Lesson video

Hi, my name is Miss Speakman.

We're on Lesson 4 of 14 of the Crime and Punishment unit.

And in this lesson we'll be looking at Lawbreakers and Types of Crime within Christianity.

So, we'll be focusing on Christian attitudes to those people who break the law and consider specific Christian teachings on murder, theft and hate crimes.

To make sure that we are ready for our lesson today, please make sure we've got a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper, an exercise book and a different coloured pen for corrections.

And we've also got a nice clear working space.

So, a clear desk and TV music off so you do not get distracted.

And then your mobile phone to one side if you're not using it for the lesson please.

If you need to get yourself set up by getting any of those things or making sure you got a nice quiet space to work in, please pause the video now and then unpause when you're ready to move on and start learning.

Okay, so let's get started.

So first of all, I think it's really important for us to look at, how does the law actually deal with criminals? Like, what is the U.

K.

sort of approach to the criminals when they are first arrested? So, when someone is arrested and charged and looking to go forward into a court case, for example, any person who was arrested is seen to be innocent until proven guilty.

What this means is that the law will treat you as though you're innocent until you have been charged and sentenced to a crime and proven that you are guilty.

When you are in court, you will be, of course going through a trial which involves producing evidence for the prosecution and the defence.

And if there's any reasonable doubt to suggest that you perhaps didn't commit that crime, then that person is released without charge, is innocent and can go about their normal day, their normal life again.

What we mean by reasonable doubt is that there's anything at all which might suggest that person didn't commit that crime.

So, there may be cases where someone has, people thought that this person did commit a crime but there's reasonable doubt perhaps maybe they have an alibi.

Someone said, "Now, I saw this person at this time, they couldn't have done it." And therefore that might cause reasonable doubts.

Someone might say, "Actually, I'm not quite sure 100% "certain that someone that this person did commit that crime." So, if there's reasonable doubt that person can then go free.

So, what I'd like you to do is I'm going to disappear and I'm going to ask you some questions just to make sure we've got this really, really clear about being innocent till proven guilty and the idea of reasonable doubt.

So someone, when arrested, charged, going through a trial, is presumed to be innocent till proven guilty.

And when we look at a court case or trial, if there's any reasonable doubt, is there any evidence to suggest that person might not have committed that crime? Then they are released without charge and are innocent and can go about their normal life.

So, I'm going to disappear.

I'm going to give you some questions and we'll go through the answers.

So, complete the following questions.

Spend about four minutes on this, please.

Sorry.

So, how does the law treat suspected offenders? And, what is reasonable doubt? So, I want you to pause the video, please.

Answer these two questions then unpause when you're ready to go through corrections, please.

Okay, if you can see this slide then I'm assuming that you are ready for corrections.

Can you please make sure you've got your different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

If you're not quite ready, then you can rewind and carry on with your questions.

Come back to us when you're ready for the answers.

So we should have, how does the law treat suspected offenders? Well, all suspected offenders are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

And by reasonable doubt, we mean the courts exist to decide if there's any doubt whether someone is guilty.

If there is reasonable doubt, then they are found innocent.

If you need to make any corrections, please pause the video now and make those corrections.

And then what we're going to do in a moment is move on to looking at specific Christian views on those who break the law and different types of crime.

So, we're going to look at specific Christian views about those who break the law.

So, generally Christians would say that they're against people breaking the law without a just cause.

So, a just cause is the idea that unless there is a fair and right reasons to why someone's breaking the law, then they should not be breaking the law.

So perhaps maybe, let's say someone is starving and needs to steal in order to save their life or their breaking law in order to protect life, for example, they might then say that there's a just cause.

There may be some laws that Christians may morally disagree with, it doesn't necessarily mean that they should be breaking them.

So Christians would say that on the whole, the law is there to protect people, to protect society, to maintain order and that it's there for a reason and therefore shouldn't be broken.

Though of course, there may be a small number of cases where there might be a just cause.

There's even a passage in the Bible in Romans which says, "Everyone must obey the state authorities, "because no authority exists without God's permission and the existing authorities have been put there by God." So as a whole, Christians would probably argue that, you know, the law should not be broken because they are in authority, the laws made by the authority of the country.

That authority is there because of God, God allows those authority people, people in authority to be there.

But of course, there will be in some small cases where perhaps maybe a Christian says there's a just cause to break the law.

