Capital Punishment

[Jerm]

Thought this might be an interesting discussion.  What are you views on captial punishment?  Are you for it (and why?) and are you against it (and why?)

[WhiteWings]

I have mixed feelings about it.

For:
- By far the cheapest for society.

Against:
- Because its a walk in the park compared to lifelong jail. Especially if jail simply means being locked up. No activities like sports, tv  etc.
- What if the judges are wrong?
--> Sometimes the judge and whatou call 'the state' (I think) are just 'corrupt'. Happend quite  a few times here. Sometimes such a peson gets a retrial and then the ruling is always exactly the same as the person was in jail...
--> A while back a claimed pedosexual was released. He has been in jail for years. Now DNA has shown he has been totally innocent...

[onlytruth]

I don't know if you have heard about the recent horror story in  woodstock ontario.
But a couple of days ago they caught the girl that lured a 9 year old away from school.This women took the child to her boyfriend who had his way with her and then killed her.they are still looking for the body.
What to do?Our system in Canada is lax but what happened to this little girl crys out for justice! Society needs deterents...death penalty would be a good persauder.

[WhiteWings]

No I haven't heared about that one. But can't say I'm suprised.
Things like robberies and killings are criminal activities.
But in the case you mentioned I don't know. I think those people are no criminals but very very very sick.
Quite often they don't see any harm in their action or even think they are doing great.
To make it even worse they get fan mail  :sigh:
A man in Switserland locked up his daugther in the cellar for 20 years.
She got several childeren from her father...
He's in jail now and gets fanmail from women telling him he did the right thing because by locking his chidren up he protected them from the bad world. Plus he showed love. (by raping his daugther and her/his children) several times  a week.

I really think for such kind of people every kind of justice fails.
Firing squad? 100 years of jail? They are so far 'gone' they not even consider that they (can) get punished.

[sheila]

well,Jesus never spoke against the death penalty....we all are

appointed to die..once.

  of course..Jesus was a condemned to death innocent man.


   I just personally would not want to sit on a jury to

  decide such a thing....there are plenty of people more than

willing to take that kind of thing on.[wrongly or rightly?]

   I don't know


   The death sentence has already been passed upon our sin

   filled flesh...but we have had our judgement with mercy..

  and even the free gift of life by the spirit raises us up.


   

[SQ]

I am undecided but I do think if people knew they were going to die for their crimes such as murder child abduction/killing then possibly some of the crime may be stopped.
One thing for sure the murderer would never repeat the crime if he was put to death.
It is a scary world!

[jabcat]

I believe in it.  I wonder if I have New Covenant grounds to stand on, or if it's hold-over from some of my prior belief system(s).  Not sure.  Maybe it's carnality in me, but I say if there's clear evidence, make it quick...no 20 years of appeals and millions of dollars of tax payer money.  Give'em a minute to "make their peace" and assist'em in moving on to the next stage.  LEGALLY, of course, sanctioned by our government's laws.

My son-in-law's a Marine, back from Iraq....I heard a (Marine?) slogan that caught my attention...something like "It's God's job to judge the terrorists, but it's our job to set up the meeting"  :grin:.     :dontknow:  Don't know if that's "right", but it's the way I see it right now.

[SQ]

I think I lean more in that direction too Jabcat, they belong to God anyway.
I heard a preacher on tv say send them to God and let him handle the rest.
I do believe there are possibly innocent people in prison or recieved the death penalty, but I believe they are few in comparsion.
Now life in prison is not always life, so if the perpetrator is put to death then he could never kill another innocent person.
There has to be consequences or crime will get worse.
Maybe tomorrow I will feel different but doubt it.

[Livelystone]

When one person does it they call it murder

When countries do it under the order of their leaders they call it war.

Both sides commit atrocities but the winners are never charged and the dead do not care care.

Death penalty ??????

How many rich folks ever go to death row let alone get excecuted?

How many politically correct go to jail let alone ever go to the chair?

Don't think that just because that a person has all of their future in jail that they they would not do anything to live one more day........ thanks to all the %^&* that they have been taught by far the vast majority will live as long as they can......... they just don't have half a kingdom to give away for another day of life.

And do not allow others to kid you about how nice prisoners have it........ I have seen them die of cancer and only get aspirin for pain.

One of the federal prisons in this country has a satan worshipper for a chaplain......Christians inmates are disciplined for giving other inmates things like toilet paper and toothpaste for their tithing........ but jews have a group called "the olive branch" that is a national lobby that makes sure that all jews are all well taken care of and that none are ever disciplined beyond minor punishment without a rabbi approving it.

Personally I think everyone should spend 1 month in a max security prison and six months living in a real ghetto......... that would help to make the world a much better and safer place.

