Tag Archives: capital punishment

Mar 23 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceAbuse: No More Silence: An Interview with Boz Tchividjian of G.R.A.C.E.

“Q. What are some of the most common mistakes churches and Christian organizations make when it comes to preventing child abuse? A. Silence is one of the most common failures of the Christian community in preventing child abuse.”

Arms suppliers: China Edges Out U.K. As World’s Fifth-Largest Arms Supplier

“Made-in-China weapons have moved into the No. 5 slot, displacing U.K.-manufactured arms, but the Asian giant still trails far behind the U.S. and Russia, whose weapons account for 30 percent and 26 percent of the market, respectively, according to a new report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute … China’s biggest customer? Pakistan. It made up 55 percent of Beijing’s arms exports between 2008 and 2012, the Institute says.”

Capital punishment, death penalty & justice: The Death Penalty Has a Face: A DA’s Personal Story [required reading]

“…  my father was … a Church of Christ preacher  so I sat through a lot of funerals as I grew up. … It may seem strange to say but I never really thought much about my feelings regarding the death penalty before I became district attorney. I was raised in a Southern conservative place with small town values by parents who believed in and practiced their Christian faith in every way. I guess support for the death penalty was simply a given.

“During my years as DA I have prosecuted more than thirty murder cases. In seventeen of those cases I was faced with the decision—seek death or offer life. Three times I chose death. It was always difficult, but as I got older and more experienced, I felt the weight of the decision grow. I held the life of another human being in my hands. Of course a twelve-person jury plays a large part in giving the death penalty, but I could stop it. All I had to do was say life, and the prisoner lived. …

“I have heard all the arguments in favor of the death penalty. In fact, I’ve made them all—it saves lives of future potential victims; it gives the loved ones of the victim closure; it’s society’s ultimate response to the most heinous of criminal acts. But, in the end, it simply remains that the state has responded to the taking of a life by taking another. …

“Over the years I have come to believe that the time for the death penalty has passed.”

Iraq War: * Was the Iraq War Worth It? A Christian Reflection for the Tenth Anniversary of the Invasion; * What America Learned in Iraq

* “… the war has devastated the church in that country. While there had been considerable religious freedom under Saddam Hussein, after the invasion suspicion and hostility toward Christians dramatically increased.”

* “The costs of the second Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, are staggering: nearly 4,500 Americans killed and more than 30,000 wounded, many grievously; tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis wounded or killed; more than $2 trillion in direct government expenditures; and the significant weakening of the major regional counterweight to Iran and consequent strengthening of that country’s position and ambitions. Great powers rarely make national decisions that explode so quickly and completely in their face. It may seem folly to seek a silver lining among these thunderclouds. But there are three flickers of light that offer some hope that the enormous price was not paid entirely in vain. These coins offer a meager return on our enormous investment, but not collecting them would be an insult to the memory of all that we have lost.”

Non-violence, outreach & preaching: Is Preaching Nonviolence Bad for Evangelism? by Kurt Willems

“Jesus and the Apostles did little in their preaching to soften the cost of discipleship. The price only goes on sale when we promote our own agendas rather than the priorities of the reign of God.”

Mar 16 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceCapital punishment: * Arizona Woman’s Murder Conviction, Death Sentence Overturned; * Once On Death Row, He Now Fights To Defeat The Death Penalty

* “There was no evidence tying her to the crime …”

* “Maryland is about to become the 18th state to abolish the death penalty. … The strongest advocate to end the death penalty in Maryland is Kirk Bloodsworth, who was convicted of murder in that state in 1985 and was the first person in the U.S. to be sentenced to death row then exonerated by DNA evidence.”

Concealed carry, church, faith & guns: Guns in Church

“Do I want our members slaughtered in their seats? Of course not. … What I am suggesting, though, is that our churches have become so accommodated to culture that we are no longer relevant. We are no longer any different from the world. We have lost our saltiness, and might as well be thrown out onto the ground to be trampled. Apparently, we have lost our faith. We no longer trust that God will keep us safe, or, that if he doesn’t, that he won’t use us even in the midst of tragedy to do good. If that is the case, and I think it is, then what is the point?”