Perhaps maybe there's an opposition to an unjust law, for example, but generally Christians say, no, you shouldn't be breaking the law.

What we're going to do is some multiple choice quick-fire questions just to see how well we have understood what we've looked at so far.

And then we'll move on to then bringing that all together in terms of making sure we got it down really really clearly what are a Christian's belief about those who break the law.

So I'm going to disappear for that.

Great, Christians would allow, always allow someone to break the law if they think it's morally right to do so.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Point to your screen or say it out loud.

False, of course.

Like they might say it's morally incorrect to, that law is morally incorrect, it doesn't mean they should be allowed to break the law.

Christians are generally against people breaking the law.

True or False? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

Christians are generally against people breaking the law.

There may be some laws Christians morally disagree with.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

There'll be some laws Christians morally disagree with, but of course, it does not mean that they'll allow someone to break that law.

Well done, if you've got all of those three correct.

It's just a really good way of recapping things.

Let's move on.

Let's up the challenge.

So, I'm just going to get my face to appear, it takes a little while always.

It's taking longer than it normally does.

There we go.

Okay, so now I'm just going to like I said, up the challenge just to make sure that we've been, we've understood what we've looked at so far.

Multiple choice quick-fire questions are a really good way of getting us started.

Now, I'm going to get you to answer this question which is on the slide which says, what might be an example of a just cause? I gave a couple of examples within the video but I want you to write down in, in your opinion, what would a Christian say is an example of a just cause.

Spend about two minutes on this question.

Pause the video now then unpause when you're ready to move on.

Okay, so hopefully you've written down an example of a just cause.

It could be where perhaps maybe a law is unjust, it's treating members of society unfairly.

So, if you think maybe of the example of the way the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany's regime.

You might talk about if someone's starving and they're close to death, it might be something about that.

A just cause in order to break the law to save someone's life or any way of breaking the law which might be in some way protecting life.

So, that might be seen as a just cause.

Now that we've got this, hopefully you've got one of those answers or you put something down which you know is also an example of a just cause.

We're now going to move on and just bring it all together, make sure we've got a really clear understanding, a clear thing written down on our pieces of paper about what Christians believe about those who break the law.

So, I'm going to disappear and I'm going to give you instructions for our next task.

So, what I'm going to need you to do is to pause the video on the next slide where I'm going to ask you to fill in some blanks on a paragraph.

So we've got a nice paragraph of what Christians believe about those who break the law.

So, as you can see here I've got a paragraph I'd like you to copy and complete please.

The missing words are at the bottom in pink and each word is used once.

So, copy out the whole paragraph and fill in the blanks please.

Pause the video now and do that for me.

Unpause when you're ready to move on.

Okay, if you can see this slide I'm assuming you're ready for corrections.

Please make sure you've got your different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

If you're not quite ready then please rewind the video a little bit and then continue with it.

But we're now going to go through our answers.

So, different coloured pens out ready to tick please.

So you should have, Christianity teaches that crime is wrong and laws shouldn't be broken.

Christians believe that generally law brings a healthy order to society and God permits just rulers to rule using law.

However, how wrong it is to break a law may depend on the reason why the criminal committed their crime.

And sometimes Christians will accept that breaking unjust law is acceptable.

If you need to make any corrections, can you please pause the video now and make those corrections.

Making corrections is so important because we learn very well from making mistakes but then also from correcting them.

So pause now, make corrections and then we'll move on to more views within Christianity.

There are two main attitudes in Christianity towards those who break the law.

There may be far more different attitudes to those people who break the law within Christianity.

But these are sort of the main two ideas.

Some Christians will believe that the punishment should be severe as the crime committed.

There are verses in the Bible such as an, "Eye for an eye," which suggests that you should have a punishment which is equal to the crime committed as severe as.

Some people might say this is a form of what we call retribution, sort of payback for what someone's done to you or a form of what we call deterrence which essentially putting someone off committing a crime.

So for example, if we said, well, the punishment for drink driving is to have your licence taken away and you won't be allowed to drive again, someone might say, "Well, I don't want to have my licence taken away so I'm not going to drink and drive." It deters you from doing the same thing.

Some Christians will believe it's important to hate the crime, not the criminal.

So, recognising that person needs help to change their behaviour and to say, "I don't like the action "you have taken but I still care about you as a person and want to help you." This is what we call reformation within Christianity.

And also with aside from Christian thought, reformation is the idea even within the U.

