Insinity: Without Biblical understanding, we cannot execute justice

The trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the man who killed 77 victims in Norway last year, is one of the most extraordinary ever held. In order to stage the proceedings, a new custom-made courtroom was built in Oslo District Court. This included the introduction of a bulletproof screen to protect Breivik from any would-be assassins, and the refurbishment of two entire floors to accommodate the more than 1,000 people expected at the proceedings each day. Throughout the trial, which is being broadcast by video link to eighteen local courts throughout Norway, the prosecution is expected to end up calling nearly 100 witnesses, while Breivik’s lawyers are expected to summon around 40. The cost of the trial, according to the court president, Geir Engebretsen, will reach somewhere in the region of $15,900,000. It is not for no reason that this has been dubbed “Norway’s trial of the century.”

But there is something far more extraordinary about what is taking place in the Oslo courtroom than the mere logistics and cost. In a normal case, you couldn’t write something like, “The trial of the man who killed 77 victims,” because the whole point of the proceedings would be to establish whether a man had indeed killed 77 victims and to punish him severely if found guilty.

But this case is quite different. There is no doubt whatsoever that the atrocities at the heart of the proceedings were committed by Anders Behring Breivik. The evidence is incontrovertible and Breivik himself freely admits that he carried them out, glorying in doing so and maintaining that he would do it again! The point of the proceedings is therefore not to establish whether Breivik carried out the acts that led to the killing of 77 innocent victims, but rather its apparent purpose is to establish whether he is sane or insane.

But it gets even more extraordinary than this. One might reasonably expect, given that this whole trial is about Breivik’s state of mind and ability or non-ability to know what he was doing, that the defense council would be the ones pleading insanity. But this is not the case. In fact, the defense counsel and Breivik himself are in full agreement with the families of the victims that he was and is sane, and knew exactly what he was doing. Incredibly, it is the prosecution and not the defense that is attempting to prove criminal insanity.

This trial tells us so much about the state of modern thinking in its attitudes toward justice and guilt. All the stuff coming out of Oslo District Court may be deeply interesting for armchair psychiatrists and psychology students, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with justice, at least not what the Bible defines as justice. Rather it is a grandiose show of psychobabble, the aim of which seems to be to find a way of covering up a crime of grotesque proportions.

If found to be sane, Breivik faces up to 21 years in prison, although this could be increased if he is deemed a danger to society. Now do the math. Twenty-one years works out as 99.55 days per victim. Therefore, the value that the Norwegian justice system places upon the life of each of the human beings that lost their life in last year’s massacre is 99.55 days. I suspect that even the Norwegian authorities are embarrassed by this, which may explain their determination to find Breivik insane so that they will be able to hold him in a psychiatric hospital for the remainder of his life, rather than face the awkward possibility of having him apply for release in the year 2033.

There are many reason given for capital punishment in murder cases, including deterrent and punishment, although in Breivik’s case it is doubtful if either argument applies. But of greater concern is what God thinks.

At the end of Numbers 35, which is all about how murder and accidental killing were to be dealt with, we read something very interesting: “You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it” (Numbers 35:33, see also Genesis 9:4-6). In other words, not only is the punishment a form of justice and a possible deterrent for others, but equally crucial is that God considered the land itself polluted until the blood was expiated by the death of the one who committed the act. Despite the fact that men are so able to dilute their justice so as to even contemplate a 99.55 day sentence for the murder of an individual, God takes it a little more seriously than all that. Should Breivik receive such a sentence, will God consider the crime unatoned for and the land polluted by the blood of the victims? Perhaps Norwegians ought not to be too surprised if there are further troubles and curses ahead.

But what of the issues of sin and guilt? Far from atoning for the crime by pronouncing justice on the guilty, what the prosecutors are essentially attempting is a sort of secular absolution in which Breivik’s sin and guilt are expiated by pronouncing him criminally insane. Is there any truth in their claim? Well, if our definition of insanity is someone carrying out the willful murder of 77 people as a protest against multiculturalism, coupled with the inability to feel remorse or empathy with the families of the victims, then, yes, he is clearly insane.

But one doesn’t have to be a professional psychiatrist to see that Anders Behring Breivik, while being a cold, callous and extremely wicked man, is far from being insane. On the contrary, he is highly articulate and often seems to have a greater grasp on reality than those trying to convince the court that he is insane. For instance, he claimed that the idea of a 21-year sentence is pathetic, and that there are only two just outcomes to his trial: acquittal or execution.

There is great irony in all this. Essentially, the prosecutors are trying to prove that Breivik’s mind functions in such a way that he was unable to comprehend what he was doing. Yet the trial has shown that it is not he who is incapable of comprehending his actions, but rather the prosecution and the authorities in general who are unable to grasp the reasons and the reality of what he did, which is why they have come to believe that he must be insane. It is the only explanation that fits with their worldview and makes sense of things for them.

But does the fact that we are unable to comprehend why someone does something absolve them from responsibility for their actions? If the prosecution is successful in “proving” that Breivik is insane, think about what this means. It means that the more incomprehensible the crime, the more audacious the plot, and the greater the numbers of people killed, the more it could be argued that the perpetrator must therefore be insane. On this basis, would the court sitting in Oslo have been able to find the likes of Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler guilty? Or would the sheer magnitude of their crimes have been so utterly incomprehensible that the very fact that they did them would constitute proof of their insanity?

Anders Behring Breivik is clearly a twisted and unhinged individual, but is this the same as saying that he bears no responsibility for his crime? The Bible doesn’t even mention this as a possibility. It assumes that anyone who is able to plan and co-ordinate such an atrocity, including going through the rather complex process of making an enormous car bomb, must by definition be responsible for his actions. This is what is commonly known as a no-brainer. Anyone who is truly mentally incapable of understanding what they are doing, would utterly lack the mental capacity to be able to do the kind of things that Breivik did.

The world is on a slippery slope into this way of thinking, and it can be all too easy for us Christians to get drawn into the same mindset. The (in)justice systems of the modern world are industries built on finding ways of minimizing responsibility, with many cases which would once have seen the accused found guilty of murder now reduced on the grounds of “diminished responsibility.” But God holds us accountable for our actions, even when those actions appear to be incomprehensible and irrational.

In a sense, all sin is irrational. It is said of the prodigal son that he “came to himself” (Luke 15:17). This is another way of saying that before this his actions were irrational, even mad. But did this exonerate him from guilt? Of course not. He was 100 percent responsible for his actions, no matter how unreasonable and incomprehensible they may have appeared to an onlooker.

Likewise, Anders Behring Breivik is responsible for his actions, no matter how mad and incomprehensible they may appear to us, and no matter how much the Norwegian criminal justice system would like to pretend otherwise. Call it not insanity; call it, rather, insinity.

Rob Slane is the author of The God Reality: A critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. A former atheist, Slane is now a member of Emmanuel Church in Salisbury, England, where he and his family live.

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