Lessons I learned from Poldark: Whatever Happened to Justice?

This Sunday saw the completion of Poldark's season one saga, wringing tears from those who watched it - those of us who torture ourselves each week as we watch the ups and downs in the life of Ross Poldark. And lately he seems to have experienced many downs. One of the charms of Ross is that he keeps on fighting and struggling to bring justice to all the world against any odds. But every injustice he encounters seems to bring him closer to the despair that his fight will never be totally won. People still die, people are still poor, the powerful still take advantage of the weak, families still fight, businesses are forced to close, and people can still be cruel to their fellow human beings, cheating, killing, gossiping, hating, fighting - and he, at least for a moment, becomes overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the problem. His fighting spirit droops under the weight of injustice in the world that will just not go away.

I'm afraid I'm going to get a little philosophical on you all in this post... :) But it seems like something worth talking about.

There is a moment about ten minutes before the series ends when you can see it in his face, and Aidan Turner does it masterfully. It is a look mixed with sorrow, disgust, disbelief, anger and heartache. Just looking at him makes me want to weep for him and for humanity!

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He is surveying the wreckage of the Wareleggens' ship while the poor, starving tenants and workers are scavenging the wreckage for passable food, fighting with each other and members of the crew who are washing up on the shore half-drowned. Every person there is tired, hungry and angry, groping in the dark amidst the smoke, the shouting and the human suffering all around them. And there is Ross. He has gone to help any man he can find who needs it, but he seems almost forced to stop by his own realization of the chaos around him - the chaos caused by the acts of self-interest that the instinct for survival drives men to do. Ross hates it, but he is also resigned to the reality that it is natural, that if left without better influence mankind will almost always choose their own interests when their survival is at stake.

He has seen the goodness and sacrifice that mankind can sometimes rise to and that reality makes his realization an even heavier blow. Men work hard in his mine in order to take care of their families, and people like Verity sacrifice their time and personal pleasure to look after their loved ones. Ross loves his wife and daughter, he has true friends in people like Dwight and Verity, and Elizabeth cherishes her son. How, his face seems to say, could people who are capable of love and sacrifice also be capable of such barbarity and selfishness?

This look resonated with me so much because I have thought the same thing, even of myself. It is poignant because it hits close to home, just like any such moment on the screen will do. The human race seems capable of achieving so much beauty, while at the same time achieving new lows of cruelty and self-interest.

From the 1780s until today - indeed, in all of human history - this despairing dilemma has not altered. Sometimes it is tempting to yell, "Why can't people just be good and love to do things that are beautiful - loving, kind, self-sacrificial things? Why is beauty always marred by things that ruin it??" Is there an answer?

Yes.

(And I wish I could tell Ross...)

Humankind was made to be beautiful, to love and show kindness to those around them, to treat those others like people. How can we really know that – especially when people so often act in the opposite way? Because we have an innate sense that cruel, impersonal actions are not right. We all get that look of Ross's on our own faces because we can tell when a person is acting in a way that is less than human.

Why do we think that there is a way to act that is human and how do we know what that should be? How do we know that we should be kind and admire self-sacrifice? The only answer that can explain it and tell us why we so often fail is that God created the human race in His own image – a person who values other people and can love them. The reason we so often don't value and love is because we have decided to choose for ourselves what love is, and that often is biased by self-interest to one degree or another. When we hear the word "sin" we think it is simply breaking a list of rules, but that is a most inadequate definition. What it encompasses is nothing less than a rejection of God – what He says and what He has created us to be and to do.

The actions of those on the beach with Ross can only be called unjust because there is another way of acting that is just. Ross knows it, and he will never give up fighting for people act justly. But all of his work will only be a temporary surface fix. The only solution to end injustice and hatred is a return to the truth: that humankind is less than it should be, and every person desperately needs to be reborn as a new person, which can only happen if they believe with faith in Jesus Christ so God can recreate them.

The world will continue to go on as it is, beautiful and despairingly cruel, while some men are treated with injustice and other men are driven to despair because they cannot save others from such a fate, as long as we insist on trying to solve the problem on our own and without God. Let Ross's look of despair drive us to finding a solution that will fully save the human race.

And thanks for reading to the end!

"As it is written, None is righteous, 

just and truthful and upright and conscientious, 

no, not one."

"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,   

being justified freely by His grace through the redemption 

that is in Christ Jesus..."

Romans 3

© 2015 Anna Morton