K.

justice system, that we'll be looking to change someone's behaviour for the better.

It's often what I say to students when they say, "Oh don't tell me off this, you just really hate me." And I'm like, "I don't hate you.

"No, no way whatsoever.

"You're all great.

"I love you as students, you're fantastic.

"But I don't like the behaviour that you're exhibiting to me right now." Same idea.

Are they willing to change that behaviour for the better? So, some Christians will say, it needs to be as severe as the crime committed.

Some will say, look, we need to acknowledge that the person themselves needs help to change for the better to realise that their actions are wrong and to hate the crime they've committed not the actual criminal.

Recognising those two separate things and that person needs help to change.

So, what I'm going to get you to do is do some multiple choice quick-fire questions again.

Just to see if we can make it really clear those two beliefs.

And then we'll have a go at building on that and looking at specific types of crime and the Christian views on them.

So, ready? I'm going to disappear.

All Christians believe a punishment should be as severe as the crime committed.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, it's false.

Not all Christians will believe this, just some.

Many Christians believe it is important to hate the crime not the criminal.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

Many Christians do believe it's important to hate the crime not the criminal.

When you put someone off reoffending it is called deterrence or reformation? Three, two, one.

Good, deterrence is the idea of putting someone off crime.

When you help an offender not to commit crime and to change their behaviour, it's called deterrence or reformation? Three, two, one.

Good, it's reformation.

This idea of changing their behaviour for the better.

What we're going to move on to now is I want to get your thoughts on something.

So, let's have a look at that.

I want you to answer the following questions.

Spend about three minutes on this.

Which view do you agree with more and why? So the two views are, some believe the punishment should be as severe as the crime committed.

And some believe it's important to hate the crime, not the criminal and look to reform them.

I want you to write down for me please.

Which of those two views you find more convincing and why? The most important thing you should tell me, why that is the case.

I want you to pause the video, write your answer down.

Unpause when you're ready and we're going to look at specific Christian views on hate crime, theft and murder.

Okay, so we're going to look at Christian views on hate crime, theft and murder.

We're going to consider sort of general Christian views, whether or not Christianity would ever allow these crimes for any reason.

And then also maybe look at some verses that would apply too.

So, starting off with hate crimes.

So, hate crimes are crimes.

They are usually violence-based and they're usually based on prejudice.

So, perhaps maybe a prejudice about someone's race, religion or gender.

It could be for a number of different reasons, essentially a crime which is based on these prejudice.

Now, I feel like I need to sort of say disclaimer, just in case any of my students are watching this from my own school.

They're going to say, "Miss Speakman, you've put "Love your neighbour" on there.

You don't like us using, "love thy neighbour." And I feel like I need to sort of clarify something here.

I tell my students that so many people in exam questions use, "Love your neighbour", thinking it's easy to remember or shove it in there.

It's the correct quotation, it applies to so many different topics.

And I say, yeah, it does it.

It's good to use.

However, there are better ways of using it than just putting it in and saying, "Oh look, Jesus said, love thy neighbour." Therefore, you should love one another and hate on bad.

I always say if you're going to be using, "Love thy neighbour," do it properly, please, okay? I'm not saying like, include the Bible reference.

That's not needed necessarily.

But explaining exactly what is meant by "Love your neighbour" not just saying this is a loving thing to do but talking specifically about that other word I've got there, agape love.

Now, Christianity does very clearly teach, "Love your neighbour" as a commandment from Jesus.

He says, this is an important teaching.

But it is important that this is based on a type of love which the Greeks called agape love.

Agape love is self sacrificial, unconditional love shown to anybody no matter who they are, no matter what they've done.

So essentially, it means that I would be no different.

I should treat my parents no differently to how I would treat an absolute stranger in a different country.

So the idea that's self-sacrificial.

I should be willing to give myself up in some way for another person.

It's unconditional.

So, it doesn't matter who they are.

And so Christians will say it's a sort of love that God shows to humanity.

And so when you use "Love thy neighbour" yes, by all means use it and I say to my students but make sure you explain about agape.

It's what it's based on this type of love that you should be using.

Because then we can really clearly say that in Christianity, they disagree with hate crime because when Jesus taught to love your neighbour, saying that nobody is different from anybody else.

You should treat everybody exactly the same.

You should love everybody unconditionally.

That's regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of gender, regardless of sexuality.

All of these things shouldn't matter.

You should love and treat everybody equally and that is truly agape.

