The Staunton News-Leader asks if we are really as Christian nation as we purport to be.
Here in the Commonwealth, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore is already running for governor on a platform that would “enhance” the death penalty and extend the reach of state-sanctioned murder to people who did not even participate in a killing. Kilgore also wants to treat gang crime as terrorism. The logic is that since the public is terrified by gangs, gang crime constitutes terrorism. Ergo, the anti-terrorism laws passed by 33 states in the wake of 9/11 – Virginia among them – are ripe for the picking to prosecute street thugs.
Wrong. All good people are terrified of crime – even small crimes – all crime terrorizes. That does not mean we should mete out the death penalty to shoplifters and burglars.
Vengeance is not a Christian value. Hate is not a Christian value. Justice, applied fairly, is.
There are adequate statutes on the books that can be used to sentence murderers, gangsters and rapists to hard time – even death, should their crimes call for it under state law – without “enhancement.”
Forgiveness and a belief that others might find the light and see the errors of their ways – those are Christian values. We are mightily sick of perversion of the law in the name of politics and vote-winning. Turning our laws into vote-winning machines is a sin of pride and a manifestation of the egotism of politicians. We must do better than that.