The issue of the death penalty has long been an ongoing debate among Christians. One side justifies capital punishment due to its biblical origins as retribution for wrongdoing, while others oppose the practice, maintaining a holistic pro-life stance.
The death penalty is advocated in the Bible, but Christians should not support the current model of the death penalty. Current inconsistencies in the system and discrepancies with offenders’ cases should cause Christians to stop blindly encouraging this policy. Christians must first maintain our pro-life and pro-human rights stance before we can promote the poorly implemented capital punishment model we currently have in place.
The concept of capital punishment was established in Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” » Romans 13:4 specifically addresses the concept of government authority, requiring the instruction: “He (rulers) do not bear the sword in vain.” »
These verses emphasize that the government has the God-given right to punish wrongdoing, which includes the application of the death penalty. The New Testament principles of love and forgiveness apply to Christians but not primarily to governments and authorities. The Bible makes it clear in Romans 13 that government was established as “an avenger who executes the wrath of God against him who does evil.” With this biblical view of government, Christians can promote the death penalty as God directs.
There is, however, a problem.
Christians must tread lightly on the issue of capital punishment. On the one hand, it is a biblical mandate for government, but issues such as racism and the possibility of wrongful convictions corrupt the current system. The argument for capital punishment must first be satisfied through proper implementation.
If anything, Christians have a bigger problem to solve than securing the place of capital punishment in government. Before promoting the use of this policy, Christians should be aware of the rights violations and discrepancies that contaminate current capital punishment.
Innocent lives have been lost to the death penalty. The major problem with capital punishment is killing an innocent person who has been wrongly convicted. Since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 185 wrongly sentenced death row inmates have been exonerated, reflecting a trend toward erroneous death sentences. Likewise, a greater number of wrongly convicted prisoners have most likely been put to death. There have been dozens of cases in capital cases where there were discrepancies and questionable convictions. Christians cannot ignore these cases and vouch for capital punishment without recognizing this problem.
Another reservation to the continued application of the death penalty concerns the racist tendencies of the sentences. If the victim of a crime is white, the offender is more likely to be sentenced to death. Cases involving white victims represent 80% of capital cases according to reports of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in which African-American offenders are three times more likely to receive the death penalty than white individuals. How can Christians support a process with racist consequences? Christians should go on the offensive to end racial disparities. Public policies that result in unjust results are not ordained by God.
Faced with these inappropriate names, Christians have a responsibility to promote solutions to these inconsistencies before beginning to encourage the death penalty with a more equitable justice system. Before capital punishment can be justified as biblical, we must follow our stance in favor of innocent life and fight against the sin of racism. We must fight to ensure innocence until proven guilty. Once these issues are resolved, Christians could then rightly encourage the biblical use of the death penalty.
Keaton Browder is an opinion writer. View his LinkedIn profile here.