By Blake Hark
The world has been captivated by the case of death-row inmate Troy Davis, and rightfully so. His innocence claims were staggering, and the fact that the state of Georgia went forward with his execution despite such doubts is incomprehensible.
Many of us fought against this atrocity — from collecting petition signatures in Savannah, Ga., where the crime took place, to sitting vigil outside of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, we tried to stop this execution.
A case like this shines the light on deeper issues in the heart of humanity. Most people would agree that executing an innocent person is an atrocity. But — for Christians especially — shouldn’t the execution of a guilty person be equally unconscionable?
Capital punishment has wide support among conservative Christians in the United States, but their arguments are normally more cultural than religious. We often hear appeals to be law-abiding citizens or to some concept of retributive justice.
When Scripture is referenced they cite Romans 13 as the end-all text on how governments are God-ordained and therefore seemingly infallible. There are also appeals to an obscure text in Genesis where it says, “Whoever sheds human blood, by human beings shall their blood be shed,” or in Leviticus where it says, “Anyone who injures a neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.”
References to Jesus’ teaching, meanwhile, are absent. In Matthew 5-7 we find one of the most instructive passages for Jesus’ ethic of life: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,’ but I tell you, do not resist an evil person…. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
In Luke’s version of this teaching Jesus goes even further, “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
The ethic of Jesus is to return evil with good. When we are sinned against we are not to sin in return to settle the score. We are not to seek a worldly concept of justice; we’re not to repay evil with evil. We are instead to seek redemption. We are to live in the order of the new Kingdom where we meet hate with love and violence with peace.
All this is rooted in the concept that the end goal is the transformation of the person. Jesus desires that both the victim and the perpetrator be changed, and we as Christians should desire no less. Thus we see a basic difference between this concept and that of our current penal system where the emphasis is on punishment and not rehabilitation.
Our justice system says that the criminal alone is responsible and must be punished. The truth is that there are many systemic problems that lead some people to resort to crime. To properly take care of the lawbreaker we must work on rehabilitation as well as reforming a broken society.
This is the harder option. It’s easier to scapegoat the offenders, throw them in prison or execute them. Capital punishment pours the blame for society’s brokenness on the shoulders of the individual who crossed the line and got caught.
Jesus tells us to love those who do wrong and to repay their evil with good. Doing so we humanize that person; we begin to realize that he or she, too, is created in the image of God, and all life is sacred. This outpouring of Christ’s love changes the criminal’s heart, and we become able to recognize systems and structures that must be changed in order for all to have a chance at the abundant life.
Georgia has taken the life of a man who may well have been innocent. This is a miscarriage of justice. I oppose all executions, however, and call on Christians to join me and others calling for the end of the death penalty. After all, who would Jesus execute?