Clayton Lockett was convicted in 1999 of the murder of Stephanie Neiman. Lockett was also convicted of the violent rape of Neiman's friend. Both of them had disturbed Lockett, who'd broken into Neiman's home in a robbery. According to the prosecution, Neiman had been buried alive and left to die.
Lockett's "botched" execution in Oklahoma last night has sparked the American debate over the death penalty.
This post is not about coming down on one side or another of that debate. Nor is it an attempt to defend Lockett.
Instead, I want to reflect theologically on the death penalty. I do intend to present a stark theological account for Christians against the death penalty.
I opened with the storied facts of Lockett's conviction. But let's be honest, for we Christians there's no way those facts can cover over the sheer, bloody horror. I'm not recounting the plot of a novel or some movie. This isn't CSI. The raw stuff of fiction doesn't know what to do with the inexplicable horror in which these two women lived and died. They were here with us. Now they're not. And the reason is that a man named Clayton Lockett killed them -- physically, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically. In every way we humans can destroy another, Lockett did.
And yet, even true stories are more than their telling. Even now, recounting the horror collapses to just words on a screen. The storyteller's promise dies in the process of telling such a horrific story.
It's unbearably real. In the way that unbearably real horror is.
But the horror of the story doesn't end in 1999. It continued on for 20 minutes last night, as Lockett's body writhed in pain and horror. Oklahoma's attempt to kill him humanly went horribly wrong. And Lockett died, not at the hands of a doctor and medicine's cold, objective touch. But seizing. Gasping for breath. Dehydrated, he smacked his lips.
Some will say that the story is complete, then. A nice narrative arc. He died with the same kinds of horror inflicted on others. It gives us a feeling of rightness. Balance has been restored to the moral universe. "Eye for an eye", and all that.
The aim of the story, we say, is "poetic justice". The killer is killed. The blood-debt is paid. Death has been satisfied by death.
But -- and here's the kicker for me as a Christian -- that's a pagan story! Jesus turned that story, one Friday for six hours, inside out.
I'm not here to repeat all the bad cultural arguments against the death penalty. CNN is covering those today.
No, my issue is deeper.
Lockett's botched lethal injection tells a story: High Justice. Maybe the victims and families will find relief. Ease their pain. Get closure.
But whose relief? Which closure?
What about Lockett's?
Hear me out: Capital punishment may be necessary -- to preserve social order or guard us collectively -- but it's never right. A life sentence is qualitatively different from a death sentence.
If Christians are right -- "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord" (Deuteronomy 32.35; Romans 12.19) -- the death penalty as retribution, reaching the end of that moral arc, takes more authority than the state of Oklahoma has. God's general providence guides history, not the whims of American justice. I don't trust human sinfulness enough to find a way out of this that ever lets me -- us! -- spill blood.
Don't get me wrong, though. That "us" isn't Americans. I couldn't give one flip what any country claims for its own divine power. Caesar and the crowds both have blood on their hands. That's blood you can't wash off or deny away. No, that "us" is "we Christians". If the state wants to kill a man, I doubt my protestations will stop it. But I/we do have a prophetic vocation. The blood of all the murdered cries out for redemption.
That redemption isn't found in reforming death penalty laws, either. It's found only in Jesus.
The story with which I began can also be told as a Christian story. Cain killed Abel. But the end of that story is not Cain's death (Genesis 4.15). The end of the story is Jesus.
Jesus is God's answer to human inhumanity to one another. Jesus is God's answer to violence and death. Jesus is God's answer to Cain. Jesus is God's answer to Neiman and her friend. Jesus is God's answer to Lockett.
Any other ending to that story requires we Christians to engage in idolatry: Granting to the modern nation state the same allegiance and power granted to Caesar. Granted to the crowds that Friday. And rejecting Jesus.
Of course, someone will throw Romans 13 at me. "The authorities that exist have been established by God", and all that. To which I respond: Sure, when they're doing what Paul said in Romans 12. If not, they're fallen powers and authorities. Idols that we've put in God's place.
Those same Romans carried out Jesus' execution, after all. Paul knew that. So if you're going to read Romans 13 as a political theology, be sure you read Romans 12 first.
Throughout Christian history, we've had in place careful distinctions concerning court and these cases. One of the central aim of those distinctions was to limit punishments that might be used by ruthless leaders. But something odd happened in the Enlightenment. We invented the modern nation state. We separated the power of theological prophetic claims from political realities. And Voltaire came across those principles and promptly used them as blanket support for the death penalty.
Traditional Christian teachings which strictly regulated and limited that kind of violence we saw last night suddenly became arguments in favor of the very tortures inflicted on Jesus.
It was so subtle and successful a move, in fact, I have friends today still using Voltaire against me. I'm saying to listen to Jesus, not a pagan philosopher.
Jesus alone sheds light on how we humans live and die. And we, by that light, can see that demands for blood payment have been made already by Jesus.
It's a genuine biblical truth that blood cries for justice (Genesis 4.10). But there's also the biblical refusal for more blood because of Jesus' blood (Hebrews 9-12).
To leave this argument in the hands who don't follow Jesus is dangerous for we Christians. Without the story of Jesus to restrain it, the pagan story will win hearts and minds. That's a power we can't let Oklahoma have.