Getting Away With It?

It was one of those moments when I wanted to pull over to the side of the road and make a note of what had been said.  Listening to the phone-in on the car radio doesn’t always make me do that, but I couldn’t help feeling just how perceptive this particular contribution had been.

          “I can’t believe he’s got away with this by dying” the angry lady had said.  She was of course, referring to the news story that has dominated the headlines over the last few weeks.  A major television personality, someone noted for his prolific charity fund-raising, and for people of my generation a weekly fixture in our childhood television watching, has turned out to be a very different person than we had known until now.  A year after his death, it seems, hundreds of people are feeling able to tell of what happened to them at his hands, and the scandal it has caused seems to be involving well-known hospitals and particularly the BBC.  No-one knows what revelations are yet to come, but none of it is going to make pleasant reading.

          That woman’s reaction as she phoned the radio programme summed up the sense that many have, one of frustration mixed with anger.  To all intents and purposes, whatever he did he has got away with.  It is impossible to put him on trial, and so not only will his victims not get their day of vindication in court, but neither will he serve the sentence that it appears he deserves.  He has got away with by dying!

          Or has he?  The exclamation of the woman on the radio hints at something deep within the human soul.  Men and women are not just highly evolved animals, but are made in the image of God.  Because of that we have a sense of right and wrong.  If we were just evolved apes, the ‘law of the jungle’ means we could do as we pleased, but deep down we know that this can’t be right.  We are also created not only with a sense of justice but a sense of the eternal too, and so the idea that in some way this man will still have to pay for his crimes comes naturally to us.  Some years ago the then Prime Minister spoke about an awareness of having to answer to a higher authority, and though he was mocked for it, it ‘rang a bell’ with a lot of people.  We can’t, indeed won’t, believe that he has got away with it by dying!

          Both in Old and New Testament, God tells us clearly that Jimmy Savile will have to account for his life.  “God requires an account of what is past … God shall judge the righteous and the wicked” (Ecclesiastes 3:15,17).  “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). I am sure the lady on the phone will be glad about that!  So will you be perhaps.  But what is true about him, must be true about you too!  Though you feel your sins are not as vile as his, in God’s sight they call for judgment! He hates pride, temper, envy, lies and selfishness too.  But he also provided someone to take the punishment for all sin – Jesus Christ, His only Son.  By trusting in Him we can find forgiveness, whatever our sins, and find peace with the Judge of all.