Jesus and the Death Penalty

Note: The passages quoted below are from the New American Bible.  Similar passages can be found in the New International Bible in Matthew 15: 1-20 and John: 8:1-11

I spent this morning in Montana’s Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on a bill to abolish the death penalty.  I was testifying if favor of the bill on behalf of NAMI Montana’s members who live with serious mental illnesses and their family.

The Catholic Churches, the Assembly of God, and the Montana Association of Churches also spoke up in favor of the bill.  It’s always nice to be on the same side as your congregation and fortunately with this job I usually am.

When the opponents got up to testify, two preachers stated point blank that anyone who was against the death penalty was not a Christian.  One of the preachers pulled out his Bible to demonstrate evidence for his point.

The preacher cited Jesus’s statement in Matthew 15:4, “‘Whoever curses father or mother shall die’” as proof that Jesus was for the death penalty.  In that passage, Jesus is restating the Mosaic Law described in Leviticus 20:9, “And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.”

The preacher waved his Bible and made it very clear that professed Christians who did not follow Jesus’s will on the death penalty were hypocrites.  It was a powerful allegation, if true; but if it was true then why would the preacher use that passage of the Bible to illustrate his point? 

In that passage, Jesus described this absurd law from Levitucus and that fact that no one followed it in order to defend from the Pharisees’ ridicule of Jesus’s followers for not washing their hands when they eat a meal. Matthew 15:2.  If the passage was actually a defense of putting people to death, why would Jesus conclude it with the simple statement that “to eat with unwashed hands does not defile”? Matthew 15:20. 

If someone reading the Bible wanted to interpret Jesus’s attitude toward the death penalty, couldn’t they just go directly to John: 8:3-11 where Jesus was asked to sentence a woman for death for adultery?  In this instance, there was no doubt that the woman was guilty or that Mosaic Law required her to be put to death by stoning.

If Jesus was a firm believer in the death penalty, He would have been the first one to throw a stone.  This action would have been recorded in the Bible and made it very clear to His followers throughout history that there was no doubt that Jesus stood on the side of capital punishment.

Jesus reached down to the ground, but he did not grab a stone.  Instead, Jesus took his finger and began drawing in the dirt.

The scribes and the Pharisees who originally dragged the woman before Jesus continued to call for his judgment against her.

Jesus “straightened up and said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first one to throw a stone at her.’” After saying this, He bent down and began writing on the ground again.

Eventually all of the woman’s accusers left leaving just her and Jesus.  “Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“She replied, ‘No one, sir.’”

“Then Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go [and] from now on do not sin any more.”

There are some strong arguments in favor of the death penalty.  No one with a heart who listened to victims’ testimonies could deny that.  But the argument that “our government should put criminals to death because Jesus wants us to” is thoroughly debunked by John: 8:3-11.

A French Saint's Prayers for America's Heroes

Note: Catholic’s regularly ask saints to pray for them or others. While this practice isn’t followed by Protestants, it’s fundamentally no different than asking anyone else for their prayers. This is a story about how one of those prayers was answered.

In early March of 2007, our family lost my stepbrother to a PTSD suicide. Chris had been back home from Iraq for about a year and a half. He was a good kid that became a great man, but the traumatic stress injury he sustained in Iraq was too much for even the brave Humvee machine gunner to defeat.

The suicide was precipitated by an Other Than Honorable discharge that he received in the mail. Other Than Honorable discharges are typically given to service members convicted by a civilian criminal court and incarcerated or if the conduct leading to that civilian conviction brings discredit upon the military.

Chris’s only crime was that he didn’t attend his monthly National Guard drills, because of his debilitating PTSD. To this day, it’s still hard to imagine how that discharge ever went through. It was the most damning piece of evidence that our military didn’t have a process to effectively care for its heroes returning home with PTSD injuries.

The most basic question was why hadn’t Chris’s unit sat him and all the other returning soldiers down in front of a mental health professional for a PTSD screening? If they’d identified the injury, they could have directed him towards treatment. Instead, they left it up to his battalion who either missed or ignored the red flags for PTSD and flushed him out of the service.

