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Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies and to forgive. How can these messages of compassion be reconciled with a policy of putting to death those whom we have judged to be wrongdoers against society? Walter Long, a defense attorney for Texas death row inmates, says that they cannot. He wrestles with the apparent contradiction between the teachings of Jesus and widespread tolerance of government violence in a state where most citizens identify themselves as Christian. He explores the impact of a particular execution of great renown - the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth - and looks for his own understanding of that event, of the man and his message, and of the followers who formed the church after his death. In a provocative essay, he returns to the basics of how Jesus taught us to live and how those instructions may encourage us to be actively faithful in our world today. Discussion questions included.… (more)
User reviews
It is the Christian answer, though. I
Walter Long suggests that to pray the Lord's prayer (Jesus's prayer), we stay in community with God and each other. Praying, we are not alone. Praying, we can find the strength to move onward.
Long quotes Martin Buber who wrote from a humanist point of view. He said,
"We know nothing of death, nothing other than the one fact that we shall die--but what is that, dying? We do not know. So it behooves us to accept that it is end of everything conceivable by us. To wish to extend our conception beyond death, to wish to anticipate in the soul what death alone can reveal to us in existence, seems to me to be a lack of faith clothed in faith" (p 24).
Speculative faith seems oxymoronic.
To
Long stresses Jesus's teachings about forgiveness. He writes, "each act of self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others is a small resurrection -- a revivifying contact with others -- and a source of hope for a less violent, more just future."
As in all of the more recent pamphlets in this series, included at the end are Discussion Questions. What a rousing discussion this material could stimulate!