Capital Punishment Essay - Christians and the Death Penalty

Christians and the Death Penalty   Almost all societies have allot with the principle of an marrow for an eye, and considered it a step toward more enlightened civilization. Christians who assert an eye for an eye in their defense of the oddment penalty be usually unaware of the strict criteria that God imposed before it could be used to take human life. The Old Testament also allowed the wipeout penalty for crimes that today we consider less than misdemeanors -- distinctly, the Old Testament truth is archaic. Finally, Jesus himself argued against the principle of an eye for an eye.   Most societies dispensed with the eye for an eye principle of punishment centuries ago indeed, it is considered one of the great advances of civilization and whitlow justice. We do non punish rapists by raping them, or arsonists by enthusiastic their houses down, or sadists by torturing them. Instead they are imprisoned, isolated from smart set where they can no longer do harm. Ther e are three main reasons for doing so     1. Any criminal justice system is inherently imperfect, and the human beings within it are inevitably fallible. Courts have a lavish history of identify convictions the Stanford Law Review has uncovered 350 cases this century where clearly innocent people were sentenced to death, 75 of them since 1970. Only God or an wise being would truly know what another person deserves. And that would apply not only to forelands of guilt, but questions of justness of punishment. Imprisoning people allows us to reverse mistaken convictions with the minimum of damage. For those inmates not sentenced to life, it allows them to re-enter society without being bent on a terrible vengeance.     ... ...Prophets I have not come to repeal them, but to fulfill them. (Matthew 517) What Jesus meant by this is the subject of diligent debate. However, what is obvious is that many laws changed under the New Covenant Christians were freed from many of the old-fashioned Jewish laws on circumcision, Sabbath-observance and temple sacrifices. So it is not a question of whether the Talmudic laws were changed or dropped the only question is how many were. If some Christians maintain that at least the civil and criminal laws of the Talmud are still valid in their entirety, then we should expect that they actually subscribe to all of them. This would include the education requiring two or three eye-witnesses for a capital conviction, and the initiation of the death penalty in all the above instances. Needless to say, no Christian would ever agree to such a legal code.