Capital Punishment. The penalty of death for the commission of a crime. God drove Adam and Eve from the garden. He also condemned them and their offspring to die some day. Such are the ways of God. What of the ways of men? God wrote on the Tablets; Thou shall not kill. But God also installed in man’s very nature that one could kill in self-defense if necessary to preserve your own life. God’s prophets also wrote, “life for life, i.e., the law of retribution. Such are Gods works according to the Jews and Christians. The history of the world now parades before us. Many are executed. Now in post-modern times most countries have prisons where many are serving life sentences for various crimes. Many Christians have enlisted into one of the causes of the late Pope John Paul’s II theology; that complete union with Christ can only happen if we submit to the higher order of forgiveness and love as lived and preached by Christ according to the New Testament. Specifically, capital punishment offends against the higher order of forgiveness and love. Christ did not repudiate the laws of his Father. He taught that we could only join with the Father through his death, i.e., our redemption. The way to the Father is through the Christ. Christ demands total forgiveness and complete love. The threshold of our forgiveness for a criminal convicted of a capital crime has to be to spare them their life. That translates into life imprisonment for most of us. For the extraordinary case where society cannot provide for imprisonment, then the state is justified in execution in the name of public safety. Notice that none of the above has anything to do with the disposition of the convicted criminal or utilitarian economic arguments. As to the prosecutor who tells the jury the death penalty is a deterrent to capital crimes that others may commit someday, only a fool accepts this. The prosecution preaches vengeance through the death penalty. There is not much more to say. Remember man, only through the death of the Son has man been redeemed, and then no man ever enters the Kingdom without the total love and absolute mercy of God.