A recent op-ed in the Christian Post hailed the increasing number of Republican lawmakers who are sponsoring measures around the country to repeal the death penalty for convicted murderers and serial killers. This has been accompanied, perhaps unsurprisingly, with an increase in the number of evangelical Christians who support ending capital punishment for capital crimes.
I am not among their number and am distressed at a move that so clearly demonstrates the collapsing reverence we hold for the sanctity of human life.
There’s a reason that in God’s ever-lasting covenant with Noah, the Creator ordained that “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed.” And the reason wasn’t vengeance, anger, or retaliatory rage. The reason followed in the very next line: “For in the image of God He made man.”
Human life is inviolable not because of anything it does, but because of what it is: a creature that bears the image of the Almighty. When someone callously destroys such an esteemed and valued being, the penalty inflicted will demonstrate the value we assign to what has been lost. In other words, when the state spares the life of a confessed or convicted murderer, it is implicitly assigning more value to the killer’s life than his victim’s. That devalues the image of God carried by that victim as well.Read the rest from Peter Heck HERE.
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