letters to surfers

Question: You write about consequences, and miss the idea of justice. On what grounds do we have the right to "assign consequences"? And "What sort of "consequences" can one rightly assign?

by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca)

I don't use the categories of having a right to or rightly. The very idea of rights (charter of rights, etc) is not used in the Bible. We all assign consequences with our children: if you use your jackknife to hurt your sister, you lose your knife. And we all assign consequences with people: if you pour coffee all over our carpet when you come to our home, you don't get invited again.

So the only question is what kind of consequences do we choose to assign. If someone comes and blows up Ottawa, or plans to kill of everyone in our capital with anthrax, most Canadians will want to assign consequences. The question of right or rightly does not arise.