Christianity and Capital Punishment

September 5th, 2026

TRIGGER WARNING: Usually I wouldn't consider this, but there's a content landmine with a kid that's awful and graphic towards the end but germane to my topic. Proceed cautiously, it's with love I promise.

Yesterday after 3 days and over 15 hours on a piece about "Coyote vs Acme", the shelved "Batgirl" movie, and other sociopolitical entertainment crud my tablet belched and it vanished. After a 15 hour ennui and pity festival, I did my homework. Simmons College is seminary, so I take required religious courses. Today, my tablet croaked like 20 times but lived long enough to churn a paper good enough I felt to put here. I'm rewriting the other on glorious God-given paper at my leisure. Hope you enjoy, and no, this is not becoming a Sunday School joint.

"Thou shalt not murder reads the Commandment (Ex 20:13), juxtaposed with "an eye for an eye" and Old Testament decrees like stoning for adulterers and homosexuals. Murder being the operative word, taking a human life willfully is not humanity's decision to make. Protection is our priority, and Christians is to lead the living home to Him. Basically, extending stays to give the living every chance to see Eternity.

 Christ was the catalyst for change. Despite God's wrathful demands, His son's arrival changed the relationship. This is not the lone time course was changed, for example the dietary codes restricting shrimp and pork were too. Our burden of deciding life and death ended with the Messiah. God Himself decides the appointed hour the wicked and all others exit the mortal coil. We are told to follow the laws of the land. Still we can correctly do what we are enabled to correct the ethics.

Christianity is political, and conflict is necessary. Christians are galvanized through it, like everyone else. Homeostasis requires food, air, water, and pressure. That forgotten final piece forges our strength, literally. Weightlifting is the response to it. Moving against current builds lean, strong physiques. Reading and studying exhaustively crafts a potent mind. Cultural conflicts can build better persons. Growing conscience, helping those in need, and showing enough forgiveness for society's worst does too. There were no asterisks when Jesus spoke forgiveness. (John Chapter 13 Verse 34): "That ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another". Nowhere does it state " besides killers".

Christian challenge is drawing lines between the Divine and the worldly, with missions like the death penalty perspective is key entering the fray. Always it should be to glorify God, not themselves or elevate the "victim". That reasoning is to keep honest. Contemporary Christian movements lean in secular directions regarding issues like this one, usually for self-promoting. Christians need to be reminded blood-thirst is undesirable a trait as other agencies the Gospel condemns. Despite the decree to battle sin, vengeance does not belong to man.

 Every day I pass by a person that dragged a little girl away from a public place, raped her, shoved her tiny head under the water of a nearby creek, and choked the life from her. Then he buried her after removing the semen from her with his pocketknife. Next day he helped her family search. He has a well-paying job and appears happy now. Once I ran from the chow hall when I imagined what she experienced that evening because I couldn't stop crying. From a job I held, I wound up at his GED graduation.

Daily, I tell those around me inmates are family. People we eat, cook, sleep, wash, work, play, and watch beside, that's brothers, dads, uncles, and cousins. Making him party to that is a struggle. I've not had to live right by him, and don't know how I'd react. What I know is sometimes when I struggle lately, praying seems to help. That would be my best advice for anyone carrying this burden here.