Genocide: The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought …”

God, Scripture, and violence: * The Phinehas vs. Jesus Conundrum; * Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible; * A Coming Storm; * A Cruciform Magic Eye [required reading]

* “As followers of Jesus, we must honesty face the challenge that the ugly, violent aspects of our Bible and our history pose for us. As followers of Jesus, we are called to not only refrain from violence, but to be peacemakers (Mt 5:9) and ‘ministers of reconciliation’ and ‘ambassadors’ of the kingdom (2 Cor. 5:19). Yet our Bible, which we confess to be ‘God-breathed’ (2 Tim.3:16), contains material that is violence-making rather than peace-making. … In light of all this, we must ask ourselves: What does it mean to be makers of peace and bringers of reconciliation when the Bible we confess to be ‘God-breathed’ has material that continues to inspire violent attitudes, if not outright violence? … The question I therefore leave you with is this: Is there a way to affirm that all Scripture, including its violent stories, violent prayers, and violent depictions of God, are ‘God-breathed,’ while at the same time renouncing its violence? For in confessing Christ as Lord, it seems we are bound to do both. It may seem like an impossible conundrum, but I have found that impossible conundrums are sometimes an opportunity for the most profound insights. Think about it.”

* “I only began to discern a way to understand how horrific depictions of God in Scripture bear witness to the crucified Christ when I finally stopped trying to deny these depictions were horrific. So long as we try to tidy up, sanitize, minimize and piously gloss over material that we honestly know in our hearts is macabre and revolting, the best case scenario is that we will succeed at finding a slightly less revolting deity in these portraits than we initially found. This is what standard evangelical apologetic approaches accomplish, on a good day. It is in essence the approach I adopted five years ago when I began this present project. But I came to see that even the very best of these approaches are of no value when it comes to disclosing how this material bears witness to the self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love of God on Calvary. And to make matters worse, all the while we are tidying up our macabre depictions of God, we are bearing some responsibility for the way this material continues to serve as a precedent for people to appeal to in order to justify their hatred and violence, as it has served throughout history.”

* “I am … proposing what I call ‘The Cruciform Thesis.’ It consists of four principles that I derive from the revelation of God on the cross, for I argue that the cross is the quintessential revelation of God and the thematic center of everything Jesus was about.”

* “The God who bore our sin and God-forsaken judgment had always been bearing the sin and God-forsaken place of his people. The God who reflected the grotesqueness of our sin back toward us by taking on the guilty, God-forsaken semblance in the process of revealing himself, had always been reflecting the grotesqueness of his people’s sin by taking on a guilty, God-forsaken semblance in the process of revealing himself. … God only became a human and suffered to atone for the sin of the world once, in the crucifixion of Christ. But the fact that this single event reveals what God is truly like means it reflects what God has always been like. And when we fully embrace this and refuse to let it be compromised by granting authority to the horrifically violent warrior images, we are in a position to discern the crucified God in the portraits of the warrior God, and see in the crucified God the crucifixion of the warrior God.”

Preventive measures to violence: Focusing on Violence Before It Happens

“‘When we looked at kids who had committed attacks, the vast majority had come to the attention of an adult for a behavior that was concerning but would not necessarily cause someone to conclude they were planning an attack,’ said Bryan M. Vossekuil, former executive director of the National Threat Assessment Center, part of the Secret Service, and a co-author of a 2002 guide to threat assessment in schools published by the service and the federal Education Department.”

War: What the Iraq War Did to and for the Middle East

“Ten years later, it’s clear that the Iraq war cast ‘a very large shadow’ indeed, but it was a much darker shadow than the fantasists who ran American foreign policy back then foresaw. Bush believed that freedom was humanity’s natural state: Blow away the manhole-cover that a tyrant pressed down on his people, and freedom would gush forth like a geyser. Yet when Saddam Hussein was toppled, the main thing liberated was the blood hatred that decades of dictatorship had suppressed beneath the surface.”

Jan 26 2013

this went thru my mind (on violence)

 

V-for-violenceAbortion: 40 Years of Roe v. Wade… Lord Come! by K. Rex Butts

“…  no human is ‘God’ with the right to decide which human life is of value and which life is not.”

Capital punishment & the death penalty: * Who Would Jesus Execute? by by Jim Wallis and Richard Viguerie; * N.T. Wright on the Death Penalty and American Christianity

* “My own road to Damascus on this issue came many years ago. When I was a young Republican in Houston in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I was a very hard-core, law-and-order type: ‘lock ‘em up, throw the key under the jail so they never get out.’”

* “You can’t reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty. Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world. As far as they were concerned, their stance went along with the traditional ancient Jewish and Christian belief in life as a gift from God, which is why (for instance) they refused to follow the ubiquitous pagan practice of ‘exposing’ baby girls (i.e. leaving them out for the wolves or for slave-traders to pick up).”

Christians & guns: Following Jesus: The Best Gun Control Ever! by Kurt Willems [essential reading]

“I invite fellow Christians to consider a life where we all simply decided to S-T-O-P… stop; stop using the following arguments or taking the following stances to justify positions on gun control.

