THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 3, 1995 TAG: 9506020082
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Wright
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
WHAT IMAGE brought home to your heart the horror of the Oklahoma bombing?
For me, it was a tiny pair of yellow baby booties.
If you've had children, you know the kind. They are those sweet little Humpty Dumpty booties with the ring of tiny pompoms on the rim of the cuff.
The day after the bombing, I saw such a pair of yellow booties on the tiny feet of 1-year-old Baylee Almon. Baylee, captured by a photograph, lay limp in the arms of a firefighter. Later, America learned that she was among the 15 children killed in the blast that ripped apart the Federal Building, housing the America's Kids day-care center.
For me, it was those soiled yellow booties - a symbol of innocence destroyed - that made the bombing real. It also made my anger real.
``Get the creeps and string 'em up,'' was my knee-jerk reaction. Even though I've calmed down a bit in the month since the bombing, I still struggle with the issue of punishment for the terrorists. In particular, I struggle with the issue of capital punishment.
What would God want us to do with the people who killed 15 children and 153 adults in Oklahoma City? Though the Lord says vengeance is his alone, there is certainly a valid history of man acting on God's behalf. But can humans possess enough wisdom and discretion to act judiciously on God's behalf where capital punishment is concerned?
For years I have struggled with the issue of capital punishment. I know both sides. On the one hand you have the statistics that show the unfairness of the death penalty, how it claims the lives of the least well-defended rather than the most serious criminals. It is also capricious, in that a wide variety of offenses have been punished by death. And there is the cost issue. Because of our legal system of appeals, it costs more to send a person to the gas chamber than it does to keep that person locked up for life.
Then, too, there is the moral question: What good does it do? Is any good done when a life is ended because another life was snuffed out? Can the killing of a few terrorists bring back the 168 people murdered in Oklahoma City? It might make us feel better, but is any good really done?
The other side of the coin is fairly simple. Certain crimes demand the harshest penalty of law. In his 1986 essay, ``The Ultimate Punishment,'' published in the Harvard Law Review, legal professor Ernest van den Haag writes that the ``severity and finality of the death penalty is appropriate to the seriousness and the finality of murder.''
This seems particularly true when children are involved. I have often read of crimes against children, horrible abuse cases, and thought to myself: ``They ought to do to that adult exactly what he (or she) did to that child. The more that adult could suffer, the better.''
Still, however, I go back to the question, ``What would God want us to do?''
I wish the answer were simple. While there is certainly much evidence, especially in the Hebrew Testament, that God approves of the death penalty, the Christian Testament offers a different model. Instead of ``eye for an eye'' justice, Jesus Christ always sought mercy for sinners. When the crowd tried to stone a woman caught in adultery - a perfectly justified case of capital punishment under the laws of the day - Jesus told the crowd to back off.
``Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone,'' he said, and no stones were thrown.
But would Jesus think that adultery were an equal crime to the killing of Baylee Almon?
A pair of tiny yellow booties. Just days before the Oklahoma bombing, I had bought such a pair of booties for my then-yet-to-be-born daughter. Today, I hold my newborn and gently fondle her tiny feet clad in little yellow baby booties.
If she had been killed, what would I think about the death penalty for the terrorists? What, too, will I teach her about the death penalty? How can I make sure that she will grow up to be loving and forgiving, and yet still possess the balance value of righteous indignation?
How can I teach her how to walk the fine line between justice and mercy? How, indeed, when I myself am faltering between the two? MEMO: Every other week, Betsy Mathews Wright publishes responses to her
opinion column. Send responses to Issues of Faith, The Virginian-Pilot,
150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510; call (804) 446-2273; FAX
(804) 436-2798; or send e-mail to bmw(AT)infi.net. Deadline is Tuesday
before publication. You must include name, city and phone number.
by CNB