Blessings

Doug

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: I don't personally agree with capital punishment for a variety of reasons, but I'll just state one; who of us knows end from the beginning? Who can say that they may not find Him in prison? I don't say this lightly given what happened to my son, but I instead try to look at it from God's point of view, and this is what came to me. Blessings....

[martincisneros]

:cloud9: I don't personally agree with capital punishment for a variety of reasons, but I'll just state one; who of us knows end from the beginning? Who can say that they may not find Him in prison? I don't say this lightly given what happened to my son, but I instead try to look at it from God's point of view, and this is what came to me. Blessings....

These are the kinds of issues where I'm tempted to look through the pages of a book on "theonomy," which is the view of some Postmillenialists of adapting the Mosaic law to the governing of nations leading up to and particularly during the millenium, to see if there are any good answers on this kind of thing there.  I'm leery of the death penalty for quite a few things, but balancing the civil with the religious when not everyone yet understands the Kingdom, and the power of the Gospel to reclaim a life...that's the daunting task, and unless there's already a whole body of really well written literature along these lines that I'm just personally not aware of yet that gives satisfactory answers, ....where do you draw the line?  Serial killers?  Does someone who's killed twice count? 

Society is so violent these days, and I understand -- deeply understand -- the desire of some to either return to an Old Testament format of civil law or some combination between that and Islamic civil law that might satisfy X% of the population...particularly of those that have been victims thus far.  On the one hand, incarcerations are sooooooo expensive at the tax payer's expense and nobody wants to be taxed into oblivion.  Yet, the money's got to come from somewhere if we're going to use more lenient means.  Yet the tendency of the judicial system to SCREW UP SOOOO BADLY and imprison and THOROUGHLY mistreat countless, countless innocent people.  With stricter death penalty laws or even simply the full application of current ones on the books, it's no longer about justice but about revenge. 

Decisions based upon money rather than the anointing of God are wrong 9 times out of 10, while decisions based upon the anointing rather than money are usually right 9 times out of 10.  Doesn't make them mutually exclusive.  I'm talking about the decision making process and the temptation to fear running out that'll go with merely looking at financial bottomlines rather than God's Word that may look like it's going to put you on the chopping block, or you'll be "reckoned a lamb to the slaughter," BUT we're more than conquerers through Him that first loved us.  Every legal case needs to be prayed over daily, as well as pulling forcefully upon Him by pulling upon His exceeding great and precious promises (2Peter 1) that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Moses and Saul of Tarsus wrongfully killed, yet without them a pretty big section of our Bible would be missing.  King David's government isn't without the accusation that could be made of having had some injustices about it, particularly with Uriah.  Again, an obscene amount of the Bible would be missing if ""justice"" had been as swift as some have desired.  So, what are we talking about?  Between a third and a half of our Bible having been written by murderers??  I have to side with Cardinal on this one with it not being in our hands from the moment Bibles filled the whole earth after Jesus was raised from the dead.  In extreme cases.... You can probably argue for anything if you want to try to hold anybody over a barrel about absolute extremities of cruelty, or absolute extremities of other issues.  But even arguing a once in a blue moon genuine need for it, that's still a far cry from what happens on a continual basis in the Western world.  If I ever had time and energy in a context that's not bathed in God's Word and Anointing...consider me available to help with Anarchist Black Cross...and other organizations that fight for the rights of prisoners, including the wrongfully accused/imprisoned.

[SQ]

Thanks for the reminder livelystone Cardinal and Martin, Yeah when it comes down to it I better leave this matter to God.
I certainly was thinking with my carnal self.

[jabcat]

Martin, you and I agreed on an earlier topic where "right to carry" was involved.  I said I carried (work in downtown St. Louis), and I remember you saying something along the lines of "if someone breaks in on you, you better be able to blow their head off"...which I agree with, considering threat and self-defense/defense of loved ones.

So, a point I'm making is, IMO, this is a complicated topic.  Someone earlier said that Jesus didn't speak against the death penalty.  That's at least interesting.  As far as the "murderers" in the Bible, weren't they (except for Moses) acting within the law (Saul) and/or their authority (David)?  Is that similar to, or at least connected with a government of the people taking the swift decisive action that I personally support.  And taking action as a society/legitimate government to execute said justice, IMO, doesn't keep that individual from being "re-claimed" by Christ.  In fact, I think as a UR community, we, above all others have an understanding of God's work in our lives post-mortem.

Again, complicated topic.  Thoughts?  James.

[martincisneros]

There's a difference between self and loved one's defense and hunting.  I'm not sure if that analogy helps or if it sorta takes it to a different discussion that I wasn't really looking to open up here, but was simply after the illustration.  We talk about how calculated someone was on the news, but aren't the legal authorities being calculating?  Killing only helps in the immediate prevention of killing, as in the case of a nation, region, province, or whatever defending it's right to exist.  Eye for eye and tooth for tooth are different from KEEPING SOMEONE FROM taking your eye and tooth.  You have a right to your life, eyes, and teeth the same as the next person, particularly if your body is a living sacrifice to Him and His Word has ravished your heart and is abiding there continually, never very far from utterance level.