So if you're going to use "Love your neighbour" make sure you explain agape alongside it.

Self-sacrificial, unconditional love.

And therefore Christians say, would say that hate crime is never okay because you should never treat anyone differently because of who they are.

That's not showing agape, that's not loving your neighbour.

When we're looking at Christian views on theft.

Theft is the action or crime of stealing.

That's taking something that does not belong to you.

And in Christianity in Matthew, it says, "Do for others what you want them to do for you." And we can clearly say, I wouldn't want my things stolen so I shouldn't do it to somebody else.

Theft is wrong 'cause it's taking something that doesn't actually belong to you.

Some Christians might argue though, that it isn't actually theft.

Let's say someone is starving and needs to have something to stay alive and the only way to do that is by stealing.

That God would understand in those cases because all of the world's resources essentially belong to God and God wouldn't want anyone to be suffering.

So, while Christians are predominantly against theft, The Ten Commandments says, not to steal.

The golden rule suggests that we wouldn't want it done to us so why would we do it to somebody else? Some Christians may say it's permissible if someone is truly suffering and needs something to stay alive, for example or to save the life of another.

Then lastly Christian views on murder.

Murder is unlawfully or deliberately killing another human being.

Now specifically in law, if you commit murder, that's the idea of premeditated killing.

So essentially, you have in some way thought about what you're doing before you do it.

There are differences in law then between murder and manslaughter.

Manslaughter might be the accidental killing of someone or when you've killed someone in self-defense.

And so murder is deliberately killing a person.

The Bible specifically says, "Do not commit murder." It's really, really clear in the Bible.

Don't murder people.

So, it's really also important for us to realise that murder and killing are not the same.

The Bible does not actually say, "Do not kill" as many people believe it does.

It's "Do not commit murder." Now, murder and killing aren't the same because murder implies a breach of the law, an offence.

Killing could be done in self-defense, which usually people aren't charged for and go to prison for depending.

But also some things are allowed when we kill another human being such as in war.

You don't go to prison for killing someone in war.

So, murder implies an offence against the law, killing implies that it is permissible in some way.

So, Christian views on murder would always be wrong but may allow killings like for example, in war.

But when we talk about do not commit murder, Christians would definitely be against the idea of murder.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to move on to some questions now.

Let's see how much we have learned of what we've done so far.

So I'm going to give you loads of questions sort of put together, just to make sure we've got everything nice and clear.

So I'm going to disappear so we can do that and then we're going to move on to the questions.

I want you to pause the video on the next slide to complete your task, please.

As I said they're going to be sort of longer questions which then get us to bring together what we've learned in our lesson so far.

So, I'd like you to answer these six questions, please.

Can you please write them out in full sentences so that you've got an answer for each of these and then we'll go through the corrections once you have finished.

So I want you to pause the video now, please.

Write your answers in full sentences and unpause when you are ready to go through corrections.

If you can see this slide, I'm assuming then you are ready for corrections.

Please make sure you've got a different coloured pen out ready for your corrections.

If you're not quite finished then you can rewind the video.

Go back and finish them off.

But if you are ready, let's get on with our answers.

So, what do Christians believe about hate crimes and why? So, they believe that they are wrong.

Jesus encouraged showing love to everyone regardless of who they are.

Which Bible verse can Christians use to support this view? "Love your neighbour." Apologies there.

That should say, which Bible verse not why Bible verse? Obviously you can tell I did this one that ties.

What is agape love? This is self-sacrificial, unconditional love.

Which Bible verse can Christians use to explain why theft is wrong? It's "Do for others what you want them to do for you." What is the difference between murder and killing? Murder is killing outside of the law, killing may imply an accident or justifiable ending of a life such as in war.

Which Bible verse supports Christian views on murder? And this is, "Do not commit murder." If you need to make any corrections, can you please do so now by pausing the video, making those corrections.

Unpausing when you are ready.

So, I'm just going to pop up on the screen again.

There you are.

There you go.

So, I want to say a huge thank you for your lesson today and your participation.

So I hope you found this really, really interesting.

I hope that you have found it useful to talk through Christian views on general on those who break the law, the differing views within that but also specific views on hate crime, theft and murder.

And I hope to see you again soon.

Our next lesson in this series of lessons is going to be looking at Islamic views on exactly what we've learned today.

So hate crime, theft and murder and those who break the law.

So, thank you very much.

Thank you for working so hard.

Goodbye.