Taking Life
My Dear People,
By the time I finish writing these words, and by the time you read them, John Allen Muhammad will be dead.
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And I cannot think of anyone who deserves to die more than him.
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Others come to mind as well.
Those who abuse children.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
Perhaps you would name others.
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But the question is: does anyone deserve to die?
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Gena and I lived in northern Virginia at the time when John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were on their shooting spree. I distinctly remember walking down King Street in Alexandria one afternoon, a few blocks from our apartment, wondering where the shooters were. It was eerie; it was scary.
What those two men did was inhuman. One of their victims was a child walking into his middle school.
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That the United States is one of only three fully developed nations (along with Japan and Singapore) that still practices capital punishment is not reason enough to abolish capital punishment. It is not a matter merely of development. It is a matter of morality and character, a matter of humanity. A spiritual matter.
Regardless of what anyone might think execution says about the executed, what does capital punishment say about us, about you and me? What does it mean that you and I are party to the taking of a human life, that, by virtue of our being Americans and Virginians, last night we participated in putting a man to death?
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In our Baptismal Covenant, we promise, with God's help, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves (The Book of Common Prayer, 305). To seek and serve Christ in all persons. All persons.
That we would seek and serve Christ in those who were victimized between October 2and October 22, 2002, by Malvo and Muhammad, that is a given.
But what about the Christ in John Allen Muhammad?
What happened to that Christ last night?
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
