“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also . . .
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good. . . ”
— Jesus Christ, who died by death penalty
JESUS, AFTER RECEIVING THE DEATH PENALTY
The death penalty, like hot button issues such as abortion or gay rights, brings out the rabid dog in people.
I hate that it brings out the mad dog in so many Christians.
Because Jesus was no kind of mad dog.
Nor, for that matter, were Paul and the early Christians who, for 300 years, were willing to go to their own deaths rather than inflict violence on anyone.
We American Christians have strayed light years away from living out our own Christian roots, and yet we Christians all over America now seem to know as much about the very complex and (yes) peaceful faith of Islam as we do our own Christianity. After all, the theologians and Koranic scholars at Fox News–who increasingly make theological claims about the Bible that any first-semester seminary student would shred–are forever keeping us educated on the Islamic faith and its long tradition.
We American Christians tend to cherry-pick scriptures at every turn to mold Jesus and the apostles into the image of a god that lines up with all the Great American Myths of great American power and control. We prefer capitalist Christianity over the genuine article because the genuine article is really, really demanding and challenging, requiring that we maintain the spiritual discipline to keep our most violent impulses in check. (But oh well, the capitalist Christianity is close enough.)
In capitalist Christianity, lives of vicious criminals–and there’s been vicious criminals around since Adam and Eve’s own son offed his own brother–are as disposable as the kazillion needless products that we buy and hoard and throw away. You murder somebody, we’re fine with letting the Righteous and Always Inerrent (according to the always spiritually disciplined Rick Perry who is not real big on irony) State Government dispose of you. Because, what the hell–you probably did SOMETHING derserving of anymore life on this earth even if you didn’t do the killing you were convicted for. (I hear people say this all the time: “He probably did SOMETHING deserving the death penalty! Ha Ha Ha, Ho Ho Ho!) You’re as disposable as last Christmas’s crap.
If Jesus were at the side of you, a killer, as you were receiving the needle in that holy death chamber, he’d tell you to your face “Man, you’re some kind of sinner.”
(Oh wait, our Christian faith teaches us that Jesus IS in those execution chambers. Weeping, no doubt, for the one being executed as well as for those doing the executing and for those loved ones of the victim watching it. Weeping for everybody, but there.)
Jesus would love him some Texas justice. The son of a man who was dragged to his death by a quite evil White Supremecist did not want the evil White Supremecist executed because the son has moved on and knows that whether the Supremecist lived out his days in a cell or in the realm of his afterlife, he, the son, can do no better than to move on with his lasting grief and his life. (They killed his father’s killer in Texas last night anyway and never mind the son’s wishes that his father’s vicious killer not be killed. That’s how Righteous Texas Government Justice is.)
Seriously, people, I don’t want to come off any too righteous on this issue or any other. While I do adamantly oppose the death penalty, I’m willing–as the saintly Pope John Paul II was willing–to make exceptions for mass killers. I’ll never lose any sleep over the execution of Osama Bin Laden, whose guilt for mass murder is beyond doubt and who continued to plot and oversee the deaths of innocent people around God’s entire world, not just in America. My only issue with his execution is that the Obama Administration didn’t come right out and tell the truth, that the mission was to kill Osama, resistance or no resistance. But Presidents, like Congress persons and governments everywhere, lie when the truth will do.
Still, to walk men and women into death chambers and stick their arms with lethal drugs regardless of innocence or guilt–it’s just bad Christian form, my fellow Christians.
“An eye for an eye makes us all blind.” — Martin Luther King,
he who was executed by a White Supremecist
The death penalty is just pain barbaric.
Woops, make that plain barbaric.