They executed John Allen Muhammed on Tuesday. You may not remember but he was the guy who masterminded the Washington DC sniper shootings seven years ago. That fall I started high school and for three weeks there were no outdoor sports. PE and all practices were indoor only.
I vividly remember that was the one season I tried out athletic training and therefore spent a lot of time sitting on alarming-smelling mats in the gym while the football team practiced. Outside though people hurried in and out of cars and buildings. I remember my dad telling my mom to duck while she got gas and we had a conversation about whether it was better to yield to fear and duck or trust that God would take you when he was good and ready and pump your gas blithely erect.
For us the death penalty is pretty much an intellectual exercise. I did this project in my eighth grade Civics class once about the death penalty. I made a chart about the different pros and cons and made little checks in some boxes. I think I got an A. You see I don’t know anyone on death row. I have never been a victim of a terrible crime.
But I do remember the fear. I remember when John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo planned and executed the sniper shooting of 10 people. One was at a middle school— a boy nearly my age getting of the car on his way to homeroom at 8 a.m. They shot one woman in a Home Depot parking lot on a Sunday night a place I pass every time I visit a friend back home. Another man was at a gas station we stop at when we go to my grandparents. Those few weeks I remember looking over my shoulder. I remember ducking.
But when I read that headline that said Muhammed was dead my heart sank. The song I had been singing died on my lips. Sadness welled up in me.
What made me sad was the idea behind his death the idea that some people are not worth saving. Sure you can argue that a lethal shot in the arm is less expensive than a life in prison or on the other side that death row is unfairly skewed toward minorities or that there are too many false convictions. That’s not the core of the issue though— that makes the whole thing about an economic equation or bureaucratic inefficiency.
The core of the issue is that I believe in a God who sent his prophet to marry a prostitute (the book of Hosea) and turned a Jew-killer into His most famous apostle (Saul/Paul) and yes a God who waged war and sent plague and wiped out nations. On that latter part I figure God has been meting out his punishment since the fall of man pretty well on his own thanks. To think he needs my help seems a tad hubristic.
I’m a Burma activist and Than Shwe the dictator there is a pretty evil guy. But when the regime eventually falls I don’t want him put to death. I want someone to tell him God loves him just as much as the people he has allowed to be killed blown by landmines forced out of their villages repeatedly raped and so much more. (I’d also like to see him handed a hammer and told to help rebuild the 3300 villages his soldiers have burned. I want him to listen to the life story of every single person missing a limb or eyesight or parents because of his government— but that’s another story.)
No one is past redemption. Than Shwe isn’t and John Allen Muhammed wasn’t. What a tragedy when we think otherwise. Forgive us Father for we know not what we do.