The defense attorney unexpectedly looked me straight in the eye.
“Juror Number Eight, are you a good judge of character?”
How would you have answered?
I was sitting in the jury box in a courtroom high up in the gleaming new Community Justice Campus in Indianapolis. It was not a place where I would have chosen to be, except that I had received the yellow Summons for Jury Service postcard a few weeks earlier, ordering me to appear as a prospective juror.
In the state of Indiana, prospective jurors are pulled from a random list compiled from the Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles and the Indiana Department of Revenue. If you have a driver’s license and pay your taxes in the Hoosier state, the odds are you’re going to receive a Summons for Jury Service at some point. Ignoring it means you could be found in Contempt of Court, not a happy place.
Now, with the judge looking on, together with the prosecutors, the criminal defendant, and other court officials, I was on a stage that I did not choose.
In the past when I had received such a card with the order, I would complete a questionnaire that included a statement that as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I did not want to sit in judgment of another human being. In the past that typically resulted in me being excused.
That advance option was no longer available, so I made the trip downtown to make the statement in person.
Now, here I was, in the jury box, going through the formal Voir Dire selection process. Twenty-six other prospective jurors were following the proceedings from the galley.
Earlier, one of the prosecutors had noted that I had checked the box on the questionnaire and made a short statement about my religious beliefs. Her simple question caught me off guard: “Are you capable of being impartial?” When I replied in the affirmative, she politely moved on, leaving me with no place to go and explain further.
This was getting unexpectedly stressful.
So now I had to answer, for the record, whether I was a good judge of character.
Humbled, I replied that I thought the question was subjective in nature. As she waited expectantly, I added, speaking from experience as a flawed human being: “I would think that I’m a reasonably good judge of character.”
Then it got harder, at least for me personally.
“Juror Number Eight, how would you evaluate the character of a person whom you’ve never met?”
Obviously respecting the process and the potential weighty responsibility, but also wanting to be anywhere else but this courtroom, I paused. Then a thought flashed through my mind. I remembered from Walter Issacson’s biography of Albert Einstein that Einstein had condemned and rejected moral relativity as an interpretation or extrapolation of his General Theory of Relativity. Einstein was appalled at the false and harmful notion that humans could decide for themselves what was good and evil. I remembered that Einstein was, as was quoted in Issacson’s work, “a man of simple and absolute moral convictions.”
Truth is not relative
So, I respectfully answered the defense counsel: “Truth is not relative.”
Then I added, “Inconsistencies can indicate issues of character.”
She met my gaze for a few more moments. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the judge making a note.
Then the defense counsel polled a few others in the jury box: “Juror Number Five [we were all anonymously numbered to protect our public privacy], do you agree that ‘inconsistencies can create issues?’” When that juror answered in the affirmative, the defense counsel asked a couple of others in the jury box the same question. They all agreed.
What had just happened?
The initial Voir Dire process concluded, and the judge asked all of the attorneys to approach the bench.
All I could think of was how in the world did I get picked for the first group of prospective jurors? The judge had read the criminal charges to us at the beginning of the process, and they were ugly. What was next?
Some papers passed between the attorneys and the judge. Then she turned to us.
The judge reminded those in the jury box that she had explained the concept of a “peremptory challenge,” where attorneys dismiss potential jurors without giving a stated reason. She reminded us that such a dismissal did not reflect on our character and should not be taken personally.
Then she looked at me and stated, “Juror Number Eight, you are excused and dismissed.” Then she excused the three other jurors who had agreed about “inconsistencies” potentially indicating a character issue. One other with a medical issue was also excused.
As I made my way out of the courtroom, I felt a heavy burden lift. I was free to go. The corridor outside the courtroom was brightly lit, offering a brilliant view of the Indianapolis skyline in a way that I had not seen.
New insight
I looked at the city with a different understanding. While the city looked beautiful from the height of the building, I knew that there were more than a million people in that view, many in the midst of their own trials. There was pain masked in that beauty.
The concept of moral relativity represents a principle that actually goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when humanity chose for themselves how to define good and evil. Based in error, it tragically undermines human comprehension of faith in the absolute and sows devastating human doubt. As historian Paul Johnson wrote, the idea of moral relativity “formed a knife to help cut society adrift.”
“Truth is not relative,” I thought, standing before the sweeping view. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God, a Gospel that the apostle Paul described as “the Gospel of the grace of God,” (Acts 20:24) was not relative. It was more real, more powerful, more immutable, more absolute than anything I had just experienced or what lay on the horizon.
How would you answer?
