America seems more and more interested in legal events. Ever since "The Trial Of The Century" ( The O.J. Simpson Trial), and then the subsequent trials dealing with the Oklahoma tragedy, and now the scandal at the highest levels of authority, Americans find themselves more and more involved in such legal carnivals. Many law schools are using these trials as classroom examples for posing to their students many of the possible issues that can come to play in a criminal trial.

One of the elements of the trial centers around the jury. In reading about jury selection, I learned that experts in legal world indicate that one can employ a number if different methods to select jurors. There are several different classification methods used to give direction and which give lawyers a handle on jury selection. One of the ways to classify jurors is by social categories.

"Other experts classify prospective jurors in five social categories: leaders, followers, fillers, negotiators, and holdouts. Lawyers generally don't like leaders whose independence makes them hard to sway. If, however, the lawyer is sure a leader is on the 'right' side, then he or she would be a good pick. A lawyer who has found such a person would then try to put as many followers on the jury as possible. That's because followers, the passive ones, are accustomed to receiving orders more than giving them, are likely to fall in line with the leaders, or strong members of the jury. What lawyers call "filler types" might also be desirable. Because "followers" display indecision but not outright resistance, any lawyer worth his salt will think he can sway them to his client's cause. Of course, a prosecutor or plaintiff lawyer would never want a holdout, a person unlikely to go along when the majority of the jurors want to convict or find for the plaintiff."1

As I read this interesting way to classify and select jurors, I thought about what God's people are like and what group they ought to fall into as they live in a world that involves many "trials" everyday. You see, everyone is in "court" everyday sitting in the juror box, listening to "testimony", evaluating evidence, and deciding "life and death issues". As we live our lives, we are called upon to decide right and wrong, to evaluate the truth of what people tell us, to judge the evidence presented to us by others; by others who may want us to find a life-style or a moral position as "innocent." We are jurors who are appointed to this trial for a lifetime.

God's people, living in this world, should be of that group called leaders, of that group called "holdouts." Bible Christians ought to be marked with that sense of independence and/or refusal to go along with the majority. It surely must be recognized that the morality, the ethics, and the standards of the world will often stand in distinction from what God expects. Perhaps we fail to see ourselves a jurors. We may fail to ask ourselves the question, "What classification of jurors are we?" American society is not on the upward path of morality, honesty, decency, and justice. It is moving downward! and we need to be of that tribe called, "holdouts," refusing to give in to the constant downward path which increasingly accepts a moving moral standard. Perhaps, the trial of the century is the "trial" that we are engaged in everyday as active "jurors" in our own lives, our homes, our jobs, jurors that make decisions on how we are going to live in this world!

" -- pgs. 76-76