A few days after Chris’s death, his family stood in his mother’s kitchen and decided to tell Chris’s story to try and prevent other families from having to go through the same tragedy. As a veteran and attorney, I took the lead.

The first week after a tragedy is critical to any effort to force a systemic change from that event. You either harness the wave of media attention that the tragedy inspires or you let it slip by and lose the opportunity.

I spent that week talking to staff of the politicians that could force the National Guard to implement changes in their systems of caring from returning service members. I also talked with the local media. I seemed cut and dry.

I was wrong. The papers came out at the end of the week mourning the tragic death. There was no mention of the discharge, that the military had failed in its duty to care for an injured soldier, or that the system of care could be improved. In short, I failed.

I met with a retired general and another seasoned member of the state government that Sunday. They drew the same conclusion. It was over. The attention would go back to the state’s budget or some other issue and nothing would be done.

I was dejected. I’d failed Chris while he was alive and then again after his death. On my way home, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a dozen roses for St. Therese of Lisieoux. The little French saint had worked miracle after miracle for our family from curing my grandmother’s infant paralysis to helping me pass the bar exam after I’d spent a summer focusing on the wrong material.

St. Therese loves roses and the only thing I could think to do was to buy her some roses as a way of asking/thanking her for praying to God for a miracle to fix my failed attempt to make something good come out of Chris’s tragic death. I set the roses on the passenger seat of my car and began to drive home. By the time I pulled into the driveway, a barebones plan had popped into my head.

I put the roses on the table. Prayed again and began typing…

I couldn’t have imagined how powerfully that prayer was answered. Eighteen months later, the State of Montana was recognized as the best state for caring for its service members returning home from combat. The foundation for its program was multiple, staged face-to-face mental health screenings for every service member returning from combat. One year later, Congress required a similar screening mechanism be put in place across the military. The Department of Defense is currently working to implement it.

According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the program has the potential to save more lives than armored Humvees.

January of 2009

I walked back into the caboose of the Inaugural Train. Soon-to-be President Obama introduced me to his wife Michelle and told her about some of the things we’d accomplished after Chris’s death.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out two religious medals. I gave a St. Michael medal to Michelle and told her to ask him to defend her family.

I handed President Obama a smaller medal with the image of St. Therese of Lisieoux, the little Carmelite nun that died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was her.”

End Note: I think it’s important to point out that praying for this does not always fix all of our issues in this damaged world. I know this too well tonight as this is the first night that I do not have my children due to an impending divorce. Prayers are not always answered how or when we want them to be, but that doesn’t change the fact that a miracle occurred after I asked St. Therese to pray for better care for our returning heroes.

Fearing Judgment

December 28, 2010

Disclaimer: I write this post because I struggle with the teaching, not because I’ve conquered it.

This afternoon a friend told me about how the Christian members of his family ostracized one of their cousins from the family and family events because he is gay. This family led my friend to faith. He’d often used them as role models to help guide his path towards becoming the kind of person he wanted to be, but my friend was appalled and confused by their professed application of Christ’s teachings.

I hope that there’s more to the story. If there isn’t, then the issue is between them and God to sort it out. I bring it up as a glaring example of the easy way that evil can slip into the thoughts and actions of people that are working to follow the path that a higher power has laid out before them.

A less cringe-worthy example recently played out in churches across the world as the regular churchgoers looked down their noses at the “Christmas Christians” that filled the pews to overflowing. It’s the same act, just a matter of scale. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been on both sides of that judgment.

Christ could not have been any clearer about His stance on humans judging humans. In Matthew 7:1, Jesus said, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”

Again in Luke 6:37: “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

This simple, point-blank teaching is hard to follow on this side of Eden. The world can be a horrible place. The men and women in it do horrible things. We have the right and even the duty to stop oppressors from taking advantage of and injuring the weak. There are people who are so scarred by life and wrapped up in evil that they can never safely be released from prison.

Beyond the extremes, what is a sin in the eyes of one person can be an act of love in the eyes of another. How can a person of faith weigh that balance? Or what about in the case of a brain injury or serious mental illness when the person’s injured brain makes decisions that they never would have made when they were healthy.

