One Good Man — Part One: The One Good Man

There is an old biblical question which has occupied my thoughts for some time.

How many good people does it take to save a society?

The question appears most famously in the story of Abraham and Sodom.

Abraham stands before God and questions the justice of destroying an entire city. What if there are fifty righteous people within it? Would it really be right to destroy the righteous along with the wicked?

God agrees that He would spare the city for the sake of the fifty.

But Abraham continues.

What about forty-five?

Forty?

Thirty?

Twenty?

Ten?

And so Abraham gradually negotiates the number down, each time asking whether the existence of a smaller number of righteous people would be sufficient reason for the city to be spared.

It is a remarkable conversation.

It suggests that the moral character of a society cannot simply be separated from the actions of the individuals within it. The existence of goodness matters. The existence of people who are prepared to stand for what is right matters.

And then there is Jonah.

Jonah is sent by God to Nineveh with a warning: the city is facing destruction.

But Jonah does not want to go.

He runs away, eventually finds himself confronted by the consequences of his disobedience, and ultimately goes to Nineveh. He delivers the warning that God has given him.

And something extraordinary happens.

The people of Nineveh repent.

And God relents from the destruction that had been threatened.

There is therefore a profound difference between the two stories.

Abraham asks whether a society can be spared for the sake of the righteous people within it.

Jonah demonstrates that a society can also be spared when it recognises its wrongdoing and changes its ways.

Neither story is really about destruction.

Both are ultimately about the possibility of avoiding it.

The One Who Stands

This has led me to think about what happens when we apply these ideas to modern society.

What happens when the institutions that are supposed to protect society begin to fail?

What happens when the people who are supposed to administer justice begin to make decisions which are themselves unjust?

What happens when an institution becomes so convinced of its own goodness that it becomes incapable of recognising its own wrongdoing?

Perhaps the answer begins with one person.

One person who is prepared to stand up and say:

This is not right.

That person does not necessarily have to be powerful.

He does not have to hold political office.

He does not have to control an institution.

He does not even have to convince anybody else that he is right.

He simply has to be willing to stand.

Because once everybody becomes frightened of challenging the system, the system becomes capable of doing almost anything.

The bureaucrat can say that he was only following the procedure.

The official can say that he was only following the rules.

The lawyer can say that he was only doing what was commercially sensible.

The politician can say that he did not have the power to change anything.

The institution can say that it acted according to its established practice.

And everybody can point somewhere else.

Meanwhile, the injustice remains.

My Experience of Jersey

I have experienced what I regard as profound wrongdoing at the hands of the Jersey justice system.

I have seen what happens when institutions that are supposed to administer justice become more concerned with defending their own decisions than with asking whether those decisions were right.

I have seen how difficult it can be to persuade people to reconsider something once they have decided that they are the good people and that the person challenging them must therefore be the problem.

And I have learned that there is something particularly difficult about confronting an institution that does not believe it has done anything wrong.

It is one thing to confront somebody who knows that they have behaved badly.

It is quite another to confront somebody who genuinely believes that they have behaved well.

That is where the battle becomes much harder.

Because the person who says, "You have done something wrong," is no longer merely criticising an action.

He is challenging somebody's understanding of themselves.

And people do not like that.

They want to believe that they are good people.

They want to believe that they are competent.

They want to believe that the institutions in which they work are fundamentally good.

They want to believe that everything is fine.

They want the sunshine and the butterflies.

And then somebody comes along and says:

No. This is not right.

That person becomes deeply inconvenient.

The Purpose of the Warning

But I do not want the people who have wronged me to be destroyed.

That may sound strange given everything that I have experienced.

But it is important.

Jonah's message to Nineveh was a warning. It was not simply a declaration that destruction was inevitable. The people of Nineveh were given an opportunity to change.

That is the opportunity I am prepared to offer to those who have wronged me and to the institutions that have failed me.

I am prepared to accept repentance.

I am prepared to accept an acknowledgement that mistakes have been made.

I am prepared to accept that injustice can occur even within institutions established to administer justice.

I am prepared to accept that people can do things with good intentions and nevertheless cause great harm.

But repentance requires something.

It requires the willingness to look honestly at what has happened.

It requires the humility to say, "We were wrong."

And it requires the courage to do something differently afterwards.

That is why I do not see my role as being one of vengeance.

I see it as being one of warning.

One Good Man

Perhaps that is what Abraham's question ultimately means to me.

Perhaps every society needs somebody who is prepared to stand in the gap.

Somebody who refuses to accept that wrongdoing becomes right simply because enough people have accepted it.

Somebody who refuses to remain silent because speaking is inconvenient.

Somebody who is prepared to ask the questions that nobody else wants to answer.

Somebody who is willing to say:

Show me where this is right.

And if the answer cannot be found, to say:

Then this is not right.

I do not claim to be a perfect man.

I do not claim to possess perfect knowledge.

I do not claim that every conclusion I have reached is necessarily correct.

In fact, one of the most important responsibilities of the individual is to remain willing to discover that he is wrong.

But somebody has to be willing to stand.

And I have reached the point where I am prepared to accept that responsibility for Jersey.

Perhaps that is my destiny.

Not to destroy Jersey.

Not to punish those who have wronged me.

But to stand in the place where somebody has to stand and say that what is happening is not acceptable.

To warn before destruction.

To offer repentance before vengeance.

And to keep standing for as long as necessary.

Because perhaps the question is not whether there are fifty good people.

Perhaps it is not even whether there are ten.

Perhaps the question is whether there is one.

One person who is prepared to stand.

One person who is prepared to speak.

One person who is prepared to say:

This is not right.

And perhaps, sometimes, that is enough.