The Death Penalty and the Bible; Reflection 3

I do not have an opinion on whether or not humans are born either innately evil or innately good because I can honestly see both sides. Whichever it may be, humans have the potential to do evil actions as a result of lived experiences, choices, and circumstances. But does that make an individual completely evil or worthy of the worst punishment? Who is to say? But in my opinion, it does not. There is a practice that I am a huge proponent of called restorative justice. It's a relatively new form of justice, having been implemented in a few particular states or areas, but not hugely  widespread. The tenets of restorative justice being accountability, making amends, and in special cases, facilitated meetings between the victims (and/or families of victims) and offenders; the aim: to repair the harm caused by the crime. Now, while I know that restorative justice is an awesome program that I wish was implemented more in our justice system nationwide, I also recognize it's limitations. Obviously, it requires the guilty party to feel genuinely remorseful for their actions, the victims or families being open to forgiveness, and a variety of other factors, so it is not applicable to all crimes. However, I think in certain cases it can be very beneficial to use restorative justice practices rather than harsh sentences. For instance, one example that comes to mind, a mentally disabled thirteen year old girl lit a match that ended up causing a house fire, killing two boys. Her punishment was the death penalty: the prosecution argued that the lit match was intended to be arson, and given that death resulted, the girl was eligible for the harshest sentence available. Now, assuming the match was not intended to burn the house down, and aside from the fact that the case was mishandled regardless given her condition, I think think there was sufficient evidence to support the theory that this girl was not an evil human and did not deserve to die for the mistake that she made. In my opinion, a form of restorative justice would have better suited this young girl than placing her in a maximum security prison. 

We have been asked to connect our chosen books with material discussed in class. While we have not explicitly discussed the death penalty, we have discussed the origin of evil in the world, using violence in the pursuit of justice (i.e. Just War), and equality of all individuals in the eyes of God. For today, I will be discussing evil, but I want to also discuss restorative justice a tad bit in this blog.


Now, to tie this conversation in with the Bible, I think the biggest piece of support is that God calls Christians to be merciful and full of love for others. In the Bible, when discussing justice, there is a lot of discussion around relationships between the people, repairing the damage done to those relationships, and helping people discover a better path. When we place people in a prison and offer them no services for improvement or restoration, we are not fulfilling God's command for us. When we seek the harshest punishment for people, who at their roots are not evil humans, we are failing them by seeing only the bad exterior. God knows our heart within and I think it is our duty to understand more than just the surface level of individuals when we are deciding fates, and I hope in the future, that our justice system will begin to expand on that idea.