Death Note and Divine Justice 2: Drawing the Lines

“Good evening; this is the nine o’clock news. Kira’s words, which I am to tell you now, are to become the law of this world. Kira will not forgive people whose existence is deemed a threat. Additionally, he will not tolerate people who live wastefully and do not use their abilities for the good of society.”

Death Note E32 ‘Selection’ (2007)

So last post, we left Light Yagami playing at being judge of all the earth, scribbling the names of convicted criminals and other assorted ne’er-do-wells in a notebook supernaturally powerful to thereby cause their deaths.¹ He understands that rotten people deserve to die – that justice is a real, objective standard to which human beings must be held – and he also thinks that he himself is able to discern which people count as rotten, namely exactly where that standard sits.

 

Look, some more amazing fanart of Light Yagami, this time by the excellent Zelkray at newgrounds.com.

But as his reign of terror under the public’s preferred moniker of Kira continues and increases, things start to get a little trickier. Once you’ve killed all the really bad guys – the ones that virtually everyone agrees the world would be better off without – how far do you go? How much wrong does someone have to do in order to qualify for execution? And, for that matter, what actually counts as wrong?

Late in the series, Light arranges – using his biggest fan, Teru Mikami, as an intermediary, in order to mask his own involvement in the matter – for the news reporter Kiyomi Takada to act as the voice of Kira to the world. Her first broadcast in this role, as I quoted above, announces that not only those who actively do harm to society, but also those to fail to make appropriate contributions to it, will be liable for the death sentence.

“Huh?” exclaims some guy watching the programme. “Does that mean that he’ll kill lazy people?”

“You’re kidding!” his colleague gapes.

Light happens to be walking by and overhears their reaction. His internal monologue chastises Mikami for encouraging Takada to make such an announcement: You’re overdoing it, Mikami. No, it’s too early.

But note the nature of his objection – not, that’s going too far, full stop, but rather, yes, that is the point we want to get to, but we need to ease the public into the idea more gradually. Light started by killing criminals, but he plans that he’ll eventually extend the same sentence to anyone who doesn’t conform to his idea of what it is to be a responsible citizen. Increment by increment, he’ll pull the line demarcating acceptable behaviour higher and higher until it sits where he thinks it really belongs; and so, increment by increment, he’ll render a greater proportion of the population liable for the death sentence.

He does it slowly, to avoid losing the not insubstantial wodge of popular support that Kira has managed to accrue. And the thing about doing things slowly, increment by increment, is that you often end up going further than you ever would in one big leap. This is demonstrated with a piercing irony by the earlier proportion of the storyline during which Light loses all his memories of being Kira. The whole thing is a highly elaborate ploy to convince his police colleagues of his innocence, and he has a plan in place to make sure his memories are ultimately restored, but for some weeks and months, he genuinely hasn’t got the faintest idea that he’s the one who’s been doing all the killing. On top of that, he has no sympathy for Kira. He considers him evil and is determined to bring him to justice. This is still Light, with his same personality, his same burning desire to see justice done – so why doesn’t he feel favourably towards the self-proclaimed judge of all the earth? Well, one reason, I’d postulate, is that he can’t remember the increment-by-increment process he went through from finding the Death Note to using it to murder anyone who didn’t fit with his idea of what a perfect world should look like. He looks at where Kira is now and it’s too big a leap from where he himself is now, for him to make it in one go.

But it’s more than that. Light thinks he knows what justice is, so if he thinks Kira is someone other than himself, of course he’s going to condemn him as just another mass murderer. He doesn’t trust anyone else to be judge of all the earth. This is still Light, with his same personality – his same burning desire to see justice done, yes, but also his same childish competitiveness, his same unmitigated arrogance, his same smug self-righteousness. While he has Kira’s power, he’ll exercise it; while he doesn’t (and has forgotten that he ever did), he consequently sees Kira as a threat to be neutralised. Whichever side of things it puts him on, at the end of the day, he wants to be the one drawing the lines.

 

Choose your weapon.

And aren’t we all like that to some extent? We look at other people and the various evils they commit, and condemn them – we ourselves would never do such things – because we can’t see or sympathise with the increment-by-increment processes that led them there. Moreover, we draw the lines as to what we consider just or unjust precisely where it suits us. To give a trivial example, how many conversations have you had where someone is complaining about some annoyance they’ve experienced because of someone else – that person still hasn’t replied to such-and-such a message, or was hogging such-and-such a piece of equipment earlier, or made such-and-such a request that seemed outside his or her remit – and you initially join in having a go at terrible people who do things like that, until you remember an occasion when you did something similar. Oops. You make an excuse for yourself: well, of course, it would be acceptable if he or she did it for this reason, or under these circumstances, or with this mitigating factor in place. And your conversation partner readily agrees: of course that would be acceptable. But in this particular instance, so-and-so was just being annoying.

