Forgiveness and Willie McNair

Alabama executed Willie McNair last night. Though countless people wrote to the governor begging him to spare McNair's life, he chose instead only to sign new legislation allowing more of the victim's family members to witness the execution.

Via Death Penalty News, one of these family member's reaction to the execution:

Wayne Riley, the youngest of the sons, issued a statement afterward: "I thank God for keeping myself, my 4 brothers and my sister alive and in good health so that we were able to see justice finally done. I ask that you pray for my family in the coming days and for the Willie McNair family, too, for they ... have suffered for what he has done."

Wayne Riley also said: "I can forgive Willie McNair for what he did because he paid the price with his life."

"I can forgive Willie McNair...because he paid the price with his life." Riley's statements caught my attention because they capture perfectly the accepted "Christian" pro-death penalty response to executions. A reference to "justice" having been done, a request for prayers for both his family and McNair's (though without acknowledging that the pain to McNair's family has in part been inflicted by the state and all of those who worked together to kill him--Instead the blame is put solely with McNair) and a cheap reference to being able to forgive McNair now that he is dead.

Why do I use the word cheap? Because the Christian ethic of agape calls for loving your enemy without relying on violence. You can't punch someone out and then say you forgive them as they lie bleeding on the floor and truly believe that you have done just what Jesus would have done. Yet with the death penalty system this is exactly what many Christians try to do--with the key difference that the other person will never get up, their life is gone, as is their capacity to live in loving community with other people. They will never experience the redemptive power of your forgiveness and you've really missed out on it too, having never asked yourself to take the spiritually challenging step of forgiving them while they were still able to be in relationship with you.

Being critical of what Riley says will seem out of bounds to some; we often believe that victims should be treated with kid gloves. But living in community means sometimes calling your community members to be accountable for the way they are living and the choices they are making. Riley is within his rights to have decided that he wanted to have the government kill his relative's murderer and to have done everything he could to make that happen. But those actions were not consistent with the Christian ethics of love and forgiveness, and he and everyone else who supports capital punishment should stop pretending that they are.