A New Commandment
On Thursday, August 30, Texas governor, Rick Perry, was just hours away from being personally responsible for taking the life of a man for a crime that the state agreed he didn't commit or plan. A state board had recommended clemency so only the governor's pen stood between Kenneth Foster and a needle that would deliver a lethal injection for the 403rd time in Texas since the death penalty was restored there in 1982.
Mariceo Brown admitted to killing Michael LaHood, Jr. in 1996 in self-defense. Brown was convicted of murder and was executed in 2006. Foster was tried with Brown as a co-defendant. Under the “Law of Parties” he was held responsible for the crime because he was present, even though he was 80 feet away in a car with the windows up and the radio on. Just because he had driven Brown to the location where the unplanned killing occurred, Foster was convicted of murder.
In a brief statement, Gov. Perry, a devout Christian, described his decision to commute Foster's sentence to life in prison as “right and just.” Certainly, taking two lives for one would have been an unjust violation of the Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:24). Limiting retaliation to just one life in exchange for another was progress over the feuding between clans in the ancient world when these laws first appeared.
Beyond the old laws, Christians have the words of Jesus in the New Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “you have heard it said 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' but I say to you, do not resist evil and if someone strikes you on the right cheek turn to that one your left cheek also.” (Matthew 5:38-39) Pushing further, a few verses later (5:43-44) he calls us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us.
Not only did Jesus revise and even reject some of the former commandments, he offered a powerful new one. At his last meal on earth, he told his disciples that they had new commandment, to love one another (John 13:34). Assuming that all of humanity is covered by that commandment, it would seem a small act of obedience to the law of love to end executions. That might be a pretty lousy way to run a government, but Jesus rejected the human governance of the world expecting a much higher standard from those who would dare to follow him. So how is it that Bible-believing Christians can ever be numbered among those who support capital punishment? Christians who advocate the death penalty are either not reading the whole Bible or they are simply asking the government to do for them what their faith forbids.
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This Little Light of Mine
Get them before they get you. Don’t let people take advantage of you. You’ve got to look out for number one first.
Such attitudes are commonplace. The lifestyle that goes with them is that of self-promotion at the expense of others. And, because “everybody’s doing it,” it all looks like an appropriate (dare I say “honorable”?) way to live. So, basically, in the public eye it’s often okay to piss on someone who supposedly deserves it.
But what happens when the one being pissed upon turns out, even by crass standards, to be completely undeserving?
At that point, the values of that way of being in the world are called into question. The “story” of everyday life becomes suspect, and people begin to think “where did we go wrong?” At that moment, people enter a place where they can consider a new vision how human beings were meant to be in this world.
And so we hear our call to an alternative story on how to live life. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. If we really think about (hard), it all sounds quite insane. Wont’ that potentially turn us into victims? Doesn’t that open us up to being taken advantage of? What will happen to my sense of comfort and security? Fair questions, with perhaps uncomfortable answers.
But such a life does affect those around us. By living in such a counter-cultural way, as the “undeserving,” we incarnate an indictment against the status-quo of victimization. (Please keep in mind that I’m not advocating self-destruction or wonton lack of care for one’s own well-being.)
This indictment can carry into the legal system as well. Jesus was crucified. The most innocent of beings subjected to the harshest measures of legal power: the death penalty. When he died on the cross, he was not “participating in” and “validating” the legal system. Rather, he was actively exposing and defying it. He was showing us “why” this system of social normalization was wrong (indeed, evil). He was illuminating the extent to which this supposedly honorable use of power was nothing more than a shameful manifestation of insecurity that flows from a sense of ultimate powerlessness. He was revealing to us the urgent need to end such measures.
Christians are called to a “more excellent way.” It’s a way that shines a divine light and exposes the darkness for what it is. And inasmuch as we are faithful, living out this way even amidst difficult or even seemingly impossible situations, the Spirit of Christ continually works through us to open the eyes of the world around us to a new vision of that which could be, the reality we call “the Reign of God.”
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The question that haunts me: "Into what is Christianity evolving?"
Godspeed on it!
Thank you Culture Dove & Eileen for such insightful posts.
The problem with Christianity is that too few have done it
The commandment "Thou shall NOT kill" remained.
No matter how heinous a crime, there is always hope for redemption, and locking someone away for the rest of their life allows time for God to work.
Taking another's life prevents the action of God upon a soul.
Before Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the mainstream, all the early Church Fathers taught that Christians should never kill another and no Christian ever served in the army until St. Augustine introduced the concept of a Just War.
Within 100 years after Constantine, the Empire required that all soldiers in the army must be baptized Christians and thus, the decline of Christianity began.
In 313 AD, when Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity, those who had been considered rebels and outlaws began to enjoy political power and prestige.
Jesus’ other name is The Prince of Peace, and with the marriage of church and state, his true teachings were reinterpreted.
The justification of warfare and the use of state sponsored violence corrupted what Christ modeled and taught; for he remained NONVIOLENT even while being nailed to a cross.
Jesus was always on about WAKE UP! The Divine already indwells you and all others.
Christ taught that to follow him requires that one must forgive to be forgiven, one must love ones enemies; one must forgive those who hate, curse and revile them, without a thought of payback.
Christ lived a life that proved evil can be opposed without being mirrored, and that the cycle of a “tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye”, will never bring peace and justice.
The term Christianity was not even coined until three decades after Christ walked the earth. Until the day of Paul, followers of Christ were called members of The Way; meaning the way he taught one should be, if they truly loved and followed him.
While Christ was never a Christian, he was a social justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the corrupt Temple for teaching the people they did not need to pay the priests to sacrifice livestock or to preform ritual baths to be OK with God;
For God already loved them, just as they were; sinners, outcasts, cripples, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all enduring under occupation!
What got him crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman occupying forces by teaching that God was on the side of the sinners, outcasts, cripples, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all enduring under occupation!
When Jesus said to 'pick up your cross and follow' him, it was a political statement.
2,000 years ago the cross had no symbolic religious meaning- the cross was how the empire rid the land of rebels and revolutionaries! The highways and byways were lined with the crucified who dared rebel against the Roman occupying forces.
Clement, Tertillian, Polycarp and every other early Church Father taught that violence was a contradiction of what Christ was all about.
I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said the problem is not with Christianity, just that too few have actually done it!
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees."
Father Philip Francis Berrigan
When enough Christians actually follow The Way;
We will change the world.
Godspeed on it!
e
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"