Tim DeChristopher

I've been hearing in the news about Tim DeChristopher. My prayers are with him. What he did was courageous or foolhardy or some combination of the two. But he was fighting the good fight. And now he's suffering the legal consequences, which is the risk you take on when you undertake civil disobedience.

Comparing him to Jesus sounds unbearably pretentious. But the comparison is perfectly valid, and not really all that aggrandizing, if it's understood that lots of people have performed this kind of Christlike action—disrupting the powers of this world in some small but dramatic way (you remember that incident with the moneychangers, yes?) and then being crushed by those same powers as the price of their witness.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see people go to prison for criminal negligence in the Deepwater Horizon spill, or the housing crash, not to mention the architects of the last administration's policies on torture.

There are times when the conspiratorial populism of the Book of Mormon speaks to me, and this is one of them.

Those Gadianton robbers had filled the judgment seats,
having usurped the power and authority of the land,
condemning the righteous because of their righteousness,
letting the wicked go unpunished because of their money—
to be held in office at the head of government,
that they might get gain,
and do according to their own wills.
(Helaman 7:4-5)