Editorial October 29, 1979 Issue

Guilty—for how long?

NAOMI PRICE

The West German parliament has recently been weighing the pros and cons of the statute of limitations on murder. It decided to repeal the law that stipulated a cutoff date after which criminals on this charge could not be prosecuted. The perpetrators of Nazi war crimes were largely in the thought of the Bundestag at the time, but perhaps we may sometimes wonder how long anyone should be considered answerable for sins he has committed. Does guilt persist indefinitely? When can one be considered as cleared of blame and no longer needing to pay a penalty?

We may feel that it is impractical and undesirable to continue pursuing and prosecuting suspected malefactors after a certain period. For one thing, memory is often unreliable, and details of long-past events are likely to become so dim that justice might be hard to ensure. However, intelligence must insist that passing time in itself cannot absolve one of guilt and responsibility for wrongdoing, nor can it obliterate the suffering and damage that may have been inflicted on the victims of one's crime. In some way the whole bitter picture of sin and its consequences has to be erased.

Christ is that way of total forgiveness, and there is, in fact, no other. Only through acceptance of the true idea of God, in which man is recognized as the unfallen expression of divine Principle, can the sinner be purified. Christ Jesus illustrated this way to wipe out sin and its consequences when he said to a man whom he had healed by the pool of Bethesda, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." John 5:14; Not length of time, not regret, and not repentance alone, but the stripping of sin from thought, and reformation of character to the point of revealing the original purity of the son of God, are required before a sinning mortal can be considered absolved from further suffering.

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