Should We Support Capital Punishment?
I recently did a Twitter poll asking about people’s attitudes toward capital punishment. It was a very close race, at some points 50-50.
People tend to have strong attitudes toward capital punishment. People either see it as important for being tough on crime or they see it as completely unacceptable. There are those who argue that a consistent pro-life position has to be against capital punishment.
For Christians, it is not just a matter of personal opinion. What does the Bible say about capital punishment?
The Old Testament outlines a lot of examples of capital punishment. In fact certain transgressions that we would never accept today (such as breaking the Sabbath) are considered capital crimes.
But when we get to the New Testament, we are told to love our enemies. Killing them doesn’t seem to be loving. So what do we do?
For those Christians who believe there is no place for capital punishment, they have to wrestle with why God seemed to command capital punishment. Did God have a complete change of mind, seeing it as acceptable at one time and later unacceptable?
Also, what does it mean to love our enemies? Capital punishment may not seem like loving, but is lifelong imprisonment? If we want to be completely loving toward our enemies, why not take the murderers out of prison and let them move in with our families? That would be loving.
Loving enemies is about a personal ethic and is not the way to run a society. For the safety of others, violent criminals needed to be dealt with strongly.
Having said that, I am personally against capital punishment. In theory I can see how there may be circumstances when it is appropriate. But in practice, there are too many examples of people who have been executed and then later were found innocent. You can release a wrongfully imprisoned person but you can’t give life back to a wrongfully executed person.
We need to have more conversations about this. In those countries that have capital punishment, things must be put into place to prevent the wrong people from being executed.
