Baby Doe as a modern Christ figure, part 1
Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”), Antonio Ciseri’s depiction of Pontius Pilate presenting a scourged Jesus to the people of Jerusalem.
Isaiah 53:3
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
… rejected-”forsaken of men” [Gesenius]. “Most abject of men.” Literally, “He who ceases from men,” that is, is no longer regarded as a man [Hengstenberg]. (See on [851]Isa 52:14; Isa 49:7).
…man of sorrows-that is, whose distinguishing characteristic was sorrows.
…acquainted with-familiar by constant contact with.
…grief-literally, “disease”; figuratively for all kinds of calamity (Jer 6:14); leprosy especially represented this, being a direct judgment from God. It is remarkable Jesus is not mentioned as having ever suffered under sickness.
…and we hid . faces-rather, as one who causes men to hide their faces from Him (in aversion) [Maurer]. Or, “He was as an hiding of the face before it,” that is, as a thing before which a man covers his face in disgust [Hengstenberg]. Or, “as one before whom is the covering of the face”; before whom one covers the face in disgust [Gesenius].
***
Most theologies recognize a pristine innocence in the newly born. The Church remembers and yet mourns the “slaughter of the innocents” every December 28, click here and here for details.
Bloomington’s Baby Doe can be viewed as such an innocent and more. While the pre-Lent 2009 parallels that Baby Doe shared with our Lord rendered him, in the words of the Institute’s friend Bob Tippmann, a “modern martyr,” recently revealed parallels are even more profound. This is because the Indiana judge who ruled on Baby Doe’s initial death sentence has broken a 27 year silence to grant an interview on the case.
This interview is found on the front page of Indiana Lawyer magazine. It is an amazingly frank back and forth between one of the most powerful sitting judges in Indiana and that leading Hoosier legal periodical.
The article opens with this long silent judge assuring the reader, through reporter Michael Hoskins, that His Honor will never forget Baby Doe.
The article closes on an even more striking note, as his Honor not only breaks his own 27 year silence, but also reveals intimate details about Baby Doe’s family that grants His Honor’s fellow church goers what was once considered top secret information regarding the identity of Baby Doe’s parents and, as he dubs the child that they had after Baby Doe’s demise, “the rest of the story.”
Such is the beginning and end of this paradoxical interview. While the judge decries that this one case has seemingly defined him and defined his career, he must have agreed to this interview and to an eight by four inch picture of himself on the front page of Indiana Lawyer with a caption that startles even the most callous among us. (see article at above links for the picture and caption)
As stated, the parallels to the Christ’s experiences and Christian theology are profound. Some of these parallels follow, with the text of the IL article in blue, Holy Writ in red and theologian’s commentary in green:
“It all began with a Bloomington’s Baby’s birth on Friday, April 9, 1982 — Easter weekend. ….. [who] lived for almost 7 days [with his defects].” IL
PS 22:10
I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
Geneva Study Bible For unless God’s providence preserves the infants, they would perish a thousand times in the mother’s womb.
“[His Honor] vividly remembers first getting a phone call at home about Baby Doe’s situation … The hospital’s attorney [sought] judicial intervention. Getting to the hospital after dark, he was immediately escorted to the … nurse-training room.” IL
“the parents and their attorney [were on] one end [of the training room] and the hospital advocating for treatment opposite them. They gave the judge a rundown, he said.”
“Everyone [then] left to give him time to think about it. They returned 4 minutes later.” IL
“The parents were given qualified medical opinions, and it’s up to the parents – not me, he recalled.”
His Honor voices second thoughts about how the “hearing” was conducted: “We had no legal books, no recording equipment, and I’d have been well advised to have more quickly gotten information beforehand so we could have had a better hearing not at the hospital” he said. IL
(see Luke 22:2; Mark 14:1). They held the Jewish trial at night hoping that Jesus’ supporters would be asleep and unable to protest his arrest. The Jewish portion of the trial had three separate phases: (1) an appearance before Annas; (2) an informal investigation by Caiaphas and (3) a condemnation by the Sanhedrin….The procedures of the Jewish leaders during Jesus’ trial were illegal. Jewish law required that trial for a capital crime begin during the daytime and adjourn by nightfall if incomplete.
“It was an interesting debate legally, morally, ethically, religiously, philosophically …. Who should make these decisions?” “In a society such as ours, those decisions should be made by parents or the individual, not the government.”
“Pilate saith to him: What is truth?” The Gospel of St. John 18:38
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
38. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?-that is, “Thou stirrest the question of questions, which the thoughtful of every age have asked, but never man yet answered.”
…And when he had said this-as if, by putting such a question, he was getting into interminable and unseasonable inquiries, when this business demanded rather prompt action.
…[Pilate] went out again unto the Jews-thus missing a noble opportunity for himself, and giving utterance to that consciousness of the want of all intellectual and moral certainty, which was the feeling of every thoughtful mind at that time. “The only certainty,” says the elder Pliny, “is that nothing is certain, nor more miserable than man, nor more proud. The fearful laxity of morals at that time must doubtless be traced in a great degree to this skepticism. The revelation of the eternal truth alone was able to breathe new life into ruined human nature, and that in the apprehension of complete redemption” [Olshausen]
“The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting. ” Psalm 119:60
[His Honor] left the hospital and went home, learning Monday morning the baby remained alive.” IL
Readers, this was no state-sponsored execution in which the ACLU would fight for the condemned one’s life and the constitution assure that the killing was not inhumane or cruel or unusual. This was a private act of infanticide legitimated by and approved by the Indiana authorities.
His Honor’s decision put Baby Doe on a court-ordered six day crash diet of no nutrition or hydration. He was to die a horrible death, a death not unlike a death in the blazing Judean sun … for Baby Doe this was so much more than an “interesting debate.”
Psalm22:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
Geneva Bible commentary
(a) Here appears that horrible conflict, which he sustained between faith and desperation. (b) Being tormented with extreme anguish.
Psalm 22:2
Young’s Literal Translation
My God, I call by day, and Thou answerest not, And by night, and there is no silence to me.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
2. The long distress is evinced by-”am not silent”-literally, “not silence to me,” either meaning, I continually cry; or, corresponding with “thou hearest not,” or answerest not, it may mean, there is no rest or quiet to me.
TO BE CONTINUED OVER EASTER WEEKEND … in honor of a baby boy who was born on Passover, 1982 and began his own passion over Easter weekend. (Like this year, those two holidays fell on the same weekend in 1982, a rare occurence.)
