From: daveshao@leland.stanford.edu (David Shao)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Death Penalty
Date: 11 Jan 93 08:45:17 GMT
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA

In article <Jan.8.00.46.26.1993.2462@farside.rutgers.edu> aaron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>
>You mean like Jesus did with the adulterous woman?  She should have been stoned
>for her sin but Jesus let her off, thus avoiding God's commands.  

What do you mean let her off?  Did Jesus raise his hand and shoot forth
lightning bolts to drive away her prosecutors?  Let us read the passage
ourselves:

  They asked him this as a test, looking for something to use against him.
  But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his 
  finger.  As they persisted with their question, he looked up and
  said, "If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the
  first to throw a stone at her."  Then he bent down and wrote on the
  ground again.  When they heard this they went away one by one,
  beginning with the eldest, until Jesus was left alone with the
  woman, who remained standing there.  He looked up and said,
  "Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?"  
  "No one, sir," she replied.  "Neither do I condemn you," said
  Jesus, "go away and don't sin any more."   
                    (John 8: 6-11, Jerusalem Bible)

Understand the real issue--Jesus had been a persistent champion of
the rights of the oppressed and a consistent critic of the hypocrisy
of the Pharisees, priests, and elders.  The ruling class had
failed to implement a society where the rights of the oppressed
were respected, one of the central demands of the prophets of old.
For these crimes they deserved the death penalty, but they had
arranged the legal system, much like today, so that they were
immune from punishment.

They dragged a helpless woman (where is the man who was with her?) before
Jesus and planned to execute her in front of him, hoping in the process
to provoke Him into repudiating the Law under which she has been
judged.  But Jesus repudiated neither the law nor the punishment.

Jesus shifted the focus of the discussion from His making a choice
to the accusers making a choice.  The accusers chose the way of
evil.  THEY renounced the Law in an effort to avoid judgment on
themselves.  

Many today have learned exactly the wrong lesson from this parable.
They believe that if they don't call an action a sin, then it cannot
be a sin.  We see supposedly pious Christian men abandoning wives
and children to poverty or stealing from ministries, then calling
on others not to judge them.  It is the inevitable culmination
of a philosophy where each person determines his own morality.
Guilt, shame, and low self esteem become the greatest evils.

When the men brought the woman before Jesus they were not concerned
with justice.  They were taunting Jesus.  It would have been as if
the KKK invited Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to see the execution
of a black man convicted of raping a white woman.  

Justice is administered unevenly in this country.  Why don't the
opponents of the death penalty use the millions of dollars that are 
being squandered to defend heartless murderers to try to change to 
system to benefit all of us?  Why must they defend the Ted Bundys
of this world instead of championing the rights of victims?  Why
the identification with the most evil of humanity?

Yours in Christ
David Shao