I’m not wrong, I’m just different.” If we have colleagues like this, those who are religious or not religious but have a common thread of self-righteousness, we might easily bring up the discussion of this trial, listen to their moral stances, and go in for the kill; expose their own moral failure. With prayer, we can get them to see their need of the Saviour.
The Non-Judgemental “Christian”
In my little time of working in Johannesburg I have never met so many people who think themselves Christians but hold to the widest range of plurality and non-criticism. You’ll forgive my ignorance, I grew up in a village where you knew a Christian was a Christian because of piety, and then I studied at a University where you knew a Christian was a Christian because he wasn’t getting sloshed every weekend, so I’m not trying to be funny, it really was a culture shock for me. But it is quite a fact that in the “enlightened” western economic world, you’ll find a lot professing Christians who abhor the idea of calling anyone to biblical alignment, particularly with the biblical moral standard, so much so that you wonder even about their salvation. So with these, one could use the Pistorius trial to get to the heart of how they make moral judgements, and help them see that Christ and His law have to be at the center.
As a final thought, as we pursue to know Christ and make Him known amongst our colleagues, there are many little trinkets of glory that Scripture endows us to remember, some of which are excellently sketched out in this article by Greg Gilbert, but the one that comforts me the most is the Lord’s very own promise that He will be with us till the end of the age. What a promise, what a motivation!
Captive105 