And thus we draw the lines as to what’s acceptable where it suits us and the people we like. We draw them so that our behaviour sits on the side of what’s acceptable, and the behaviour of people who annoy us sits on the other side. It’s the same thing Light does when he’s dishing out death sentences with notebook and pen. And if the scale of the thing seems rather far removed from his reign of terror as Kira, just remember that all it takes is an unusual opportunity and an increment-by-increment process to make us capable of things that we’d squarely condemn if we were to suddenly forget how and why we’d done them. I’m not just speaking from fiction, either: name an atrocity you know of from world history, and consider the number of ordinary human beings like you and me who persuaded themselves (and mutually reassured their associates) that being complicit in or even helping to perpetrate it sat on the ‘acceptable’ side of the line.

In short, we can’t trust ourselves to draw the lines in the right places. Our view of what justice is is limited, because we don’t know everything; and skewed, because we want to pass off our own behaviour as acceptable, but are happy to condemn that of people who annoy us; and unreliable, because we often, increment by increment, change our behaviour, and consequently reassess what we’re prepared to call acceptable, to suit our changing circumstances. Because we’re imperfect human beings who sit subject to judgement, we’re always going to be biased on the matter of what justice looks like, because we want it to be favourable for us, and overlook our particular flaws. In order for someone to be able to be trusted to draw the lines in the right places, that person would have to know everything; and be perfect to the point of being beyond judgement himself; and never change.

Remind you of anyone?

Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem. Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter”; therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’ And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”

 

Apparently this is what a house foundation looks like before it has the house on it. I’m prepared to believe it.

There are lots of bits of Bible I could have mentioned here, but of course I couldn’t resist this chunk of Isaiah 28,² because of the way God says in it that he will make justice the line. It’s not quite the same kind of line I’ve been talking about, though – this line is less a boundary, which is roughly how I’ve been using the term, and more the kind one uses to measure a straight line in order to make or build something according to the correct shape and proportions. The beginning of that building project in question is the sure foundation and cornerstone that God has laid – and I can tell at this point which kind of church you go to by whether the song you now have in your head is ‘Christ is made the sure foundation’³ or that Hillsong one with the chorus that goes ‘Christ alone, Cornerstone’.⁴ Either way, they’re both right about the identity of the foundation.⁵

If we draw the lines of justice where we think they should go, and not according to God’s true standards, in order to reassure ourselves that our own behaviour is acceptable, we’re taking shelter in falsehood, just as the leaders in Jerusalem did in Isaiah’s day. And God won’t stand for that; he’ll sweep such shelters away. But he has given us Christ as our sure foundation and he has made justice the line, so that as surely as we can’t trust ourselves to draw the lines in the right places, we can trust that Christ is the measure of all that’s just and righteous. So instead of having our idea of justice pulled this way and that by our changing circumstances, we can ground ourselves on that foundation, seek to know him ever better, and so to align our own ideas about justice ever more closely with his. If we’re grounded on our sure foundation, we’re guarded against increment-by-increment processes by which we would move into ever more unjust territory; if we’re grounded on our sure foundation, we’re no longer relying on our unreliable selves to draw the lines, but on him.

That’s kind of scary and uncomfortable; as Light demonstrated when he lost his memories, we’d naturally much rather be drawing the lines ourselves. But think back to whichever atrocity you called to mind earlier: that’s the kind of thing that happens when people do draw the lines themselves instead of seeking to understand where God in his all-knowing, unchanging righteousness has drawn them. Maybe it starts small, making excuses for oneself while having a go at some other annoying person – but all it takes is an increment-by-increment process to escalate from there to doing things of which we’d never have thought ourselves capable.

So let’s not make comfortable refuges for ourselves out of falsehood, drawing the lines to accommodate our own behaviour as acceptable; instead, let’s ground ourselves on the sure foundation, and seek to discern where the lines really are, which, by the Holy Spirit in us, we are now able to do. And as a sine qua non alongside that, let’s be altogether thrilled and awed and grateful that despite all the unjust things we do and try to pass off as acceptable, the righteousness of him who is the very measure of what is just and right has been freely gifted us by his death on our behalf.

Footnotes

¹ Box on the right for last week’s post. Netflix for Death Note itself rather than my ramblings about it: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70204970&jbp=1&jbr=1.

² Whole chapter for you: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+28&version=ESVUK.

