In light of the chronic complaints about lethal injection being “cruel and unusual punishment”, this In The News item in Tuesday’s Arkansas Democrat/Gazette caught my attention:
Khamisa Sawadi, a 75-year-old woman, was sentenced by a Saudi Arabian court to 40 lashes (not with a wet noodle) and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives because she asked the 24-year-old nephew of her late husband and his friend to bring her bread.
That followed up another grotesque story about the Middle East man who spoke up for women’s rights and was threatened with the death penalty. He got a long jail sentence instead.
Women basically have no rights in the Middle East. A Catholic priest who spent years in the Middle East told me about a decade ago that the Muslims see women there for men’s beckon call and they have no soul.
Most Americans have little concept of what real harsh punishment is like in countries around the globe.
I asked some young people recently how they would punish a man who raped and brutally murdered (is there any other kind?) a woman.
One young woman said a man convicted of such crimes should be sent straight to prison and get raped by his fellow inmates.
Rape in prison is commonplace.
Remember “Shawshank Redemption”?
The young man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to life for the murder of his wife (played by Tim Robbins) was introduced to the rawness of prison life right away.
On most issues my 90-year-old Clarksdale friend said he was opposed to capital punishment. He said persons convicted of a capital offense should be spending the rest of their lives imprisoned in solitary confinement.
I thought about that one for a while. Then I remembered a business teacher at a Texas college call solitary confinement the cruelest form of punishment.
People are by nature social beings that long for fellowship.
Homicidal maniacs are different. They hate other people and carry out their animosity against others without the slightest feeling.
People who hate others most likely don’t like themselves. Child abusers generally were abused as children.
They only know how much hurt they endured and believe it’s their turn to carry out acts of violence on others.
The Old Testament speaks of “an eye for an eye” in terms of retribution to those who harm others. The New Testament takes a 180-degree approach to loving those whom we do not love maybe even despise.
Jesus said there is no gain in simply loving those who cherish. As those of us work through the season of Lent try to remember that no one endured a more heinous execution that Jesus did.
In our world of cynicism people just don’t want to see the good in others. Trying to see the good in those we can’t stand is difficult.
Give it a try.
