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Wednesday, 17 January 2007 06:54 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"Any manës death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
ÇƒÓ John Donne
ï
MARS HILL ÇƒÓ I used to believe the Bible was specifically anti-death penalty. I was wrong, but I am still anti-death penalty.
When I cited the Bible to reinforce my anti-death penalty penchant, I used both Testaments. "Thou shalt not kill" sounded pretty straightforward. And when Jesus had a chance to join in vigilante justice against the woman caught in adultery (John 8), he declined. "Those without sin, cast the first stone." Yep, I concluded, the Bible is anti-death penalty.
However,
when I studied the Bible more academically, I learned how wrong I was.
When Exodus 20:13 actually states, "You shall not murder," thatës
exactly what it had in mind: murder and vigilante justice. It did not
have in mind a state permanently removing its criminal elements. Such
"eliminations" were as acceptable to biblical culture as it is to ours
today.
I also found out
how likely that the story from John 8 was perhaps not a part of the
original text. Only one Greek manuscript has it older than 500 CE, and
we have many other manuscripts older than that, without it. Long story
short, this story about the woman caught in adultery might be
authentic, or it could be wishful thinking by early Christianity.
Though a great story, the textual evidence might ÇƒÓ or might not ǃÓ
explicitly support my pro-life position.
The person
responsible for the most number of murdered innocents in recent years
is dead. If there was ever a person deserving the death penalty, Saddam
Hussein seems to have been that person. Now dead, do you feel safer
than when he was alive?
His sham trial,
and his too-early execution means that thousands of Kurds with
grievances against Hussein will have no place for their stories to be
heard by the world.
The typical
knee-jerk anti-death penalty (liberal) position invokes tired
arguments: the death penalty doesnët bring victims back, or satisfy the
survivors, and the appeals process for a death row inmate costs many
lifetimes of life-imprisonment costs.
But Iëm a person
of faith, who believes the Bible true, and thus knows that God loves
this world more than we could ever suspect.
I believe God is
supremely pro-life, with love-plans for us all. Saddamës death by
hateful wills corrected nothing, and perhaps ended his future
appointments with grace. If you really wanted to punish him, make him
spend his life in prison reading the Qurëan, which is a surprising
book. God (or Allah), who designed Saddam for a life quite different
from the one he led, had not yet ended His plans for him.
Nor is God not
finished with any of us. While weëre all under some penalty of death
(the bell tolls for thee), we havenët the right to foreclose on what
God may be doing.
I started out
above with the Bible supporting a no-death-penalty approach, and
outlined my revision of this. Now I revise again: The death penalty is
murder, which violates the Ten Commandments. All killings of Godës
creation before their time, whether through war, or national policy, is
ÇƒÓ letës call a spade a spade ÇƒÓ murder.
Husseinës death
was as premature as yours would be if you were murdered. If we do not
lead the lives we are supposed to, may some judge give us the grace to
live long enough to know that correction for ourselves. What we would
wish for ourselves, we should extend to others.
We are not wise
enough to know what God has in store. Every personës untimely death
diminishes this world because it prematurely cuts a minute thread of
Godës will, and sometimes this world, or someoneës world, hangs by a
thread.
ï
Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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