³ Here’s a Songs of Praise recording from Aberdeen if you’re not sure how it goes or fancy a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bC0tgG_blE.

⁴ And here’s Hillsong’s official video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izrk-erhDdk. The contrast with the video in the last footnote is actually hilarious. I take no sides.

⁵ As is clear from 1 Peter 2, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+2&version=ESVUK, though do look at the cornerstone motif more generally for a fun time.

Death Note and Divine Justice 1: Judge of All the Earth

“I will become the god of this new world.”

Death Note E1, ‘Rebirth’ (2006)

Suppose, then, that you somehow get hold of a notebook whose inside cover is inscribed with a proclamation that any human whose name is written in it shall die. And suppose, for argument’s sake, that you give in to curiosity and try it out – not really believing that it might work, but nonetheless using the name of some good-for-nothing criminal you saw on the news, just in case. And suppose said good-for-nothing criminal immediately drops dead. All of a sudden you find yourself in possession of the power of life and death over virtually everyone around you. What do you do?

 

My thanks to the talented oroy2041 at newgrounds.com for this stylish portrait of our mass-murdering protagonist.

Hopefully your response doesn’t correspond too closely to that of Light Yagami, the intriguing and, as time progresses, increasingly infuriating protagonist of Death Note.¹ It’s a great little series: compelling from the start, packed with unpredictable twists and turns, and spilling over with enough blog-post fodder to keep me busy for a long time (though you needn’t worry; I only plan on writing about it for three weeks including this one). To entice you further, there are only thirty-seven episodes of a little over twenty minutes apiece, so it’s not too vast a commitment; and it’s also very accessible for audiences generally unused to the weird and wacky world of anime (which I say as someone who by and large fits into that category). But if I still haven’t managed to persuade you to give it a watch before reading further, then count yourself warned that there are spoilers ahead.

Not that it’s much of a spoiler that Light decides to use the Death Note to execute his idea of justice by filling its pages with the names of vast numbers of people whom he deems unworthy of continuing to take up space and oxygen. The following chunk of his internal monologue (as per Netflix’s English subtitles, with a few changes to pronunciation for flow) outlines the thought process whereby he reaches this decision:

I – I killed them! Two men – I killed them! Human lives shouldn’t be taken so lightly. Do I have the right to judge people like that? No … I’m not wrong. I always thought about this: the world is rotten, and that rotten people should die. Someone – someone must do it, even if it means sacrificing one’s conscience and life. Things can’t stay like this. Even if someone else had picked up the Death Note, would they be able to erase unwanted people from this world? No way! But I can – I can do it. In fact, only I can do it. And I will, with the Death Note: I’ll change the world.

And so to a montage of Light scribbling name after name in the Death Note, soundtracked in dramatic choral fashion.² Mind you, he does have a point. The world is rotten. Things can’t stay like this. And rotten people do deserve to die. That much is clearly laid out in the scriptures; try Jeremiah 25:31, as one fairly randomly chosen instance: “The clamour will resound to the ends of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against the nations; he is entering into judgement with all flesh, and the wicked he will put to the sword, declares the LORD.”³

Light’s not wrong, then, about the state of the world and its need for judgement. What he’s wrong about is whose job it is to fix it: the LORD’s, and not his. Light erroneously construes the fact that he has the capability to pass judgement on other people as proof that to do so is his responsibility. His initial pang of doubt on this matter is quickly overcome by a certainty that he is uniquely placed to serve the world at large in the role of judge, jury, and executioner.

Fast forward several episodes, and ‘Kira’ – the name that the general public uses for whoever it is that keeps killing all these criminals, Light having taken every precaution to prevent the deaths being traced back to him, even to the point of joining the team of detectives tasked with identifying and apprehending Kira – is so well established that even some national governments have pledged to cooperate with him. As the president of the United States is televised making such a pledge, Light’s colleagues erupt into uproar at his cowardice. One of them, Matsuda, has doubts, however. He remarks that the world is, after all, a much safer place to be these days, at least for law-abiding citizens, and so he can see why some people support Kira. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s completely evil,” he admits.

“Do you believe that Kira is justice?” retorts his colleague Aizawa.

And it’s a fair question, because those are really the only two options on the table. Either Kira really is enacting fair and right judgement on the guilty, or he’s just another mass murderer. Either he sets the ultimate standard for justice, or he majorly needs to be brought to justice himself. It’s got to be one or the other.

Light offers a pragmatic response to Matsuda’s doubts: “We shouldn’t argue over whether Kira is good or evil. We just have to catch Kira. If Kira is caught, he is evil. If Kira rules the world, he is justice.”

