Even in the feudal system, people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty!

Yesterday @empress-eremmy asked me a really good question when she responded to my post "Judging a book by it's cover":

Is it possible to give every individual the benefit of the doubt? Won't that be impracticable? 

This question gets to the very root of our struggles with people and how easily the legal system got corrupted as well.  Yes, it is impracticable, but absolutely necessary to ensure that we don't judge people unfairly.  We must give each and every single individual the benefit of the doubt and go through our own due diligence.  Even Sir William Blackstone expressed this importance within the English Legal system when he wrote in his famous Blackstone Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765 - 1768):

 It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer - Sir William Blackstone (1765) 

By Kazvorpal - This is a graphic that includes a creative commons Wikipedia graphic, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

It is supposed to be a foundational principle within most legal systems on this planet, that a feudal serf / citizen is innocent until proven guilty.  But we don't really treat people that way any more, even in our own private or personal lives.  In fact, the legal system has been pressured by people over decades to forgo these principles in favor of sending people to jail out of revenge or some sense of entitlement.  I see that unfolding within social media as well.  People have traded liberty for safety and we were warned about doing that hundreds of years ago.  

 Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Benjamin Franklin

When the system works the way it was designed and sends guilty people back onto the street, people cry out in frustration and anger.  They want revenge as they want the bad guys to pay for what they did.  Yet when someone who is innocent is found within the system, people cry out too, citing the system does not work.  People, you cannot have it both ways.  

Over time, we drifted from principles that were designed to help us govern ourselves.  By passing judgement over people without doing the actual work to get to know them first, we risk lumping the innocent in with the guilty.  But it goes even deeper than that.  Should we be judging at all?

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. - Matthew 7:1-2

How hard is it for us to give the benefit of the doubt and allow their yes to be a yes and their no's to be a no?  How many of us observe actions as they speak louder than words?  Do we walk away when those actions violate the very principles we work hard to live our own lives by?  Have we gone down so far down the road of hatred that these principles now seem foreign to us?  I'm not suggesting we trust everyone we meet.  Far from it.  We need discernment, caution and vigilance to ensure we are not dragged down the wrong path.  

But we also need friends and allies in order to rebuild our tribes.  Those people are the wheat mixed in with the chaff.  It will take work, diligence and time to find these gems of great spiritual value.  If we dismiss whole segments of people because they happen to share the same skin color, religion or social-economic characteristics, we are no better off than the system that no longer worries about sending innocent people to jail to appease the population who does not want any guilty people running around.   

Yes, it is decidedly VERY inconvenient and completely impracticable.  But we must do it anyway if we want to bring peace to this planet.  Spirit will help, which turns an impossible task into one that can and WILL change the world.  Spirit will help remove the chaff so that we can find each other and bring peace to Mother Earth.  We must be willing to surrender the old stereotypes, dogma and discrimination to accomplish this task.  

Creator's stewards will be the most unlikely group of spiritual warriors this planet has ever seen.  This group is made up of people who were broken, poor, hurting, suffering and lost.  As they all healed from their journey, they have built a type of spiritual armour that cannot be penetrated by the armies of the world.  They will change this world and it is up to each and every single one of us to embrace our spiritual talents and bring them to bear against hatred, greed, murder, slavery, gluttony, violence and any action that violates the sacredness of Mother Earth and our own divine temples that hold our spirits while we are here in this Physical Realm.

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