The short answer is that it’s hard and we are going to get it wrong sometimes. The fuller answer is that we must be truly afraid of our urge to judge in the same manner that we fear our urges to kill, steal, or maim. The fact that it is easier to go through life without killing someone, than it is to going through life without judging others doesn’t change the burden that we bear to avoid judgment.

“[T]he measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” The warning could not be any clearer.

We have to struggle to come to grip with the basic tenet that it is not our role to determine who is good or evil any more than it is our role to make the sun come up or the tides dance back and forth across a beach. Measuring the good deeds and sins of others is too difficult of a task. Thank God it is not a task that we’ve been given.

A Late Night Lesson from a Screaming Baby

My daughters are only sixteen months and two and a half years old, yet I think they’ve already taught me more than I ever will be able to teach them. It’s not that I’m not trying. I know that teaching them about life, faith, and love is my biggest duty. It’s just that some of their lessons to me have been so powerful that I can’t help but doubt my ability to match them. This is one of those lessons.

The majority of my life has been spent making plans and working to complete them. From elementary school on through West Point and law school; my teachers taught me that you had to define your goals or you would never achieve them. My coaches said that those goals should be taped up on my mirror so I would see them each morning as I brushed my teeth and each night before I went to bed.

I dutifully taped up the goals and eventually achieved some of them. But time and time again my best-laid plans shattered upon the anvil of reality. The complex world swirled by and around my fixed goals. A military career ended by injury at the moment that my country needed me. A business career stymied by technical problems in the product we were bringing to market. A writing career stunted by the brutal realities of the evolving publishing industry. A law career crippled by the fact that I didn’t care enough about the end state of corporate legal battles to ever master the field.

Then tragedy struck, I was in the right position with the right skill set to make a bigger difference than I ever could have imagined. If I had succeeded at any of those other fields, then I would not have been ready when I was truly needed. If I hadn’t had tried and failed at so many random occupations, I would’t have had the diverse skill set necessary to weave my way though the military bureaucracy and legal pitfalls that needed to be overcome along the way.

I had to face the stark reality that I was put in all of those positions by a higher power. My plans were destined to fail before they’d even been concocted. It’s a humbling and terrifying feeling to understand that you’re a pawn in a larger game and that it is a game beyond your comprehension. As one of Dostoevsky’s characters said in The Brothers Karamazov, “since I can’t understand even (Euclidian Geometry)…, I can’t expect to understand about God.”

So much of the world doesn’t seem to make sense. How can we not help but question the greater plan. In a world where a father is killed by an IED on the other side of the world from his children… Where illness or abuse can inflict a child before they’ve even said their first word… Where a man can spend his whole life trying to build up a company only to have it dashed by a world economic collapse… Where people will blow themselves up in a marketplace crowded with their neighbors in an effort to please God…

How do you try to navigate through a world that complex and disastrous?

I received the answer from my two little girls.

I was not prepared for parenthood in general. I was even less prepared for the long nights spent trying to get an overtired baby to quit screaming and go to sleep. I read the books and followed their tricks: everything from setting a sleep schedule, to swaddling, to rocking them in the same room as a running clothes dryer.

Some of these tricks worked to a degree. But they didn’t change the fact that I spent a lot of time with screaming infants in my arms. The longer they stayed up, the madder they became. I felt their frustration at their inability to make themselves feel better. They would struggle to move this way, then that way, then this way again. None of their attempts to improve their plight helped.

I knew that they were just tired. That the only way for them to feel better was for them to go to sleep. I wished that there was someway for me to impart that to them, but their young minds couldn’t comprehend what was really going on.

Each night, they would struggle in my arms until they finally went to sleep. Then I would walk them over to the bassinet and lay them down at total peace. The exact peace that they had wanted all along. They just didn’t know what they had to do to get it.

One of those late nights, I realized that we are all in the same position with God. We don’t understand what role we are supposed to play in this world or what good things can come out of our failures and miseries. We struggle, fight, and rant to try and accomplish the objectives that we think are critical.

We rail against the situation and lose ourselves in doubts, but eventually we have to give ourselves over to the knowledge that there is a higher power and that higher power will eventually drag us kicking and screaming to where we are supposed to be.

Our job is to do our best not to be a complete disaster along the way. I still have a lot to learn before I figure that trick out.

