{"id":956,"date":"2005-01-03T10:28:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-03T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/01\/03\/christianity\/"},"modified":"2005-01-03T10:28:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-03T15:28:00","slug":"christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/01\/03\/christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Staunton News-Leader<\/a> asks if we are really as Christian nation as we purport to be.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Vengeance is not a Christian value. Hate is not a Christian value. Justice, applied fairly, is.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}