> Timothy Mcviegh will die tomorrow at 8:00am EST. What are your thoughts on this? He committed a horrible crime but does it give the government the right to take his life? My mom used to always say, "two wrongs don't make a right" when my excuse for hitting my sister was "she hit me first", but its very true. The government (or anyone else for that matter) has no right to take anyone's life, no matter how horrible the crime. Life is precious, and most don't realize it until it has been lost.
>
> ht"realizing how inappropriate his Sn is for this topic"aeD

Hi! Remember me? Probably not; I posted here intermittently earlier this year and then vanished. Finding myself with some free time for the first time in recent memory, I've been lurking around here again, and since this is an old argument that I have Strong Views on, I thought I might as well drop in my $0.02.

But, my, this does seem a conservative set of responses, doesn't it? Almost enough to make me play Devil's advocate even if I weren't anti-death penalty, which I am.

I'm not going to cite the statistics showing that the U.S. is both the most aggressively pro-death penalty nation in the First World and has the highest violent crime rates (most people familiar with current politics already know this anyway), or the statistics that show that the the states that enforce the death penalty to the highest degree do not have demonstrably lower violent crime rates than states that enforce it to the lowest degree (deterrence has always been more of an "It makes sense" hypothesis than a provable sociological theory, after all, since causes and effects are *extremely* difficult to prove with something like this), or statistics showing the number of death row inmates who have been released after the finding of new evidence (which is distressingly high).

Why? Because anyone can question statistics, and that sort of thing can be argued forever without reaching a conclusion. Does it deter? Does it affect the psychology of the criminal? How much does it cost relative to life imprisonment? (I know people fight about this statistic, but the last source I checked said that surprisingly life in prison is cheaper, on average.) Is it a necessary step to provide closure for the victims' families? How efficient is our prison system at protecting society? Etc., etc., etc.

I'll just tell you the reason I am philosophically opposed to the death penalty. I could be convinced about any of the other points, but not this one. And, yes, a quick warning: it is religious, it is personal, and it may make very little or no sense to you. I can't help that; I can only hope a few people might understand and even some might agree.

I cannot conscience, in any circumstance, for any reason, taking the life of a person.

Even a criminal.

Even a murderer.

Even someone who cold-bloodedly set a bomb to kill 162 civilians and feels no remorse.

Because I still believe God made that man in his image, and Jesus Christ died on the cross and descended into Hell for that man, and that man's salvation or perdition is intimately and irrevocably tied to my own in a way I cannot describe or understand.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear the cries from the balcony, pious BS, you've never been in the victim's families' shoes, you don't know what it's like, you have no right to say things like that.

Well, maybe you're right. It's moot for now; it's never been directly my power to choose. All I can say is how I feel now, and that, if it *were* my mother or my sister or my best friend or my son killed, I hope I could be strong enough to keep my principles and not give into hatred and the desire for vengeance.

But I'd like to turn the question around: what if you were the killer? What if you were the one consumed and controlled by the dark side of yourself, the one who lost his humanity and empathy and sank so low, so far from what God made you to be that you took another's life? And what if, by some miracle (the same miracle as always, actually) you changed, somehow you were lifted up out of the mire and back into the sun, you received mercy from the world and another chance? How would you feel, knowing that it was the nation's choice to instead send you plunging down, down, down into the abyss for eternity?

That's how I sometimes feel, even though no one's overtly threatened my life in the past. But there's a million chances to die every day, as we all know, and what if I'd died before I'd received salvation, before I'd gotten the Answer to my life's question?

Sure, I used to lean back in my armchair and say, "Screw him! It was his choice! We have a right to be protected from people like that." "We". "People like that". Us and them.

Now I'm not so sure. The Bible tells me that all of us are depraved and broken within, that anyone who has ever felt the emotion of hate is guilty of murder in the eyes of God. Spiritually, I am a heartless, brutal murderer, many times over, a murderer of the whole world. (A Muslim Sura: "He who takes a single man's life shall be considered guilty of destroying the whole world. Yet he who saves a single man's life shall be considered to have saved the whole world.") And physically? I just never had the means or the opportunity, but the motive's been there. How many people can say with *certainty* that they *would not ever* murder anybody, if placed in the right situation? If the loaded gun were there? If the push continued long enough? If they had grown up in a different home and had different teachers from the ones they had? Who can, honestly?