A Fool's Fool: Stop Thinking and Swim

Early Spring 2001

I sat down in the dark surf and put on my freediving fins. My spear rolled with the wave against my waist. A full moon cast its shimmering light through the inky water.

“You ready?” Jimmy Davis asked.

We were on the beach just behind his backyard on Oahu’s north shore. I’d fallen in love with freediving over the course of the past two months. I’d SCUBA dived before, but it didn’t compare to the feeling of strapping on massive fins and going as deep and far as you lungs could take you. This was my first night dive.

I flipped on the dive light, said yes, and followed him into the Pacific. The first hundred yards of water was shallow. At points, we had to scramble over the sharp volcanic rocks that lined the bottom. Then the ocean opened up.

I wasn’t ready for how dark it was. Surrounded by salt water with nothing to guide my way but a four-inch diameter dive light. Black water pushed against the little stream of white. I couldn’t help but think of the tiger sharks that frequented the area.

I couldn’t see Jimmy’s light. I panicked and surfaced. Remembering the mantra of “never separate from your dive buddy.” He was twenty yards away. I swam in his direction.

Eventually, I got more comfortable in the water. Swimming along the bottom. Fish of all sizes darted back and forth through the lava rock and coral. A massive sea turtle lay in a sandy patch. I floated over the serene relic from the age of the dinosaurs. Feeling at one with the living planet as never before.

Jimmy and I separated three more times before finally separating for good. It wasn’t on purpose, but it wasn’t possible to explore the dark waters and keep track of each other at the same time.

I breathed the tropical air through the snorkel and then launched myself down through rocks below. Silver fish shimmered past my light. Octopus tentacles danced away from me. I could feel the water rush by my skin as the long fins propelled me through the depths.

My lungs began to ache, crying for more air. I arched my back and swam upward. The top of my head slammed into a lava rock. A mix of pain and terror sparked through my body. I raised the dive light. It illuminated a rocky ceiling above me. My lungs screamed for relief.

My mind scrambled to assess the situation. It was clear that I’d swum into an enclosed rock formation. I didn’t know if it was a tunnel that would open up or a cave that would dead end. I didn’t know deep I was in the formation and therefore if turning around and trying to swim out would mean certain death.

I quieted my mind and swam forward. Fighting the fear that would devour through the remaining oxygen in my system. My fins moved left, right, left pushing me through the rock formation.

Eventually the rock above me opened up and I launched myself toward the air. I broke the surface and gasped the air into my screaming lungs. After twenty or so breaths, I realized that I was alive and started laughing with joy.

After calming down, I went back down. I was careful to stay above the rock formations. I dove for another half hour, then began to swim back towards the twinkling lights of shore. I swam and I swam, but the lights only seemed to get further away.

I caught my breath and tried to figure out what was going on. It was only after I’d stopped completely that I felt the tug of the current, pulling me away from shore. I dropped down again and began to swim with all had, trying to free myself from the current.

I surfaced. The lights were even further than before. I was trapped. The way forward had nothing to offer. I had to swim parallel to the shore with the flow of the current, hoping to swim out of the current.

I swam for ten more minutes and then tried again for shore. Still stick, being pushed out further. It was time for a decision, Keep pushing ahead towards shore or drop my weight and begin to float with the current. From what I heard anyone stuck in the current had bought themselves a one way seventy or so mile trip to Maui. If you didn’t have the strength to swim into the Maui shore, then you were headed to the open ocean.

I filled my lungs with air and dropped down in the water. I kicked and prayed, kicked and prayed. I surfaced and then went down again. Over and over. Eventually, I felt the fins gaining traction in the water. I pulled the air in through the snorkel and kicked.

I don’t know how long I was in the current, but I broke free and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight than the flicking lights from shore growing closer and closer.

I learned two lessons that night. The first is that there is a thousand ways for a fool to die on dry land and ten thousand in the water. The second is that sometimes you have to just keep going, beyond fear and beyond reason. There’s always a way back to shore as long as you don’t lose yourself in the situation and give up.