“#1 Stop appealing to the 2nd Amendment as if it were the lost ending to the Gospel of Mark. … #2 Stop metaphorically connecting the loss of certain guns to the Apocalypse. … #3 Stop clinging to guns as if they are central to one’s identity. … #4 Stop ignoring the rest of the modernized world as if American culture has the corner on gun control (or the lack there of). … #5 Stop trusting guns as a source of personal security. …

“If we can stop the previous five approaches to the issue of guns, then perhaps we could start implementing several life-giving approaches to the gun conversation.

“#1 Start appealing to the New Testament (which includes the Gospel of Mark, amongst other things). … #2 Start choosing to trust in God’s faithfulness to see us through even the worst of ‘apocalypses.’ … #3 Start building one’s identity on the biblical and relational person of Jesus Christ and nothing else. … #4 Start recognizing that we are citizens of a global kingdom, not an isolated nation called the United States. … #5 Start trusting that Christ is our only source of security and that our only weaponry is “spiritual” and never lethal.”

Consistency, gun control & history: NRA was Pro-Gun Control When It Came to Black Panthers

“While today’s NRA takes hardline positions against even the most modest gun control measures, this was not always the case.  Throughout its history, the NRA supported gun control, including restrictions on gun ownership, and was not focused on the Second Amendment.

“But the organization had a change of heart in the 1970s when the Black Panthers advocated for an individual right to bear arms. Ironically, the Panthers were the founders of the modern-day gun rights movement, which became the purview of predominantly white, rural conservatives.”

Covert operations: Dirty Wars

“… one of the things that humbles both of us is that, you know, when you arrive in a village in Afghanistan and knock on someone’s door, you’re the first American they’ve seen since the Americans that kicked that door in and killed half their family. And yet, time and time again, those families invited us in, welcomed us and shared their stories with us, based on—you know, we promised them that we would do everything we could to make their stories be heard in the U.S.”

Depression & guns: Please Take Away My Right to a Gun by Wendy Button

“My depression appeared for the first time in the late ’90s … It comes and goes like fog. Medicine can help. I have my tricks to manage and get through it. Sometimes it sticks around for a day or a week, and sometimes it stays away for a couple of years. … You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the second hand.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,364 Americans lost that fight in 2010 and committed suicide; 19,392 used a gun. No one ever attempted to break down my door in the early morning again, but I had an episode when my depression did come back in full force in the early winter of 2009, after I made a career-ending decision and isolated myself too much; on a January night in 2010; and again in May 2012 … If I had purchased that gun and it had been in my possession, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist and would be here typing these words. …

“Please take away my Second Amendment right. Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for relief. I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to pull the trigger.”

Gun buy-back efforts: Steps to Disarm (Get Gift Card) at Ohio Church [cf. http://pdchurch.org/home/ for this church's website]

“… every gun collected — and turned over to the police to be destroyed — is a gun not found by a curious child, not reached for in a fit of anger over a slight on the street.”

Gun control: Gun-Control Advocate Looking for a Million Good Moms

“‘The time has come, just like in the 1980s when the time was right for Mothers Against Drunk Driving,’ Ms. Watts said. ‘We need MADD for gun control. … One Million Moms for Gun Control … The N.R.A. outlined how they saw the vision of America. That future is everyone is armed and the bad guys shoot it out with the good guys over our children’s heads. That’s not tenable, and it’s not the American way.’”

Hard contact sports: Junior Seau’s Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against NFL

“…  Seau committed suicide last May and a postmortem study of his brain by the National Institutes of Health found that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease associated with receptive injuries to the head.”

Military service: Following Jesus Means Learning to Say Both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’

“I hate the fact that so oftentimes Christians have not helped one another discover what it means to worship a Savior who would rather die than use coercion to save us. And as a result, we underwrite forms of life, such as military formation. Which looks so morally attractive to so many people because it’s so much more compelling than anything we offer as Christians. I don’t in anyway judge people in the military because I think they are in many ways so morally admirable. But most of the time no one ever told them Christians might have a problem with war and that really bothers me.” (Stanley Hauerwas, as quoted in the embedded video clip)

Military spending: * The Force; * The U.S. Warfare State and Evangelical Peacemaking by David P. Gushee [required reading]

* “The United States spends more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined. Between 1998 and 2011, military spending doubled, reaching more than seven hundred billion dollars a year—more, in adjusted dollars, than at any time since the Allies were fighting the Axis.”

* “Retired U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich argues in several important recent books that the direction of U.S. foreign and military policy is slipping from democratic control. It is instead dominated by a cohort of active and retired military, intelligence, law enforcement, corporate, lobbyist, academic, and political elites whose power in Washington is sufficiently impressive as to foreclose serious reconsideration of what Bacevich calls the ‘Washington rules.’ The elites enforcing these rules consistently drive us to policies of permanent war, a staggeringly large global military presence, and regular global interventionism. This analysis stands in striking continuity with the warnings offered 50 years ago by President Eisenhower about the ‘military-industrial complex.’”

