Executions: Viewpoints based on Jesus vary

Myron Pitts
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“Who would Jesus execute?”

A man opposed to the death penalty asked this provocative question on our letters page. Naturally, he drew letters in response.

I am strongly opposed to the death penalty on many grounds other than moral. I have written about this before and won’t rehash my points.

But what about Jesus?

The literal answer to “Who would Jesus execute?” seems obvious, if we are talking about the innocent carpenter who was himself executed at the age of 33 more than 2,000 years ago. It is New Testament wisdom that Jesus possessed the means to lay his captors low but deliberately refrained.

“I think Jesus made it very clear,” says Dr. Steven Brey, a Methodist minister and the chairman of Methodist College’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. “He chose not to execute anyone but instead allowed himself to be executed.”

Key question
Brey says he does not doubt that some people deserve the death penalty.

“The question is not, ‘Who deserves to be executed.’ Well, quite a few people, perhaps all of us in the end.

“The question is: Should we kill them? I think Jesus’ answer is unequivocally ‘no.’”

The underlying issue is whether a Christian ought to be advocating capital punishment. The provocative question is a direct take on the popular believer’s slogan, “What Would Jesus Do?”

The Rev. Mark Olson, senior pastor at Snyder Memorial Baptist Church, says a person can either support or oppose the death penalty and still be a Christian. He said he supports capital punishment if it is fairly applied and is not influenced by a defendant’s race or income.

“Your salvation is not dependent on your view of this issue,” he says.


Olson says that Jesus’ life is a model for personal behavior, and that Christ did not comment on specific laws.

“That does not mean that you can’t draw implications of what (laws) would be good for a nation,” he adds. “But we should be hesitant on making definitive statements on what he would or would not oppose.”

Who’ll cast the 1st stone?
The Rev. Edward Beddingfield, pastor at First Baptist Church downtown, said Jesus weighed in on capital punishment one time in the Bible. In events recorded in the eighth chapter of John, Christ was asked if an adulterous woman should be stoned to death.

“He said, ‘Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone,’” Beddingfield says.

The state is charged with executing a convict. But an individual person must inject the fatal shot after midnight.

Can that individual executioner still claim the kingdom of heaven?

Certainly, Olson says. He compares it to a soldier’s duty to his or her country.

“You have to ask whether a person’s conscience allows him to do it or not to do it,” he says. “But if we want Christians to be allowed to participate in government in any way, shape or form, I do not see how you can condemn that person — unless the person felt the execution was an extreme miscarriage of justice.”

Dr. Victor Hebert says the question “Who would Jesus execute?” misses the point and dangerously mingles scripture with philosophy and other secular disciplines.

Hebert is a Fayetteville State University music professor, a lay leader at The Church of Fayetteville and host of a Sunday Bible study on WIDU.

He says the focus should be on the larger issue: “Jesus came to offer man life.”

My view
My view is that Jesus’ message is filtered through our own desires.

For me, I do not like to think Jesus would advocate killing. That would turn him into any ordinary man.

Then the question becomes, “Why would I do what he does?”

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayettevillenc.com or at 486-3559.