Ranger School and the Ugandan Orphanage

May 2000

The Georgia sun climbed higher in the morning sky. My squad had just finished up our first patrol in the first phase of Ranger School. Of the three leaders, one received a go. The other two got no-go’s.

I was one of the no-go’s. I was the team leader of the team in charge of land navigation. Anybody that knew me probably would have made good money on my no-go. Putting me in charge of land navigation was a little bit like putting a fish in charge of a footrace. Unfortunately, my number two wasn’t much better. We were lucky to stay in Georgia, much less get to our objective on time.

The three of us walked down a dirt road from the grading area back to our patrol base. I was telling a story about high school when one of my buddies found his grandpa’s hang glider in their garage. I checked about a book about hang gliding from the library and we were off. I was just about to the part where the hang glider flipped in the air and dropped Chet into a cactus patch when we got to the trail that led back to the patrol base.

One problem, the Ranger candidate who led the squad the night before didn’t turn down the path. The other team leader and I followed behind asking him what he was doing. He didn't answer, not wanting to tell us that he'd forgotten his rucksack on the ground before we established the patrol base. The other clueless member of our party and I got more and more confused. I didn’t know whether it was worse to leave a fellow Ranger candidate alone or follow him off into the middle of nowhere.

Before I came to the right conclusion, a truckload of Ranger School Instructors pulled up in a Humvee and made it very clear that both options were wrong.

Half an hour later, I dug my firing position and tried not to think about what the Company Commander was going to do to me and my two squad mates. It was going to be bad. The only question was how bad. In the peacetime Army, it didn’t get much worse than being an Infantry lieutenant that got kicked out Ranger School. Being forced to restart the phase was the better option, but still miserable.

I hacked the little shovel into the ground over and over again. My brain drifted through prayers. Ranger School could turn even the moderately religious towards piety, although the effects usually didn’t hold after the candidate’s first sighting of a woman or beer. I was tired and hungry. I couldn’t believe it could be over.

I asked God to show me something positive: something to carry me through the chain of command’s upcoming decision.

I was answered with an image of an old black woman standing in front of a dilapidated brick building. She had a broom. I could tell it was Africa. There was no sign of kids, but something told me it was an orphanage.

I felt my chin hit my chest and woke up. I went back to digging. Thoughts of the old woman and her orphanage had replaced the feelings of impending dread.

August 2006

I sat in the passenger seat of the SUV as Peter Francis Luswata drove through the streets of the small Ugandan town. I’d been in Africa for two days and I was about to get my first view of the Uganda Rural Fund’s (URF) projects in AIDS-ravaged countryside.

Peter was talking about how a priest had bought a building and turned it over to his sister to run an orphanage. URF provided some of the resources to help keep the orphanage going. I tried to listen, but my mind kept drifting to Mike.

I’d begun volunteering for URF as a tribute to Mike MacKinnon. I’d been friends with Mike since I was five and followed him to West Point. He died in October of 2005 when his Humvee was hit by an IED in Iraq. At his funeral someone from the unit said that they were delivering toys at the time of the ambush.

I was still to gimpy for the military, but somehow I’d fixated on the idea of working with AIDS orphans as a way to honor his sacrifice. An internet search led me to a home-grown Ugandan nonprofit that was desperate for volunteers.

I didn’t know if I was ready for the reality of that pledge. I got out of the SUV in front of an old brick building.

Peter was ahead of me. I heard him say, “This is Josephine. The house mother.”

I looked up and into the eyes of an old woman. She was the same one from the dream that I’d had in Ranger School six years before.

Josephine had tears in her eyes. She said, “I prayed that you would come and now you have.”

I wish that I could say that I turned into some powerful force for good in Uganda. I did what I could when I was there, but I haven’t been nearly as helpful as I’d hoped when I got back to the U.S. The one thing that I did do before I left was to hire Caroline, a twenty year old girl who grew up in the orphanage to help Josephine attend to the children.

It’s been four years since I left Uganda. I still sit on the URF board, but I'm not a stellar contributor. Each month, I send money for Caroline’s salary. It’s a meager sum and I’m embarrassed that I don’t give more. But from all the reports that I’ve gotten back of Caroline’s stellar work at the orphanage, I believe that the old woman’s prayers were answered.