[jabcat]

We talk about how calculated someone was on the news, but aren't the legal authorities being calculating?  Killing only helps in the immediate prevention of killing, as in the case of a nation, region, province, or whatever defending it's right to exist.  Eye for eye and tooth for tooth are different from KEEPING SOMEONE FROM taking your eye and tooth.  You have a right to your life, eyes, and teeth the same as the next person, particularly if your body is a living sacrifice to Him and His Word has ravished your heart and is abiding there continually, never very far from utterance level.

I agree with the last line.  But thinking this through, I personally don't see how the government being calculating really has anything to do with it in a negative sense.  In fact, I would think we would want them to be calculating, as in, being careful and "making sure" of guilt.  A murderer, calculating or not, is operating outside the same laws that a correctly functioning government would be acting within.

You know what?  I bet there's a WHOLE lot to discuss and consider here  :bigGrin:.  And I may be wrong, I admitted that from the start.  I'm just not sure of it though, and maybe none of us should come to conclusions without a very thorough examination  :dontknow:...and maybe others have...maybe I'm the one dragging behind on this one...the old former Southern Baptist/Assembly of God Republican, who's now a heretical UR'er Independent.. :mshock:

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: It's a tough topic for sure. This is the truth and it has nothing to do with me. It was strictly His grace that kicked in immediately and kept me from losing my mind over finding out that night what happened to my son; BUT in those first few moments when I was told the age of the kid that did this and got his friends to participate with him, my first thought was, "What must have happened to this kid in his young life so far to create this, "little-better-than-an-animal", that could do such a thing?"

It was as if He placed that thought in my mind to prevent hate and bitterness from getting a foothold, by making me look beyond my own pain and the pain of my own son. So because I KNOW that reaction was not mine, but His, I have to think that His reaction's to things are not nearly as grounded in emotions as ours are. He is moved by our sufferings, but not so much as to lose His own nature in seeing the broader picture, and the sufferings of ALL involved.

The answer to that question above was solved by a conversation a few days later with a police officer. The boy's father had put the boy's mother into a bathtub, poured gas on her, and set her on fire, which the boy witnessed, when he was 6 or 7, because she tried to leave him. He got away with it somehow, and she never got away from her abuser. Who knows what he may have done to the boy, besides scar him for life over that. We just never know........Blessings.....

[martincisneros]

I would think we would want them to be calculating, as in, being careful and "making sure" of guilt.

That's the problem: too many -- way too many miscalculations.  I heard a story a while back on the news on how a lot of these crime dramas are prejudicing juries against defendants because of programs like CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, Life, and a whole bunch of other programs we could cite on network and cable television feeding the FALSE IMPRESSION that law enforcement agents have it totally down to a science, when justice is actually an art rather than a science.  It's as much a matter of the purity and sensitivity of the conscience of those seeking to apply the law and interpret the evidence as it is a matter of anything else. 

And I guess this gets back to a discussion of our relativistic society that's trying to make up the rules as they go along -- "going along to get along."  I'm not sure if I'm ready for a country from the pre WWII era on the one hand, with basic respect and manners and where that even made sense because of the other problems that went along with it with zero rights for women and other issues that make me boil when I see certain things on my local PBS station or online.  But there does need to be revival in our land and a reconsideration of the ways of our whole nation before we can safely rest in law enforcement moving with God's blessings rather than in the confusion of the reprobation that they're daily encountering and trying to sort through from an evil heart of unbelief.

[jabcat]

Yeah, good points, both of you, and a good piece of a pretty big issue  :Chinscratch:.

Certainly I think as well about what it is that drives people and their behavior, often figuring that if they could have done anything different, then they would have.  Not always, sometimes.  However, I think I also know that many criminals are sociopaths/anti-social personality disorders, and those basically don't change without an absolute, unquestionable miracle.  You know, the folks with absolutely no consciensce, the world is simply about what they can get out of it, and you better not get in their way.  So maybe we do just house these people forever, I don't know.  I will tell you a really weird thing I've thought, and still do...I could see placing such criminals in a penal colony rather than executing them...preferrably an island, disconnected from other society except for planned visits/delivery of supplies, etc.  Sort of the way Australia originally functioned (except to the detriment of the Aborigines  :thumbdown:).  Anyway, thinking about it, that's pretty much the way the prison system is anyway, their own criminal society in and of itself, except society as a whole is much more involved, and IMO, burdened down with the task of caretaking thousands of individuals that in the vast majority, die as they've lived.

Well, anyway, what the heck do I know about it?  It's all above my pay grade  :laughing7:.

