I came across this blog and found it fascinating. It's a running list of the last-meal requests of death row inmates.


It makes for compelling reading ... and it does put human faces on those waiting for execution. It makes you consider the complexities in surprising ways. It's not every day that you think about the fact that a murdering rapist is also a guy who likes cheeseburgers and Jell-O.

I found myself especially effected by those entries that provide no information other than the details of the meal itself. The reader is then left to fill in the particulars with her or his own imagination. Including the questions "What did this guy do?" and "Could he maybe have been innocent?"

Most of these guys aren't innocent, of course. Most of them are murdering scumbags. But murder is murder, even when the victim himself is a murdering scumbag, and if you're a Christian, I think you ought to realize that there's no asterisk after the words Thou shalt not kill. Nor is there support for the death penalty anywhere in the New Testament. You can find "Christian" ways to justify the death penalty all day long ... I used to do it myself and I know all the tricks. But, ultimately, that's all they are: tricks.

And, if you live in a state that sanctions the death penalty (as I do), then murder is being committed in your name every time someone is executed.

The death penalty is one the few political areas where Wendy and I disagree. I oppose it, she supports it. When I showed her this blog, her immediate reaction was "That's depressing. I don't want to think about it." I don't blame her.

It's a lot to digest, you might say.

Labels: Faith, Personal, Politics