If you’d like to see Josephine and her Nazareth Orphanage, here is a film clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpTVTp2C-pc. The organization’s website is now http://www.ugandaruralfund.org/ not the one that is listed in the film.

URF is now in need of monthly donations for teachers’ salaries. At $150 a month, it’s a great opportunity to make a difference in a lot of incredible children’s lives. If you're interested in donating, you can find out more at http://www.ugandaruralfund.org/.

Five Minutes

I haven’t shared this story with more than one or two people. I don’t know if I’d be sharing it today, if someone battling mental illness hadn’t challenged me for hiding my own struggles with depression.

End of November, 2000

I pulled the knot tight in the green rope and then secured it with an overhand hitch knot. I put my weight on the rope. It held strong around the rafter.

The white chair wobbled beneath me. I opened the noose and tested the length of the rope. It would be about an eighteen-inch drop. Perfect.

I shifted my leg brace down and stepped off the chair. I went downstairs to write a note.

A rational mind struggles to comprehend suicide. Those of us with depression or another mental illness struggle not to comprehend it. The sick brain self-destructs by sending out waves of overpowering chemical and electrical signals. It’s similar to how the bone marrow of someone with leukemia creates abnormal white blood cells bent on destroying the body.

My world had collapsed over the course of six months. An injury in Ranger School shattered my military career and left me crippled. My fiancée had betrayed me while I was at the Office Basic Course and Ranger School. It seemed that everyone I knew on the island had kept that betrayal from me.

I’d suffered from depression before and this combination of events more than set it off again. I couldn’t see how I could make it through another day. It felt like being trapped in a dark room where suicide was the only door. I fought not to open it, but eventually the darkness overcame me.

I stopped on my way down the stairs and prayed. “God, I love you, but I just can’t do this any more. If you have some reason that I should stay alive, I’ll give you five minutes to show me a sign.”

I didn’t expect an answer. I hobbled around the kitchen and pulled together a paper and pen. I wrote and then threw out two suicide notes. The final one just said, “I’m sorry, Matt.”

That summed it up. I hung the paper on the wall and went back upstairs

I stepped up on the wobbling white and blue chair. I slipped the noose around my neck and had a few final thoughts. One thought wouldn’t go away.

I needed to pay the rent. It would probably take a week or two for my unit to send the police to my apartment. It would probably take two or three weeks to clean it up and get rid of my gear. There was no way that they could have it rented again before the first of the year. The least I could do was pay them for the month of December.

There was one problem. I didn’t have any checks. I’d ran out of checks the week before and was still waiting for the new ones to arrive. I’d tried to take the money out of my ATM the day before, but had hit the daily withdrawal limit well short of what I needed.

I’d looked through the checkbook multiple times for a spare check that I may have missed among the duplicates. There was nothing. My irrational mind was battling with my irrational mind. Go look again versus get on with it. Go look again won.

I took the noose off my neck and got down to look through the checkbook again. I flipped through the duplicate checks once, nothing. I flipped through them again, nothing. I flipped through them one last time and found a check.

I filled it out and then walked outside to drop it in the mail. The mailboxes were in the center of the complex. On my way there, I said hello to my neighbor Jeff who was sitting on his porch.

I said hi. Jeff said hi back. We were amicable, but hadn’t said more than a few words over the two months that I lived there. Jeff was a Hawaiian native and I was a lily white haole from the mainland. The insider and the outsider. A cultural barrier left over from the island’s colonization.

I dropped the envelope in the mail slot and turned back towards my apartment. I heard a soft whimper from across the street. Jeff was crying.

I walked over and sat down next to him. We began to talk and didn’t stop for the next two hours. Jeff thought he was about to be laid off. His marriage was already on the rocks and he was terrified about what that meant for his children.

I didn’t have any answers, but we talked until he felt better. Somewhere along the way I began to feel better too.

We hugged and I went back to my apartment.

I’d forgotten how much peace can be found through trying to help someone else. It was a lesson I’d learned as a child while trying to help Darcee battle her eating disorder.

It was another door out of the darkness. A door that I wouldn’t have found if something higher hadn’t planted the idea in my brain that I couldn’t say goodbye to this world without paying the rent.