[martincisneros]

Because some of my sentences will get about as long as those of a book from the 1800s or so, let me clarify that I do believe in the following

with basic respect and manners and where that even made sense...

but I wrestle with how things in some ways were so much better "once upon a time," yet at the same time those generations had their utter atrocities as well.  The women treated worse than animals back then with practically ZERO rights depending on where they lived, are the Pro-Choice ones of today.  Adolf Hitler was pretty close to the Pre-Rock 'N Roll era, since some want to blame everything on the Beatles, Beach Boys, Elvis, Monkeys, Four Seasons, etc.  No, on quite a few issues, they were [temporarily] lost [or momentarily forfeited] in the pulpit a long time before the world supposedly became worse than it had ever been.  But thankfully, we've got a new generation of faith in God's Word growing up that'll preserve the best of what we've gained over the years and reclaim what we should have never lost or set aside in the previous century.

[Shadow]

I personally do still support capital punishment for premeditated first degree murder without justification, eg a serial killer that murders because they enjoy seeing their victims suffer, here's one case where I personally think the death penalty should have been imposed, instead of the lenient sentence of 20 years, as her husband suffered a cruel and painful death

Joanne Curley

Not saying my opinion is right, of course :2c:, however I do believe the person should be proven guilty without a reasonable doubt, and the death penalty should be as humane as possible eg lethal injection

[sven]

I have read an interesting German article on this subject, an Evangelical universalists! who defends the death penalty (though we don't have it in Germany)

basically it's a scriptural punishment, but I can't tell if it's good to do so

[Seth]

Thought this might be an interesting discussion.  What are you views on captial punishment?  Are you for it (and why?) and are you against it (and why?)

I don't get involved with issues of the world, for we are told not to concern ourselves with that. Politics is the world's vehicle and since I know that Christ will put down all rule and authority, I can be assured that He sees a good reason to do that. You don't put away something that works so well. The body of Christ is filled with strangers in a strange land. So I can say I am 100% against ALL war and ALL capital punishment, believing IMHO that both are evil and contradictory to the teaching of Christ to the very few that follow Him.

Christ's bride is a light-bearer and a healer, not a killer in this world of killers.

[whyiloveitaly.com]

Christians who support the death penalty still do not understand the concept of "grace."

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Good to see you again, WhyIloveItaly! Blessings.....

[jabcat]

Christians who support the death penalty still do not understand the concept of "grace."

Good to see you back too friend, but I think there may be more to consider than the above summary statement. 

Perhaps grace in regards to salvation has some different aspects to it as opposed to socio/political issues.  Maybe the death penalty isn't best, but I'm not sure what that ultimately has to do with GOD'S grace in terms of His saving of our souls and ultimately reconciling us to Him.  God has every ability to reform us to the nth degree, even Hitler, but it may not occur in this lifetime.  He can do it if necessary "as by fire".  IMO, there are many in this life that are incorrugible, have absolutely no consciense (psychopaths/sociopaths) - I've personally worked with them for many years -  who will take the knife you hand them to cut the loaf of bread you've just given them and cut your throat with it - just to see if you've got 50 cents in your pocket.  If God hasn't reformed them, give them your grace and mercy and they'll choke you to death as you walk away from them.

Killing them as a legal, societal measure may have merit or it may be highly debatable or even detestable.  But I'm not sure anyone who agrees with it does not understand God's grace.  My  :2c:.

So I can say I am 100% against ALL war and ALL capital punishment, believing IMHO that both are evil and contradictory to the teaching of Christ to the very few that follow Him.

Christ's bride is a light-bearer and a healer, not a killer in this world of killers.

Just as I agree with the above.  But then what do you do with the killers?  Heaven forbid any one of us reading this are standing on the street corner and one of our loved ones is within 2 seconds of being murdered before our eyes.  Do we say "bless you brother, I offer you grace and mercy", or do you "draw the sword" and strike him down before he sheds the innocent blood of your wife, young daughter, or son?   And since defence/self-defence (may be) different than capital punishment, once he's done so, what do you to prevent him from doing it again?  Lock him away, where he kills another or two in the grotesque jungles we call prisons - which are really just a sick society of sociopathic, gang-banging, hardened criminals - most of which will not be redeemed this side of the grave? 

We're not of this world, but we are IN it!  Jesus didn't take the thief off the cross, thus sparing him his execution.  He met Him on the other side.  :dontknow:

One last thing.  Do you think it may be possible to forgive someone and offer them love and introduce them to their Redeemer, but still as a society carry out the consquence of the death penalty for their crime?  In essence, REALLY introducing them (setting up the appointment :mblush:) to their Redeemer?  Perhaps a little bit of a dilemma there  :Chinscratch:. 

Somebody quick, figure all this out and let the world governments know so they can get it right from here on out, as well as back-track and make retribution for the last several thousand years.   :laughing7: