Hi all. I haven't posted in a really long while because I have been working so hard on my book and my other blog and everything in my life, but the problem is that my other blog (Blog for the Intellectual Potato) is to funny (or tries to be funny) to write any of my serious pondering. I've had a few in the past little while that I need to get out so here they come, watch out.
It becomes evident in even having a light conversation with me, I am sheltered. I come from a safe home, a safe haven with no drug abuse, or really any abuse really. Setting that aside and trying not to laugh, I though the electric chair was just a joke for the longest time... like a week ago.
OK, stop laughing. Now I guess I thought way to highly of my fellow people, but I just assumed that we weren't cruel. This sounds really naive because I know that torture is real and the electric chair is not by any stretch of the imagination torture, but still it gets me thinking, if it's not torture, is it really humane. Or even pushing the envelope further, is it really human?
Isn't the whole reason why we are the prominent life on Earth because we can see into the future, make logical assumptions, and then map the easiest, or most efficient root to the point in time that we want to arrive in? So I start to think about capital punishment which I have no expertise, or even much experience with, but still, I understand the electric chair.
Now lets just set aside all that for a minute and make an example. Your dear family member is murdered, no, your dear family member is a murderer. You say your final goodbyes and then she's shipped off to the electric chair. Now I know that your thinking 'Yeah, but that's just, what if you were the family of the murdered person', and that's all horribly, impossibly sad, but still, the murderer is killed brutally in the electric chair and never lives to live a better life after punishment...
The very definition of punishment is to be subjected to pain , loss, confinement, death, etc., as a penalty for some offense, defined by dictionary.com now it does say death, but isn't the point of punishment to make the person suffer so that he or she will live on as a better person because of the suffering. Maybe not. It has become apparent to me that we are less worried about bettering other people than we are about satisfying our own selfish revenge. Is that really human? Isn't that what an angry dog would do, strike back as hard as it could until the thing that angered it was lifeless? And yet no one feels that capital punishment is wrong.
The real question, from a christian perspective, is who are we to punish. Now, I agree, a criminal must be punished severely, especially for murder, but like I said before, what's the point? God is the only person who can judge them fairly anyway. Were they in their right mind? Do we even have all the facts straight? Isn't the point of the next life so that we can receive our eternal reward or punishment? And most of all, are we not downsizing the savior himself in saying that this person can never be forgiven, not even through him?
Now I don't know anything about criminal justice or recovery or anything, but what do we gain from murdering a murderer. And even if we must, why do we do it so savagely. Are there not painless injections for the same purpose? Who are we bettering by ending the life this way instead of that?
That's the question I would like to ask, or answer: Who are we bettering in capital punishment? The offended are appeased an the offender is never bettered for what they did. They aren't out their being a better person, making this world a better place. Now of coarse a great percent of these people are never going to be a better person, won't ever repent, but I'm talking about a small percent.
The family is put at rest, but are they?
I guess in the end it isn't any of our choices to decide, even though the choice is put in all of our hands.
Only God knows all. Especially all we're doing wrong.