Christianity produces a system of laws and justice that puts a high premium on both personal moral responsibility and the sanctity of human life. For this reason, the punishment of murderers has been taken with great seriousness. Those who take a human life with premeditation were understood to forfeit their own.[The Post-Christian Condition – Anders Breivik and the Limitations of Justice Fri, Apr. 20, 2012 Posted: 10:13 AM EDT]
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R. Albert Mohler Jr.
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Christianity
produces a system of laws and justice that puts a high premium on both personal
moral responsibility and the sanctity of human life. For this reason, the
punishment of murderers has been taken with great seriousness. Those who take a
human life with premeditation were understood to forfeit their own. - R. Albert
Mohler Jr. [The Post-Christian Condition –
Anders Breivik and the Limitations of Justice Fri, Apr. 20, 2012
Posted: 10:13 AM EDT] [PHOTO SOURCE: https://quozio.com/quote/8zh58xvsz6bv/1295/christianity-produces-a-system-of-laws-and-justice-that] |
Why Christians
should support the death penalty
Opinion by R. Albert Mohler Jr.,
Special to CNN
May 1st, 2014
09:15 AM ET
(CNN) - The death penalty has been part of human society
for millennia, understood to be the ultimate punishment for the most serious
crimes.
But,
should Christians support the death penalty now, especially in light of the controversial execution Tuesday in Oklahoma?
This is
not an easy yes or no question.
On the
one hand, the Bible clearly calls for capital punishment in the case of
intentional murder.
In
Genesis 9:6, God told Noah that the penalty for intentional murder should be
death:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
The death
penalty was explicitly grounded in the fact that God made every individual
human being in his own image, and thus an act of intentional murder is an
assault upon human dignity and the very image of God.
In the
simplest form, the Bible condemns murder and calls for the death of the
murderer. The one who intentionally takes life by murder forfeits the right to
his own life.
In the
New Testament, the Apostle Paul instructs Christians that the government “does
not bear the sword in vain.” Indeed, in this case the magistrate “is the
servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the evildoer.”
[Romans 13:4]
On the
other hand, the Bible raises a very high requirement for evidence in a case of
capital murder.
The act
of murder must be confirmed and corroborated by the eyewitness testimony of
accusers, and the society is to take every reasonable precaution to ensure that
no one is punished unjustly.
While the
death penalty is allowed and even mandated in some cases, the Bible also
reveals that not all who are guilty of murder and complicity in murder are
executed.
Just
remember the biblical accounts concerning Moses, David and Saul, later known as
Paul.
Christian
thinking about the death penalty must begin with the fact that the Bible
envisions a society in which capital punishment for murder is sometimes
necessary, but should be exceedingly rare.
The Bible
also affirms that the death penalty, rightly and justly applied, will have a
powerful deterrent effect.
In a world
of violence, the death penalty is understood as a necessary firewall against
the spread of further deadly violence.
Seen in
this light, the problem we face today is not with the death penalty, but with
society at large.
American
society is quickly conforming to a secular worldview, and the clear sense of
right and wrong that was Christianity’s gift to Western civilization is being
replaced with a much more ambiguous morality.
We have
lost the cultural ability to declare murder – even mass murder – to be
deserving of the death penalty.
We have
also robbed the death penalty of its deterrent power by allowing death penalty
cases to languish for years in the legal system, often based on irrational and
irrelevant appeals.
While
most Americans claim to believe that the death penalty should be supported,
there is a wide disparity in how Americans of different states and regions
think about the issue.
Furthermore,
Christians should be outraged at the economic and racial injustice in how the
death penalty is applied. While the law itself is not prejudiced, the
application of the death penalty often is.
There is
very little chance that a wealthy white murderer will ever be executed. There
is a far greater likelihood that a poor African-American murderer will face
execution.
Why? Because
the rich can afford massively expensive legal defense teams that can exhaust
the ability of the prosecution to get a death penalty sentence.
This is
an outrage, and no Christian can support such a disparity. As the Bible warns,
the rich must not be able to buy justice on their own terms.
There is
also the larger cultural context. We must recognize that our cultural loss of
confidence in human dignity and the secularizing of human identity has made
murder a less heinous crime in the minds of many Americans.
Most
would not admit this lower moral evaluation of murder, but our legal system is
evidence that this is certainly true.
We also
face a frontal assault upon the death penalty that is driven by legal activists
and others determined to bring legal execution to an end in America.
Controversy
over an execution this week in Oklahoma will bring even more attention to this cause,
but most Americans will be completely unaware that this tragedy was caused by
the inability of prison authorities to gain access to drugs for lethal
injection that would have prevented those complications.
Opponents
of the death penalty have, by their legal and political action, accomplished
what might seem at first to be impossible – they now demand action to correct a
situation that they largely created.
Their
intention is to make the death penalty so horrifying in the public mind that
support for executions would disappear. They have attacked every form of
execution as “cruel and unusual punishment,” even though the Constitution
itself authorizes the death penalty.
It is a
testament to moral insanity that they have successfully diverted attention from
a murderer’s heinous crimes and instead put the death penalty on trial.
Should
Christians support the death penalty today?
I believe
that Christians should hope, pray and strive for a society in which the death
penalty, rightly and rarely applied, would make moral sense.
This
would be a society in which there is every protection for the rights of the
accused, and every assurance that the social status of the murderer will not
determine the sentence for the crime.
Christians
should work to ensure that there can be no reasonable doubt that the accused is
indeed guilty of the crime. We must pray for a society in which the motive
behind capital punishment is justice, and not merely revenge.
We must
work for a society that will honor every single human being at every point of
development and of every race and ethnicity as made in God’s image.
We must
hope for a society that will support and demand the execution of justice in
order to protect the very existence of that society. We must pray for a society
that rightly tempers justice with mercy.
Should
Christians support the death penalty today? I believe that we must, but with
the considerations detailed above.
At the
same time, given the secularization of our culture and the moral confusion that
this has brought, this issue is not so clear-cut as some might think.
I do
believe that the death penalty, though supported by the majority of Americans,
may not long survive in this cultural context.
It is one
thing to support the death penalty. It is another thing altogether to explain
it, fix it, administer it and sustain it with justice.
We are
about to find out if Americans have the determination to meet that challenge.
Christians should take leadership to help our fellow citizens understand what
is at stake.
God
affirmed the death penalty for murder as he made his affirmation of human
dignity clear to Noah. Our job is to make it clear to our neighbors.
R. Albert
Mohler Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The
views expressed in this column belong to Mohler.
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