There was once a man, I’ll call him Joe, who was sentenced to death by the state.
Joe was of a questionable character. No one was sure who his father really was. He ran away from home when he was 12. He was a loner. He brought alcohol to the parties and hung out with prostitutes. He was a blue-collar worker when he was employed, which wasn’t constant, and at other times lived on handouts.
He criticized religious leaders for taking advantage of their members, and let his anger out on these people to the point of physically damaging their property. He started a gang of men who roamed the territory with him, condemning the powerful and wealthy. He would have been called a socialist if the media knew about him, because he kept saying those who had should give to those who did not have, including prison inmates.
It should not come as a surprise, then, that eventually Joe was arrested and put on trial. He wasn’t a citizen, and the road to the death penalty was easy. The religious leaders cheered at the death of this traitor.
Joe, is of course, Jesus. In the recent GOP debate, there was a noticeable celebration of Rick Perry’s declaration that the death penalty was ultimate justice. Perry tries to succor Christian extremists (not all Christians are extreme) and proudly defends authorizing the death of 234 people in the state of Texas.
There doesn’t seem to be any cognitive dissonance for certain Christians to celebrate the death penalty, despite the fact that the hero of the Christian faith was not only executed, but you could also argue that he was wrongfully convicted, as is argued about many of today’s death row inmates.
I myself am generally opposed to the death penalty for a lot of practical reasons, but I’ll admit that I certainly would be the first to pull the trigger if someone hurt my kid. Yet, that’s also why we have the law, to keep up from pulling the trigger, to find out who is really guilty, and what the circumstance were. For those Christians who do support the death penalty, there should at least be a sense of somber necessity, not a sense of righteousness vs. the guilty. After all, the Jesus that was executed by the state is also said by many Christians to have experienced that in the place of others. But can those Christians take that belief, that Christ died the necessary execution, at face value? Do they believe it? Or do they really believe he died for the innocent? In which case, why did he need to die?
Excellent post, Jen!