Dear Editor:
It is not just wishful thinking that states can live without the death penalty. Generally, states that do not have capital punishment have lower homicide rates than states that have capital punishment. People of New Testament times need to consider what Jesus did when asked about the legality of divorce. Jesus was aware of His present time and of what the law stated, but He referenced a time before the law was ever given to reveal what God's intentions were/are for humanity (Mt. 19:3-8).
For the sake of our Protestant brethren in Missouri, I promise not to bring up the whole Henry VIII affair, but the example of what Jesus did regarding divorce is also valid for capital punishment. We only need to go back and to examine what God did about the very first homicide. After Cain killed Abel, God put a seal on Cain so that no human being would presume to execute him (Gen. 4:15). Execution is God's domain - not man's. This is the ideal of what God intended/intends for humanity even for today. Cain became a wanderer, but society today can not have killers on the loose. This is why we have jails. Incarceration is enough. The law of love leads one to choose life instead of death.
Until the saints come marching in, and I am not just referring to the ones down in New Orleans, we all have work to do. Missouri, please pray the little prayer at www.de-vrouwe.info every day, and please abolish the death penalty as your next door neighbor Illinois has done. "Society will never learn to respect human life when the state hypocritically kills those who have killed." "The violence of capital punishment only begets more violence." Let the Missourian without sin be the first to put the lethal needle in!
Sincerely,
Matthew R. Dunnigan
Rome, Italy
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