Stranded On Death Row: Abolish The Death Penalty

“No prevention from this lynchin’ of sorts
You’re a victim from my drive-by of thoughts
No extensions, all attempts are to fail” — Stranded On Death Row by Doctor Dre.

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash

I am working on myself. I truly am. It bothers me that I want the monster who invaded a black church and murdered those nine beautiful souls because they were black, and he wanted to spark a race war…to be executed. I do not want him to live in the same world that my daughter occupies. I don’t want him breathing the same air that I breathe. Knowing that he exists, regardless if he is wasting away in solitary confinement, spoils the air that I breathe. It disgusts me that he is still able to eat, maybe even laugh, while the victims of his cowardly act of hate will never laugh again.

I know the Lord said vengeance is His. Yet, does not divine scripture state that God dwells within each of us? Accordingly, should we not lust for blood when blood has been spilled? Is it not holy to demand a life for recompense for a life that has been taken?

I know Jesus tells his followers to offer their other cheek if their assailant has smacked one cheek.

However, that is the Jesus of radical love. The Jesus with pigment in his skin. That is the Jesus that exists in the Bible but not in the churches that flourish throughout America.

The Jesus that I have come to know and now reject is the blonde hair, blue-eyed, pale-skinned Jesus. The Jesus who populates the pulpit in America allows those to hate others in His name. He is the Jesus that mandated the church remain segregated. This pigment-less Jesus was hesitant to condemn his worshipers who spent Saturday night terrorizing black folk: raping, beating, harassing, and even lynching them when they would pack the pews of his house Sunday morning.

This Jesus, who does not allow any slight to go unaddressed, is in favor of the death penalty. Many white-evangelical churches are reticent to decry this state-sponsored act of barbarism.

It is almost as if the congregation sings in unison: vengeance is ours.