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Words from the Bible were written by men like us

Aug 13, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
I would like to respond to the letter supporting the death penalty by one Elder Small in a recent issue.
First of all, the writer has used as his main elements for its justification quotations from the Bible, condemning any who has killed another human being, and asking whether anyone who has been murdered does not have rights, as some are claiming for those who have perpetrated these crimes, and that the quotations he uses are directly attributed to our Almighty God.
Firstly, I would humbly like to ask how the writer knows that these quotations are really the manifestations of our Creator? Were they not written by men as ourselves?  Do we not find in the same Scriptures that God exhorts us to be merciful and forgiving to those who commit the gravest sins, and which also contains quotes that we should not judge lest we be judged ourselves?
Are not the people who urge us to respect the rights of all men in determining how to proceed in cases of murder just as desirous of justice, as all those who would use the name of God to condemn others who were not as fortunate as ourselves to have obtained the proper upbringing and other opportunities in life, and so wrongly used violence to fulfill their needs?
Are we not expected to use those innate qualities of conscience, reasoning, mercy and forbearance which the same Almighty God has bestowed on us to deal with any whom we consider have transgressed?  Or are we to go against the same Scriptures that admonish us against practicing “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”?
I would like to submit that, as in all instances where we are called to make the laws governing the behaviour of those under our jurisdiction, we need to be proactive and diligently search for the means to foster peacefulness and magnanimity in all our citizens long before they stoop to violence to answer the problems they face.  High-handedness and hard-headedness will not help us to do so in the long term, but will only bring us to a level lower than the beasts that use vengeance as their only means of settling any problem.
Roy Paul

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