If you can, you're a better person than I. I can only say, "But for the grace of God, there go I."

God tells us his wish is that none, not even one, might be lost. He tells us that we all have gone astray and there is none righteous, no, not even one. Murder? Rape? Theft? Arson? Fraud? Hatred? Lust? Greed? Pride? Sins of the hands or sins of the heart, they all damn equally. We are all damned without Christ. At least, so I have come to believe.

Yes, I empathize with the victims. But I hope you can understand what I mean when I say I empathize with the criminal, too. I can't imagine doing what he's done, the repercussions, the damage to the world, the horror he's caused, but I can imagine all too well the forces that drove him to do it.

And I don't believe I'm better than he is. I've just been lucky. Lucky to be, by grace, kept from going that far down his path, and lucky to have been forgiven of the many times I have strayed onto it.

As for justice, I don't believe God calls for justice on Earth. True justice is dispensed in the afterlife, and none of us wants it, if it is what I believe it to be. True justice means each and every human soul in the world going down to Hell. True mercy means wiping away our huge litany of sins and allowing us into the presence of the Father. It's either/or; there is no other choice, because, after all, Heaven and Hell are mutually exclusive, necessary propositions; eternal separation from God or eternal companionship with God. Nothing we do to a person on Earth can compare with that.

Paul told us the Old Testament Law was given as a stumbling block, to show the believers the magnitude of their sin so that they might believe in grace. The Law itself has no power to save, only to condemn, and it ends up condemning everyone; it only existed to pave the way for grace. Moses told us to take an eye for an eye and a life for a life; Jesus, however, told us to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile for an enemy and to love him as the Father loves him, the Father who makes the rain fall on the just and the wicked.

Our function on Earth is not to dispense justice but mercy and grace, to help bring souls to knowledge of God and of truth and love, to take the sick, even the sickest (*especially* the sickest; remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees) and help them get well; to give the evil a chance to become good. To kill somebody is to take that chance away, forever, to personally be the agent of damning a fallen and broken soul to Hell forever. I couldn't live with that on my conscience.

I continue to have faith that no one is irredeemable and that everyone deserves the same chance I got. I believe that if a criminal is repentant, that he deserves a chance at life, a chance to do something better with what God has given him and give something back to the world. If he is unrepentant, he deserve a chance to make the choice to repent (and not just *a* chance as in sending a priest over to the death chamber; as many chances as we can give him, remembering how many chances we received ourselves).

Yes, there is the very large argument of how we prevent them from killing again. I wonder what to make of a society where we are so uncertain in the functioning of our courts and prison system that we would trade a *certain* death of the criminal for the *possible* death of future potential victims "just to make sure", and then turn around and call those innocents who invariably die in the death chamber unavoidable collateral damage (eerily similar to McVeigh's own attitude and the attitude of military minds everywhere, the attitude of those who see death and destruction as tools; is Oklahoma City *that* different from My Lai?). Because our system is inefficient at preventing death we must make it serve death? I still can't make that fit in my head.

I know and I've heard the objections, that if I can love the criminal in that way I lack sympathy and love for the victims, that I'm being the worst kind of coldhearted ivory tower jerk. And maybe they're right. But I find it hard to stomach a definition of "love" and of "sympathy" for one that must encompass hatred and cruelty toward another. And I fail to see how sending a person at best to oblivion or at worst to eternal perdition can be construed as showing love for all mankind. Heinlein said (and, yes, I'm taking the statement out of context and reinterpreting it; I like many of his words better than many of his ideas) that the central defining feature of man, his saving grace and perhaps his fatal flaw, is that, throughout history, millions of people have been willing to sacrifice their own lives for the life of just one. Unlike the Bugs, we will give up the whole for the part. We have it in us not to be machines, not to play the numbers game with human lives. When we're at our best we don't see people as collateral damage, as sacrifices that must be made, as dangerous factors that must be cut loose, we see each and every individual person as a story and a masterpiece, an image of God with infinite value.

