Yeshua Explored
The Death penalty
What should we do with unrepentant serial killers?
Is life now considered so much more valuable that capital punishment has been deemed unacceptable for every category of murder, whether the Bible considers it legal or illegal? The death penalty was abandoned in Great Britain in 1965, although fifty-six countries still practice it. In earlier days life was certainly considered cheap, cheap enough in Tudor times for King Henry VIII’s reign to boast 72,000 executions, many of them for charges of heresy. Also, tens of thousands of women were executed as witches during the middle ages. In the 18th and early 19th Centuries the UK had a horrific system in operation called the Bloody Code, which featured 220 crimes punishable by death, including living with Gypsies for a month, stealing sheep or goods valued as low as 12 pence and using a disguise while committing a crime!
Reforms were in place since the start of the 20th Century and 1957 gave us the Homicide act, which made a distinction between capital and non-capital murder. This resulted in just six categories of murder that were punishable by death; during a burglary, by shooting or causing an explosion, resisting arrest, killing a police officer, killing a prison officer and repeat offending. But this confused and divided the Nation and, in 1965, MP Sydney Silverman introduced a bill, passed by a free vote of 200 votes to 98, to abolish the death penalty.
Why have we abolished the death penalty? Is it that we are living in more enlightened times? During the last few judicial executions the questions being asked by the public, encouraged by the media were: did society have the right to take life at all? Were innocent people being hanged? Was hanging really the deterrent it had always been made out to be? Was hanging humane? As God was no longer at the centre of decision making in our society, the questions that were being asked were humanistic rather than justice-centred and seemed to be concerned more and more with the rights of the perpetrator, rather than the victim of the crime. We now face situations where unrepentant serial killers and mass murderers escape capital punishment where every bone of your body is crying, justice for the victims, an eye for an eye but the statute book urges mercy for these evil people. And we wonder why. They certainly would have been executed in a society run on Biblical principles.
You shall not murder.
We must not forget that this refers to the original crime, rather than the justice meted out to the perpetrator, who would receive the ultimate judgement in both Old and New Testament days.
“Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death”. (Exodus 21:12)
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” (Matthew 5:21-22)
As the New Testament is concerned with God’s kingdom, rather than the Kingdom of the World, it was never meant to have the power to execute such judgements and the only place, I believe, in the New Testament where an extreme judgement was carried out (for a much more trivial offence) was God’s judgement on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).
Holland abolished the death penalty in 1870, but brought it back briefly in 1944 to execute wartime collaborators. It will even refuse to extradite criminals if there is a possibility that they would face a death penalty elsewhere. The Dutch government must have a very high value on human life. Really? It doesn’t seem to have an issue with euthanasia, a word that they don’t use, preferring the expression, assisted suicide and termination of life on request. Holland is a pioneer in this, ready to assist people of all ages and circumstances to end their lives but refusing to do the same, for the most evil of murderers. So, it’s not death that concerns them it’s the individual’s freedom to live or die. If the individual seeks death then they will assist, if an individual deserves death then they will do anything but. But even this is changing, with a recent case in France where a quadriplegic patient had his life support systems switched off by the state, despite the wishes of his Catholic parents.
So, to answer a question posed earlier, are we living in more enlightened times? We are now living in a society wrenched from its Biblical roots which basically gives us rules by consensus, by what seems fair to us, in other words, government by human wisdom. If this means slaughtering millions of innocent pre-born babies without a tinge of conscience, or facilitating the deaths of those with suicidal tendencies, or preserving the life of those who have intentionally taken the lives of others … then so be it. If that’s progressive, or enlightened, then surely we must mourn the passing of more primitive times, when God’s absolute laws governed our society … if indeed these times ever existed!
The Sinner’s Charter virtually writes itself on this issue:
You must not kill another regardless of the circumstances and seek to preserve life as society defines it, unless personal freedom compels you otherwise.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