Scripture & nonviolence: Swords into Plowshares

“The image of swords into plowshares is about dismantling guns and making gardening tools instead. It’s moving from full armories to full granaries, preferring crops to a cache of weapons. … It calls us–not to a less violent world, but a non-violent one. … This song of swords into plowshares stays with me these days. I’ve decided I don’t want to waste my energies on fighting. I want to feed people.”

Suicide: Mr. Hurd and Leaving Life Behind by Craig Cottongim

“Please, if you are ever contemplating suicide, seek help. There are better ways out of your despair. I think anyone who has been affected by suicide would plead with you to find help. If you’ve lost someone who took their own life, please don’t seclude yourself, and don’t suppress your feelings. There are loving friends and family and church members too who would be a great source of comfort for you.”

War: Janine di Giovanni: What I Saw in the War [11 min. TED talk video clip]

“… there were bodies piled twice my height.”

Women in combat: Military Removes Ban on Women in Combat

“The military has removed its ban on women in combat. The decision, which overturns a 1994 ban and is one of outgoing Pentagon chief Leon Panetta’s biggest decisions, ‘opens thousands of front-line positions’ to women, though the change ‘won’t happen immediately.’”

Jan 23 2013

this went thru my mind

 

Climate change & global warming: How High Could the Tide Go?

“‘I wish I could take people that question the significance of sea level rise out in the field with me,’ Dr. Raymo said. ‘Because you just walk them up 30 or 40 feet in elevation above today’s sea level and show them a fossil beach, with shells the size of a fist eroding out, and they can look at it with their own eyes and say, ‘Wow, you didn’t just make that up.’”

Fear: Quit Asking Fear for Permission by Jon Acuff

“Quit asking fear for permission. Fear will never tell you it’s time to do the thing you’re afraid to do.”

Hell: * What Did Jesus Teach About Hell?; * Hell: From James to John

* “The traditional view of hell rests on four pillars: that the OT says nothing; that the Jewish view at the time of Jesus was one of eternal conscious punishment; that Jesus’ view was thoroughly Jewish; and that the NT authors follow Jesus. Edward Fudge, in Hell: A Final Word , subjects each of these to examination in a readable, accessible format. The first pillar is wobbly; the OT does speak about the “end” of the wicked and the idea is one of a “consuming” fire (not tormenting fire). The second? Wobblier. There were three views: a consuming fire, a purifying fire, and a tormenting fire. Third? Today we sketch Fudge’s short chapters on what Jesus taught, and I shall sketch his sketch.”

* “The Book of Acts does not motivate by fear.”

Pro-life: A Dialogue on What it Means to be Pro-Life by Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo

“Our ideologies come with responsibility. In my neighborhood, to be against abortion means we have to figure out what to do when a fourteen-year-old girl gets pregnant. If we are really pro-life, we had better have some foster kids and teen moms living with us to prove it. I don’t want to just be an anti-abortion or anti-death person. I want to be pro-life.”

Relationships & work: What If You Could Truly Be Yourself at Work? by Tony Schwartz

“Each of us is far less likely to succeed by forever pushing to stand out from the pack than by building communities of care and trust committed to raising the bar for everyone.”

Retirement & work: God at Work: Mission Work by Jonathan Storment

“The Greek view of work was that it was a necessary evil. … But Genesis, starts off radically differently. It involves a God who intentionally works and creates the world with care. In fact, the word that Genesis uses for God’s creative word is just the Hebrew word for everyday work. The Bible starts off with God working. And then he creates Adam and Eve and immediately puts them to work And that’s important, because before the fall, there was work. God didn’t finish creation, he started it and then joins in a partnership with them as they create culture, name animals and pioneer… well basically everything. …

“It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t have [an] … idea of retirement. Instead the Bible has the idea of Sabbath. That is you don’t just work yourself to death until you turn 65. You work with the pace of someone who knows they aren’t the Savior and creator of the world. You rest for a season and then work for a season. But you never just decide to not work again.

“In fact, the closest thing in the Bible that would resemble what we call retirement is death.”

Social security: To Save Social Security, Raise the Minimum Wage

“… we have to do something that will top up benefit levels twenty years from now, not something to stave a complete collapse tomorrow. One thing we could do is simply make up the projected 27 percent shortfall in Social Security benefits through general government spending. At today’s prices, that would cost about $200 billion per year, or about 6 percent of the federal budget. That’s a lot, but not an unmanageable sum of money for the federal government. It could be done. Another thing we would do is just raise the minimum wage.”