On Christianity and Capital Punishment

There has been a lot of new lately about executions in the United States.  I can't read that news without getting sick to my stomach.  The death penalty is murder by the state.  Capital punishment is morally indefensible.  Period.  I fail to see how any Christian can support it.  The one we call Lord and Savior was executed by the state authorities of his time.  He taught us the way of nonviolence.  He wouldn't even let his followers use violence to prevent his own unjust execution.  He said love your enemies and turn the other cheek, which at the very least means do not repay violence with violence.  Matthew 5:38-39  His great Apostle Paul said do not repay anyone evil for evil and never avenge yourselves.  Romans 12:17, 19  Christianity came to accept capital punishment only after it became the established religion of the Roman Empire.  Accepting capital punishment is one of the many ways in which our faith abandoned its core principles in order to accommodate itself to empire and become powerful in the world.  That our faith accepted capital punishment is something of which we must repent.

So much of the discussion around capital punishment in our country misses the point.  We hear much talk about whether or not a particular prisoner is guilty.  For the Christian it doesn't matter.  Guilty or not every condemned person is a child of God.  That's all that matters.  We hear a lot of talk about the effect of race in capital sentencing.  The statistics prove that our juries are much more likely to condemn a Black man to death than a white one, but that's irrelevant.  Black or white, all people are children of God.  That's all that matters.  We hear a lot of talk about whether it is more expensive to keep a person alive in prison for many years than to execute him.  That's irrelevant.  How can a matter of mere money ever be a consideration in whether or not it is moral to kill someone?  We hear a lot about the deterrent effect of capital punishment.  The statistics prove that it has none, but that's irrelevant.  Every condemned person is a child of God and cannot morally be used as a tool to influence the behavior of others.

There is only one point that is relevant in any discussion of capital punishment.  It's murder.  It's the killing of a human being.  It is the killing of a child of God.  Whatever the victim of our state murder may have done, he or she is still a child of God.  Killing is still wrong.  Killing can never justify more killing.  Capital punishment is immoral.  Capital punishment is a sin committed by the society that sanctions it and the people who carry it out.  All of those other considerations that get discussed at such length in the little public debate that takes place over capital punishment in our country may be helpful in convincing people who don't oppose all capital punishment on moral grounds to oppose it on other grounds, but all of those considerations are morally irrelevant.  The only thing that's relevant is that capital punishment is murder.  It is immoral.  Period.

Every other supposedly advanced country in the world gets it about capital punishment.  We claim to be the most Christian of nations, and we don't get it.  Our commitment to state murder belies our claim to be Christian.  Capital punishment betrays Christ, the most famous victim of capital punishment.  I fail to see how any Christian can support capital punishment.  May Jesus Christ forgive us that we just don't understand.