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Now and then we find a ‘religious’ argument for a public policy position that betrays an embarrassing ignorance of Scripture. We found one not long ago concerning the death penalty. What dismayed us was not the familiar arguments we’ve heard before but the source of them: a site we review often called Religion Dispatches.
The author of the piece in question is Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Ruprecht is against the death penalty, for all the reasons you might imagine: it is an act of vengeance, it does not act as a deterrent to crime and it precludes the possibility of correcting a mistake. We’ve heard it all before. So have you, probably.
The truth of the matter is that these are all valid points that proponents of the death penalty, in our experience, don’t take nearly as seriously as they should. Increasingly, the cost of execution is being cited as a factor as well. Legal fees to cover years of appeals can actually be more expensive for the state than a lifetime of incarceration.
We would add another reason why governments should not execute people: because it precludes the ability of prisoners to experience the love and forgiveness available through Jesus Christ. Some of the most authentic faith we’ve experienced has been inside the walls of a prison. God is alive and well there, and killing a prisoner, regardless of the severity of the crime, makes it impossible for the prisoner to confess and begin to atone for his or her actions.
Even if they oppose capital punishment, Christians have no right to say that their faith prohibits the government from carrying out the death penalty for one simple reason: it isn’t true. Scripture does not mandate the ultimate punishment, but it certainly permits it. Claiming otherwise, as Ruprecht and the publishers of Religion Dispatches have done, is biblical malpractice.
Ruprecht’s faith-based argument for abolishing the death penalty, if you can call it an argument, boils down to this: the death of Jesus was unjust and Pilate had Him killed for purely utilitarian purposes. True enough, but ultimately beside the point.
Left unsaid in his piece is the obvious truth about the crucifixion: it was part of God’s plan, and Jesus acknowledged the right of the state to carry out its punishment. The book of Romans is clear that civil government has the right to execute, and even the commandment roughly translated “Thou shalt not kill” more accurately refers to the shedding of innocent blood, not the punishment of a crime.
The important distinction, then, is this: You may argue that the state shouldn’t use capital punishment, and in many cases we’ll say “amen.” But when you say that God prohibits it, you are simply wrong. For a Web magazine that calls itself Christian or a professor of religious studies to say, even implicitly, that God prohibits capital punishment shows either poor scholarship or the crass use of the Bible as a justification for one’s own personal agenda. Either way, they are without excuse.
You may have noticed that we provided the link to Religion Dispatches above. We normally don’t do that because in general, we link only to sites that will build your knowledge or build your faith. But you might want to bookmark this site and look at it occasionally to remember a lesson we learn here every day: there are no shortage of people who will use the Bible to justify the most unbiblical concepts you can imagine. We dare not forget there are people and organizations like that in the culture, because they make the job of proclaiming the truth markedly more difficult.
The author of the piece in question is Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Ruprecht is against the death penalty, for all the reasons you might imagine: it is an act of vengeance, it does not act as a deterrent to crime and it precludes the possibility of correcting a mistake. We’ve heard it all before. So have you, probably.
The truth of the matter is that these are all valid points that proponents of the death penalty, in our experience, don’t take nearly as seriously as they should. Increasingly, the cost of execution is being cited as a factor as well. Legal fees to cover years of appeals can actually be more expensive for the state than a lifetime of incarceration.
We would add another reason why governments should not execute people: because it precludes the ability of prisoners to experience the love and forgiveness available through Jesus Christ. Some of the most authentic faith we’ve experienced has been inside the walls of a prison. God is alive and well there, and killing a prisoner, regardless of the severity of the crime, makes it impossible for the prisoner to confess and begin to atone for his or her actions.
Even if they oppose capital punishment, Christians have no right to say that their faith prohibits the government from carrying out the death penalty for one simple reason: it isn’t true. Scripture does not mandate the ultimate punishment, but it certainly permits it. Claiming otherwise, as Ruprecht and the publishers of Religion Dispatches have done, is biblical malpractice.
Ruprecht’s faith-based argument for abolishing the death penalty, if you can call it an argument, boils down to this: the death of Jesus was unjust and Pilate had Him killed for purely utilitarian purposes. True enough, but ultimately beside the point.
Left unsaid in his piece is the obvious truth about the crucifixion: it was part of God’s plan, and Jesus acknowledged the right of the state to carry out its punishment. The book of Romans is clear that civil government has the right to execute, and even the commandment roughly translated “Thou shalt not kill” more accurately refers to the shedding of innocent blood, not the punishment of a crime.
The important distinction, then, is this: You may argue that the state shouldn’t use capital punishment, and in many cases we’ll say “amen.” But when you say that God prohibits it, you are simply wrong. For a Web magazine that calls itself Christian or a professor of religious studies to say, even implicitly, that God prohibits capital punishment shows either poor scholarship or the crass use of the Bible as a justification for one’s own personal agenda. Either way, they are without excuse.
You may have noticed that we provided the link to Religion Dispatches above. We normally don’t do that because in general, we link only to sites that will build your knowledge or build your faith. But you might want to bookmark this site and look at it occasionally to remember a lesson we learn here every day: there are no shortage of people who will use the Bible to justify the most unbiblical concepts you can imagine. We dare not forget there are people and organizations like that in the culture, because they make the job of proclaiming the truth markedly more difficult.