I suspect that Light’s words here may be designed to prepare his colleagues for the scenario he expects to play out: he is fully anticipating that he, as Kira, will soon rule the world, and if he can sow the seeds of the detectives’ transferral of allegiance to him when he does, so much the better. After all, if this isn’t about good and evil – if the only ultimate measure of justice is whichever one is acknowledged by the world at large – then the detectives’ zeal for justice, logically speaking, ought to be redirected into support for Kira’s policies upon his accession to the role of supreme judge. Still, Light doesn’t – can’t – really believe what he says here. If he really thought justice so arbitrary, he would never have started using the Death Note to bring about the justice he perceived to be lacking in the world. He would never have felt that dissatisfaction with the way things were, and that hunger to put them right. Light believes justice is a real, objective standard; he just also believes that he knows exactly where that standard sits.

Moreover, he understands precisely the role in which he’s casting himself by claiming to know what justice is and undertaking to enact it appropriately. Already at the end of that first episode, having described the world he intends to create – devoid of crime and filled only with kind and honest people – he declares, “And I will become the god of this new world.” Credit to him, in a way, for at least acknowledging the implications of what he’s trying to do. It turns out that he does get that dispensing justice is God’s job; he just plans on taking on the title as well as the workload.

Leaving aside the way he claims God’s judgement seat for himself, then, there’s quite a lot about divine justice that Light understands rather well. Justice is a real, objective standard, and it’s God who knows exactly where that standard sits and so has the right – and not merely the life-and-death power – to execute judgements over human beings according to it. Consider, if you will, the bit of Genesis where Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”⁴

Look at the grounds on which Abraham makes his intercession here. Justice isn’t arbitrary, “if Kira rules the world, then he’s justice” style, as if God were to simply decide whom to smite on a whim and then demand regardless that his actions be endorsed as just. Rather, justice is a real, objective standard, such that Abraham can tell God that it wouldn’t match up with that standard for him to destroy the city were there fifty righteous people in it. (Note, incidentally, that God has not, at this point, actually told Abraham he’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, only that he’s going to go and have a look at how sinful they really are.) Equally, though, it is by God that that standard is set, because he is Judge of all the earth. That means there is no higher authority to which one can take a case: he has the ultimate say on every sentence, and there is never any grounds for appeal.

Light merely plays at being judge of all the earth: he doesn’t really know what true justice looks like. God, on the other hand, is just in his very nature; to select another fairly random example from Deuteronomy 32:4, “his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.” Because God is in essence just, every judgement he enacts – along with everything else he does – is perfect. That’s the basis of Abraham’s appeal: shall you not behave in accordance with your character?

In later years, many a prophet and psalmist would appeal to God on the same grounds in the face of injustice. Look at the first chapter of Habakkuk, for instance, or the ninety-fourth psalm.⁵ These people are on the same wavelength as Light in that they acknowledge that the world is rotten; rotten people should die; things can’t go on like this – but instead of claiming the role of judge of all the earth for themselves, they cry out to the true Judge of all the earth, to the effect of, shall you not do what is just?

Because we don’t have Death Notes, it’s sometimes hard to see when we’re attempting to usurp God in the same way Light did – thinking we know what justice is and even that actually, we’d do a better job of dispensing it ourselves than seems to be being done at the moment. Still, such attempts still amount to sin and idolatry. By contrast, the fitting response to the injustice in the world is to cry out to its Judge, knowing that he doesn’t tend to enact judgement in the way we would enact it ourselves, but that that’s because his understanding of justice is better than ours, not worse. Which of us, after all, would have dreamed up that God’s own Son, whose work is perfect and whose ways are justice, should bear the judgement that we, rotten as we are, deserve?

Footnotes

¹ You can get it on Netflix, either in the original Japanese or with English dubbing: https://www.netflix.com/title/70204970.

² If you’re into things of a dramatic and choral nature, might I recommend Puccini’s Gloria Mass, which the orchestra I play in tackled in our recent spring concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOfrCYPKb1Q.

³ It’s that chapter about the cup of God’s wrath that’s really important for understanding certain sayings of Jesus: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+25&version=ESVUK.

⁴ It’s from Chapter 18: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+18&version=ESVUK. By the way, the Hebrew in that last sentence I quoted works particularly neatly: the word translated ‘Judge’ in the ESV is an active participle from the root שפט (špṭ, ‘to judge’), and the word translated ‘what is just’ is a noun formed from the same root, so the question comes out as even more of a no-brainer than it does in the English – shall not the one who dispenses justice dispense justice, kind of thing.

⁵ Here’s the Habakkuk, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hab+1&version=ESVUK, and the psalm, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+94&version=ESVUK.