TRI In The News

Lion and the Lamb: Life is Not Ours to Take or End

September 27, 2011

9/27/2011

TRI IN THE NEWS: LION AND THE LAMB: LIFE IS NOT OURS TO TAKE OR END

From The Crossville Chronicle

CROSSVILLE — Let us imagine for a moment that there was no death penalty, and that one of us was given the task of ending the life of a person who had committed a crime. This death could only be by our hand! The ending (or "taking") of a life would now become very personal—by you or me, and no one else. It is dismaying to even think of such a possibility.

What would we do? Would we say that they deserved death, getting what they deserved (a balance—a life for a life)? Would we try to hire someone to do it for us? Would we, as described in the Bible, have everyone take stones and stone the person to death by our communal hands? Most of us, I dare say, would try to evade putting a person to death, ending a life by our own hands. Just imagining ourselves doing this certainly humanizes the issue of the death penalty.

We have established policies for ending people's lives. It becomes impersonal with us, so we can close our eyes to its inhumane-ness. Look at the ways we have shielded ourselves from feeling the personal anguish of the death of others:

We play video games that turn the violence and extermination of enemies into "play." Drones are directed by "pilots" halfway around the world to exterminate the targets (real people) revealed on their screen. Bombs are dropped from a height that makes their human victims invisible. During state executions in the past, several marksmen fired their rifles at the same time, but only one unknowingly had "live ammunition" so that no one knew which marksman actually killed the prisoner. Today killing is done in a pseudo-scientific setting separate from the few invited watchers in another room, with no public photos of the execution itself being permitted.

We've grown accustomed to death "by distance." If we do not know, then we are not responsible or participating in ending a person's life. What a comment this is about us.

We live in a system that needs to change, especially in the way we look at people. Our world and our lives cry out for a society that is moral and humane.

There is a trend to abolish the death penalty, as outlined recently in an article in the Crossville Chronicle by John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have done away with the death penalty; execution remains an option in thirty-four states. As Whitehead comments, "Imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. ... There is nothing moral or just about the death penalty—certainly not in the way it is implemented in America, and anyone who says otherwise is either deluding themselves or trying to get elected by appearing tough on crime."

On Oct. 10 groups around the world that belong to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty are focusing on its 2011 theme, "The Inhumanity of the Death Penalty." The observance will highlight such issues as inhumane conditions in prisons, the processes and methods of executions, and the situations of families of all parties.

We who belong to the local chapter of Action by Christians Against Torture, ACAT USA (TN), www.acatusa.org, encourage readers of this column to remember on Oct. 10 those on death row and to oppose the death penalty. President Lincoln's offer of clemency to over 200 persons continues to be a reminder to all of us to be humane, for life is a gift of God, not ours to take or end.