According to Gio’s exhaustive test of every variety of custard cream, there is quite a lot of variation in the well-known biscuit. There is the “solid but unspectacular” ASDA offering that “holds up to the crash test admirably” but whose dunking leads to “deeply unpleasant sogginess”. The Waitrose variety “holds its structural integrity well after dunking”, but its “strength proved a downfall in the separation stakes”. The Co-op’s “convention-defying purple packaging” sadly conceals biscuits that are described as “all fur coat and no knickers”.
Few could fault the rigour and breadth of the testing. But although the structural integrity of the Waitrose custard cream would probably make it ideal for the construction on the left of this diagram, what characteristic would lead to the “sheer criminality” we are clearly witnessing on the right, where even a Victoria sponge, older than the custard cream itself, and having survived two world wars, is wantonly de-creamed and set alight?
Have these rebel creams been abandoned by the establishment, forced into poverty and ignored by those in power for too long? Or are they just evil biscuits, thugs created as a result of poor discipline, bad parenting and their own wilful disobedience? Or is it a complex mix of both, and other factors as well?
All right, my biscuit allegory is crumbling a bit at this point.
Anyway, that’s not what we really care about, is it? Let’s be honest: when we’re busy denouncing the rioters in London, Manchester, Liverpool et al as “scum”, what we’re really doing is saying “we’re not like them”. We have realised pretty quickly that we don’t want people thinking we would ever steal (except downloaded music of course) or vandalise property (except homes destroyed by natural disasters caused indirectly by our own carbon emissions, naturally) or destroy livelihoods (except by the extortion, slave labour and corporate bludgeoning of communities that we are quite happy to support in our supermarkets, you understand). Hmm, I’m a bit worried actually at what could come out if God really started revealing the snowball effect of my actions. I could find myself guilty of some far bigger things than I will ever know.
I wrote on Facebook the other day that these rioters don’t make me ashamed of my country. They don’t. What they have done is wrong, plain and simple. There’s no denying that. But they are living, conscious human beings just like I am, and they remind me of something. That I do wrong too. I’m not separate from them, any more than I am somehow morally superior to “the bankers” or “the expenses-fiddling MPs”.
When Jesus was on earth he went around telling prostitutes and extortionists that their sins were forgiven, and reserving his harshest warnings for the religious leaders who went about labelling and condemning people. That’s not because he disagrees with justice. Far from it. It’s because if we really meted out proper justice with absolute fairness on everyone, we’d all be dead by now.
I suppose our society would break down if we didn’t draw the line somewhere and convict people of what we have agreed is wrong. But how do we choose who to punish and how, when we are all guilty of something? That’s a tricky one. I’m not sure of the answer. The Bible tells us to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). That’s a delicate balancing act, isn’t it? Justice, yes — but with generous helpings of mercy, and humility. If we start self-righteously baying for blood, we’ll find our calls echoing right back at us.
If I was a rioter in court now, I’d expect to be punished, but I guess I’d be hoping for compassion and understanding along with it — a sense that even though my actions were wrong, I was still a valued human being. Hoping, essentially, for a sort of forgiveness. Are we as a nation prepared to offer mercy and practice humility as well as just dispensing justice? I hope so!