Bob Lively Discusses the Death Penalty
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/faith/2009/06/06...
Saturday, June 27, 2009
BOB LIVELY | YOUR WORDS
A chaplain's take on capital punishment
Some years ago I posted myself at the back fence of the Governor's Mansion on Lavaca Street so that I might be a silent, and therefore unobtrusive, witness to Jesus on a night when the State of Texas was scheduled to put to death a young man from my father's hometown of Grapeland.
Several vocal protesters had arrived before me, and like many of us did in the '60s in the context of protesting everything from the Vietnam War to the Jim Crow laws of those days, these folks lifted high homemade placards while they marched in a wide circle, chanting the predictable slogans of a tepid and typically ineffective civil disobedience.
I gave thought to joining their parade but just as quickly decided against it. I'd already written the governor a heartfelt letter appealing to the better angels of his nature. Even before I slapped a stamp on the envelope, I told myself that this letter would never reach the governor's desk, that it would be read by some scribe on the state payroll who would, no doubt, send me a reply filled with all manner of rationalizations justifying state-sanctioned murder in the name of law and order.
On the other side of the street, an elderly woman wearing a T-shirt identifying herself simply as a member of Austin's First United Methodist Church sat alone in a lawn chair as she held a sign that pleaded: "Please don't kill anyone in my name." I liked her sign and I appreciated her willingness to come sit on a street corner on a hot, humid evening so that she might witness to God's kind of justice as opposed to going blissfully along with Caesar's irrational agenda of killing human beings so as to demonstrate once and for all that killing human beings is wrong.
The last time I checked, seven out of 10 Texans approved of the death penalty, and not surprisingly, Texas executes more people than any other state (and for that matter, most foreign countries). Hence, it should surprise no one that our current governor has sat by while 200 fellow human beings have been executed over in Huntsville. If he commuted death sentences, he'd never be re-elected.
But I wonder about those pro-death penalty Texans. Don't they know that Jesus was a victim of the same state-sanctioned murder to which we've become so tragically inured here in the Lone Star State? The Jewish Sanhedrin did not kill Jesus. Rome did! And from the very beginning of his brief three-year ministry, Jesus opposed any and all expressions of violence.
By far, the most authoritative book I've read on the subject of the death penalty was "Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain," written by a fellow Presbyterian minister, Carroll Pickett. The Rev. Pickett begrudgingly began assisting with executions back in the '70s when capital punishment was once more ruled legal. Today Carroll Pickett travels coast to coast, advocating passionately and effectively against the death penalty, but more importantly he witnesses to the life and to the radical love of Jesus.
I think Pickett's book is a must-read for every human being who, like me, believes that all human life is sacred. Pickett has come to understand that Caesar's kind of justice all too often looks and smells a whole lot like vengeance, while for God justice is quite simply always the same thing — an incomprehensible love made public.
- - - - -
Bob Lively serves on the adjunct faculty of Seton Cove Spirituality Center and is a teacher in residence at First Presbyterian Church.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
BOB LIVELY | YOUR WORDS
A chaplain's take on capital punishment
Some years ago I posted myself at the back fence of the Governor's Mansion on Lavaca Street so that I might be a silent, and therefore unobtrusive, witness to Jesus on a night when the State of Texas was scheduled to put to death a young man from my father's hometown of Grapeland.
Several vocal protesters had arrived before me, and like many of us did in the '60s in the context of protesting everything from the Vietnam War to the Jim Crow laws of those days, these folks lifted high homemade placards while they marched in a wide circle, chanting the predictable slogans of a tepid and typically ineffective civil disobedience.
I gave thought to joining their parade but just as quickly decided against it. I'd already written the governor a heartfelt letter appealing to the better angels of his nature. Even before I slapped a stamp on the envelope, I told myself that this letter would never reach the governor's desk, that it would be read by some scribe on the state payroll who would, no doubt, send me a reply filled with all manner of rationalizations justifying state-sanctioned murder in the name of law and order.
On the other side of the street, an elderly woman wearing a T-shirt identifying herself simply as a member of Austin's First United Methodist Church sat alone in a lawn chair as she held a sign that pleaded: "Please don't kill anyone in my name." I liked her sign and I appreciated her willingness to come sit on a street corner on a hot, humid evening so that she might witness to God's kind of justice as opposed to going blissfully along with Caesar's irrational agenda of killing human beings so as to demonstrate once and for all that killing human beings is wrong.
The last time I checked, seven out of 10 Texans approved of the death penalty, and not surprisingly, Texas executes more people than any other state (and for that matter, most foreign countries). Hence, it should surprise no one that our current governor has sat by while 200 fellow human beings have been executed over in Huntsville. If he commuted death sentences, he'd never be re-elected.
But I wonder about those pro-death penalty Texans. Don't they know that Jesus was a victim of the same state-sanctioned murder to which we've become so tragically inured here in the Lone Star State? The Jewish Sanhedrin did not kill Jesus. Rome did! And from the very beginning of his brief three-year ministry, Jesus opposed any and all expressions of violence.
By far, the most authoritative book I've read on the subject of the death penalty was "Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain," written by a fellow Presbyterian minister, Carroll Pickett. The Rev. Pickett begrudgingly began assisting with executions back in the '70s when capital punishment was once more ruled legal. Today Carroll Pickett travels coast to coast, advocating passionately and effectively against the death penalty, but more importantly he witnesses to the life and to the radical love of Jesus.
I think Pickett's book is a must-read for every human being who, like me, believes that all human life is sacred. Pickett has come to understand that Caesar's kind of justice all too often looks and smells a whole lot like vengeance, while for God justice is quite simply always the same thing — an incomprehensible love made public.
- - - - -
Bob Lively serves on the adjunct faculty of Seton Cove Spirituality Center and is a teacher in residence at First Presbyterian Church.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by debby on -
It is resposibility of ours to develope such issues and the media to make general awareness through discussion over not to commit any crime and preventing those who are going to accomplish a crime. sympathy words
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