Mr. Moderate

From the standpoint of a born-again Christian, is executed murderess and fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker enjoying full privileges in Heaven? If so, is that in any way “justice” for her victims? On the Christian worldview, it is highly-unlikely that either of her two dead victims, both members of an underworld biker community, were in any Christian sense “saved” before they were killed, so would not Tucker’s acts of murder have sent the victims straight to Hell? And if the murder victims go to Hell and the murderess goes to Heaven, what does that say about God’s idea of Justice?

One of the key concepts in the whole idea of what “justice” means is the idea of proportionality. We do not impose the death penalty, or million dollar fines, upon people convicted of parking tickets because the punishment is not proportional to the crime. “Let the punishment fit the crime is the principle that the severity of penalty for a misdeed or wrongdoing should be reasonable and proportional to the severity of the infraction.” So, on the Christian worldview, why is God so unjust as to have only one possible punishment of the most-extreme sort (an eternity in Hell), with the only other possibility being the most-extreme possible reward of an eternity in Heaven? In fact, it is exactly the concept that God is just, and Hell is an impossibly-extreme punishment that can never be just for any person, which led many Christians to the idea of universal salvation; everybody goes to Heaven when they die, regardless of any sin they might have committed while alive.

But then the argument over proportionality resurfaces, but in this case the idea is that imposing no punishment whatsoever for offenses against God and fellow humans is also an unjust principle. This is reflected in the article about universal salvation by this quote:

The more common, and less extreme version of the Universalist doctrine is that Hell does indeed exist and many souls may end up there, however, Hell is not a realm of eternal punishment. Instead God continues to care for the souls in Hell until, eventually, God’s infinite, patient love will outlast the sinner’s ability to resist. When, at last, the sinner who had turned away from God turns back to the God who had never turned away, the sinner will be removed from Hell to enjoy the salvation God had always intended for all creation.

However, that quote still does not deal with the need for proportionality of punishment for the likes of Karla Faye Tucker, who supposedly turned back to God before she was executed by the State of Texas. Presuming that to be true, would she then avoid Hell altogether, again while her victims might continue to reside in Hell if they continued to be unrepentant of their own sins?

The key question, then, is how much better or worse is a death penalty as opposed to the alternative of life in prison without any possibility of parole. Most people subject to the death penalty in the United States are provided with a chaplain to tend to their spiritual needs. I think that a fairly-large percentage of executed criminals would properly repent of their sins before being executed by the government. If those people are going straight to Heaven to be rewarded with eternal life with God, would it not be more of a punishment to keep them in prison until they die of natural (or other) causes?

Most healthy people fear death for logically-justifiable reasons. We tend to view our lives on Earth as important, at least to ourselves. It takes a fair amount of heavy-duty indoctrination to get people to the point where they are ready to lay down their lives for the greater good of humanity. And our society fosters that mind-set by holding up those who do die for a cause larger than themselves as “heroes” for the rest of us to emulate in some sense or another. (But of course, not to emulate their death by going out and deliberately committing suicide!)

So, it is a natural and mentally-healthy attitude for people to fear death and desire life. And that continues until such time as a person might grow so old and/or infirm that they begin to desire the alternative of death because life, for them, has become too much of a burden. Of course, there is always the idea in younger people that they are immune to death, so they frequently engage in much riskier behavior. (This perhaps explains why we tend to recruit soldiers from this class of people.) By these comments I mean to illustrate that our attitudes about life and death will tend to reflect our personal circumstances of age and health.

But on a time scale of birth through eternity (in Heaven or Hell), just how important is our brief span of time here on Earth? And if we adhere to the idea of proportionality, what eternal punishment or reward could ever be merited by any courses conduct, for good or evil, during life? Of course, the Christian worldview is that God’s grace grants the reward of salvation to at least the “true believers” among us. Unfortunately, the various Christian sects have distinctly different ideas about just who the “true believers” might be. But the more important question is this: if you believe that God is just, and that justice is proportional, then are there any stories about Heaven and Hell we can logically believe?

Unfortunately, I’m forced to conclude that the correct answer must be “no.”