I Think Of The Catholic

One Thing That's Clear In The Scriptures Is That The Nations Do Not Lead People To Peace; Rather, People Lead The Nations To Peace.

We Think Of Justice Sometimes As Getting What You Deserve, You Know  -  what Crime Was Committed And What Is The Punishment For That Crime. That's How A Lot Of The Criminal Justice Works. But God's Justice Is Restorative, So It's Not As Interested In Those Same Questions Of "what Did They Do Wrong?" And "what Is The Punishment For That?" It's More About What Harm Was Done And How Do We Heal That Harm, And That's A Much More Redemptive Version. So, It Definitely Doesn't Turn A Blind Eye To Harm, But It Does Say We Want To Heal The Wounds Of That.

I Think We've Misinterpreted Some Of The Scriptures To Justify The Death Penalty. So Whereas A Lot Of Folks In America Feel Like We Can Do Far Better Justice  -  it's More Expensive To Do The Death Penalty Than The Alternatives  -  there's So Many Reasons That People Come To The Conclusion To Abolish The Death Penalty.

We Have To Use Our Discontentment To Engage Rather Than Disengage - Our Hope Has To Be More Powerful Than Our Cynicism.

When You Look At The Bible, And I Read The Bible Very Seriously, For A Lot Of My Life, I Believed The Bible Ordained The Death Penalty, And The Bible Seemed To Be Very Clear About That. But The More I Look, The More Troubled I Became Because It's Not That Simple. In The Bible, There's Some 30 Death-worth Crimes, Like Working On The Sabbath, Or Disrespecting Your Parents. Are We That Fundamental That We Should Bring Back That Death Penalty?