p19cap More on Capital Punishment

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Dunnville Fireside

Reader feedback

Further Comments about Capital Punishment

 

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Dunnville's Fireside in June

Dunnville's Baha'i Fireside takes place on Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Ron Speer and Cheryl Sensabaugh share a power point presentation on their recent trip to Israel, including Baha'i gardens and holy places, Nazareth, the Golan Heights, the Jordan River Baptismal Centre, Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the West Bank.

This presentation will take place Tuesday June 10th at 8:00pm at the Garfield Disher Room of Dunnville's Library.

 

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Ron and Cheryl are available to take this presentation to your group. Just call Ron Speer 905-774-6526 or Cheryl 905-774-6218 and book a place and time.

 

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Reader feedback from Jimbo

 Very interesting and timely ideas! Just an update on the world's present population. It is now 6,668,967,842 human beings living on this planet, and growing fast. See http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html  for the latest world population count.

 

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Capital Punishment

 

Recently I wrote about the provisions in the Aqdas for capital punishment, and I got two comments on the blog, one quoting the first sentence of the 62nd paragraph only, saying I was wrong, and another saying I should have quoted the passage in question. So here is the whole paragraph:

 

"Should anyone intentionally destroy a house by fire, him also shall ye burn; should anyone deliberately take another's life, him also shall ye put to death. Take ye hold of the precepts of God with all your strength and power, and abandon the ways of the ignorant. Should ye condemn the arsonist and the murderer to life imprisonment, it would be permissible according to the provisions of the Book. He, verily, hath power to ordain whatsoever He pleaseth."

 

The second sentence says to "abandon the ways of the ignorant," probably means extremists on both sides of the issue, pro and con, those who would increase punishments and those who would wipe out capital punishment completely. But note the third sentence. It allows society to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. The last sentence again throws water on those who would take an absolute position either way; saying that God does what He wants, so leave it alone.

So the question remains, do Baha'is "believe in" capital punishment, or do we see this provision for its use as gradually removing the need for ever applying it? Let me ask a parallel question. Baha'u'llah's law provides for all nations to rise up and attack an aggressor nation. Does that mean that He sanctions attacks? Is He advocating war? Can you correctly say that Baha'is "believe in war"? That would be a gross perversion of the intent of Baha'u'llah's proposal for collective security. I am just saying that it is a gross half-truth to say that Baha'is believe in capital punishment.

 

It is, I declare forcefully, a fundamental step in the spiritual path to recognize that compassion for life is central to the belief in God. But compassion cannot thrive without the firm support of justice. But taking a life created by God is an affront to God, even in the hands of justice itself, which is why Baha'u'llah allows for life imprisonment instead of capital punishment for the arsonist or murderer. It is like the parable of the sower: some seeds fall on rocky ground, some on swampland, but neither crop grows. A society that bases itself on too much punishment or too much compassion will not thrive for long.

 

Since I have been citing Leo Tolstoy's story of his spiritual journey, let us look at the following. The turning point for him in finally accepting God after being an unbeliever all his life came upon two events, the death of his brother and the disturbing occasion when he witnessed a public execution. A footnote in Confession explains that on 25 March 1857 Francois Riche was executed for murder, and on 6 April Tolstoy mentioned the execution in his diary: `He kissed the Gospel and then -- death. What insanity!'

 

Here is how Tolstoy tells the story in Confession,

 

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"During this time I went abroad. Life in Europe and my acquaintance with eminent and learned Europeans confirmed me all the more in my belief in general perfectibility, for I found the very same belief among them. My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time... This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question -- Where are we to steer?" -- By saying, "We are being carried somewhere."

 

"I did not notice this at the time. Only now and then would my feelings, and not my reason, revolt against this commonly held superstition of the age, by means of which people hide from themselves their own ignorance of life.

 

"Thus during my stay in Paris the sight of an execution revealed to me the feebleness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw how the head was severed from the body and heard the thud of each part as it fell into the box, I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong.

 

"Therefore, my judgments must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

 

"The death of my brother was another instance in which I realized the inadequacy of the superstition of progress in regard to life. A good, intelligent, serious man, he was still young when he fell ill. He suffered for over a year and died an agonizing death without ever understanding why he lived and understanding even less why he was dying. No theories could provide any answers to these questions, either for him or for me, during his slow and painful death." (Tolstoy, Confession, pp. 22-23)

 

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Tolstoy, in my opinion, went to the nub of the question: the idolatry of progress. Advocates of capital punishment believe in an automatic mechanism of social engineering: kill killers. If we kill murderers we will automatically progress to a better, more just social condition. Progress is an ideology if it is used as an excuse not to seek out truth for yourself. So the question is: does capital punishment lead to progress?

 

History, especially American history, amply disproves this notion. As it is now in America the ones who end up being executed are non-whites and other despised minorities, thus worsening the racism that the Baha'i faith is designed to eliminate. The only way forward is to take the shoelaces of history between the hands and shake them by seeking truth for ourselves.

 

Capital punishment only perpetuates a culture of violence and retaliation. In the same way, if some nations rather than all nations were to arise to suppress an aggressor nation, Baha'u'llah's suggestion would actually spread regional conflicts into world wars. No, you have to look at the whole context of the peace program in order to understand it; and same way, look at the entire justice agenda of the Baha'i Faith.  Anything less than the whole Law of God is not enough. It is but sounds repeated back by a parrot. Baha'is do not parrot the pros or cons of disputes like capital punishment: we seek to establish justice and love through our own spiritual effort and by planned social action.

 

Let us apply each of the Aqdas's provisions as the divine Doctor prescribes the whole remedy. This law is designed to end murder, not perpetuate it.