If it's about justice and evening the score, I think McVeigh himself said it best, "So what? It's still 162 to 1." A pretty poor price to extract for the victims' lives, isn't it? One man? Too bad we're not fighting a war against a populous nation so we can execute one of our prisoners for every one of our dead. Too bad the only enemy we have is this guy who gave himself up to the cops so we couldn't have the satisfaction of shooting him up, gassing him out and blowing his head off with a bomb like he did our brothers and sisters, our children, our parents, our best friends. Too bad, as one victim put it, "he got off so easy". Too bad he can only die once and we can't make him die a hundred sixty-two different ways and keep a tape and watch it over and over again so we can get that warm feeling that yes, this is justice, he's getting his own back. Too bad, if you think in terms of numbers, of keeping a scorecard of hurt.

Here's how I think: Even if sacrificing his life could be proven to be a demonstrable good for all six billion people on the planet, which I'm not sure it is, but even if his death were necessary for the psychological well-being of every single person on Earth bleeding for justice, and if it were up to me to hit the button and start the injection, I wouldn't do it. Because killing one man, no matter how awful he is, will be judged as killing the whole world. Because I have a Lord who cried bloody tears for ones such as this, who suffered more than anyone else in history so that he might be saved, a suffering that transcends anything in earthly experience, the suffering of God in Hell, and that suffering has already paid for everything Tim McVeigh or Dylan Klebold or Adolf Hitler caused or could cause a million times over. And I could not look myself in the eye if I took his forgiveness for the six billion lives I owe him, the six billion lives I have spiritually killed by being selfish, by ignoring them, by living for myself and my own lusts and throwing away the love God meant me to have for the whole world, and then I denied this man forgiveness for one hundred sixty-two lives. Maybe you could. Maybe you think it's a whole load of BS and that I'm exaggerating. That I'm weepy and weak and lack the self-confidence to make the right decision. Whatever. I'm just telling you, I couldn't.

Yeah, I'm a namby-pamby liberal pacifist. A Christian pacifist, for what it's worth, and I don't consider myself a "liberal" Christian. Radical, fine, but not liberal; I base my beliefs on what I believe the Bible, as a whole, says, not what I would like it to say. (Hey, living with my family and my friends, it would make things *much* easier to be pro-death penalty. It would save a lot of endless debates, arguments, and outright insults and attacks on my faith. But what the hey. I don't mind that much.)

For whatever it's worth, in interviews there have been relatives of victims who have spoken for clemency for the killers, citing the same reasons I do; it was their stand that first inspired me to come to the conclusion I have. (If it really were physically and psychologically impossible to desire mercy for a killer of one's loved ones then I would be shaken, but it isn't. It's hard as hell, but it's not impossible.)

And there are murderers who have publicly stated their support for the death penalty and their willingness to die. So? Mostly it's because they know they don't have a choice anyway, I'd imagine, and if they do mean it, I'd see it in the same light as I see people who commit suicide when they're *not* on Death Row. Same idea; lack of respect for one's own life out of a false idea of what one's own life and death mean; the eye for an eye POV is just as possible from behind the bars. Guilt is Satan's weapon as well as God's.

But in the end it's not what any one person feels that matters; it's what I believe to be right because of how I see life. All the rest boils down to that. Is the death penalty murder, that is, unlawful killing? Of course not, if your definition of the law is the law of the current reigning human government. (Of course, by that definition, the Balkan ethnic cleansings or the Nazi death camps weren't illegal and therefore weren't murder either.) If you believe that law is more than a piece of paper and that it's based on a higher moral principle, then we're back to square one. Some say moral principles say life must be sacrificed for other life; I and others say moral principles demand holy protection of all life. That is *my* law whether it be U.S. law or not and it is by *that* standard that I call the death penalty murder. Furthermore, I believe that that law is the *real* law, and that is why I believe it *is* murder no matter what other laws say. That is what I believe, believe strongly, fanatically, even.

Well, this has turned out longer and more oratorical than I meant it to be. :) If I come off as a little crazy, I'm sorry; it's because I am. I don't intend to offend anyone else's beliefs, in the sense that I believe the decision is yours to make as to what you think, but this basically forms the central core of my value system and influences all my other thinking, so it'd be difficult to tear me away from it. Nonetheless, I never get tired of hearing other people's opinions, if only for the added light they shed on why we believe differently.

But anyway, it's late at night and I must be getting some sleep. I'd be very interested to hear what your responses will be, if there are any. (And yes, I did offer up a prayer for McVeigh this morning, and was disheartened to hear that he remained unchanged to the end. I wish he could've had more time, but such is the nature of life and of choice.)

Thanks once again for this wonderful forum and for all your insightful ideas! I love this board for the thought it generates.