SUPPOSE you’re a referee in a football match. A player is rolling on the floor clutching his ankle, and you’re deciding whether to show a yellow card for a foul. You must assess what you saw, listen to the linesmen, ignore your gut feeling (who do you trust more, the player who claims to have been fouled or the player who appeared to commit the foul?), and ignore the crowd and coaches who are yelling at you from the sidelines.
It’s essential that referees are impartial. Let’s just remind ourselves what that is. Dictionaries define impartiality as ‘a quality of not being biased’; ‘fairness’; ‘the equal treatment of all rivals or disputants’.
The problem is, impartiality is surprisingly difficult. We’re emotional creatures, and we’re inclined to act on feelings rather than evidence. Also there’s the fact that we’re very good at deceiving ourselves: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jeremiah 17:9). That’s God’s assessment of us, not everybody likes it but if you really think about it you have to admit it’s true—if it’s in our interest to believe something, or if it corresponds with our world view, then we are more likely to believe it. For example, if the player on the ground is a nice guy, and the player who appeared to foul him is a bad-tempered thug who has already insulted you twice during the match, you may well be biased and you may be completely unaware of it.
In the Law of Moses
When God delivered to Israel the Law which was to govern their national life, He stressed the necessity for impartiality. ‘You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour’ (Leviticus 19:15).
There is the obvious temptation to favour the wealthy and influential, because they may have the power to reward you if you favour them, or punish you if you don’t. If you favour the powerful, that’s corruption. But there’s also the danger of being biased in favour of the ‘underdog’, and this is perhaps less obvious because it often seems right. Everybody ‘roots for the little guy’. (This is no doubt one reason for antisemitism: Jews are often successful people, and the nation of Israel is prosperous and powerful, and so in any situation people’s sympathy is likely to be with their opponents.)
God told the judiciary they must judge ‘in righteousness’. The Hebrew word He used means fairness, equality: the word is used of fair weights and measures. In the days when goods were sold by weighing them in scales, a favourite trick of dishonest merchants was to have two sets of weights—a slightly overweight set against which to weigh the goods they were buying (so the seller would have to give them more in order to balance the scales), and a slightly underweight set for weighing the goods they were selling (so they would have to give the buyer less in order to balance the scales). God said, ‘Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord’ (Proverbs 20:23).
In the Early Church
The Apostle Paul had left the young disciple Timothy in the congregation at Ephesus, and he wrote with practical instructions for the conduct and nurturing of the brothers and sisters there. ‘In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality
(1 Timothy 5:21). Impartiality is essential in any organisation, and especially in God’s family.
The Apostle James gave an example of prejudice in action: ‘My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place”, while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there”, or, “Sit down at my feet”, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?’ (James 2:1–4). When we’re talking to people about the Gospel, we can form judgements based on our preconceptions—maybe this person will respond, and that person won’t. James says that is to be a ‘judge with evil thoughts’. God wants everyone to hear about the Gospel, and sometimes it’s the most unexpected people who respond.
The ultimate example of all that is good and fair, of course, is that of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the model on which his followers build their lives. He showed impartiality throughout his life, as he healed, rebuked and preached to anyone he came across—rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles. When he returns to establish God’s Kingdom, he will rule on the same principle:
Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor! May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations! (Psalm 72:1–5).