Cartoon Shooting in Denmark

[Commodore]

That sounds, if anything, like an injunction against killing your enemies - he's saying that these cities will suffer on the day of judgement, rather than encouraging people to make them suffer in the present. Sounds a lot more like an argument for leaving the punishment of wrongdoers up to God.

I agree with your assessment of the quoted verses. It also seems to me that given the message of those verses, one would have to be against any form of man-made criminal justice system if they want to claim to be a true Christian.

 

[Sommerswerd]

At this point these three threads are all basically simultaneously discussing the same thing...

Cartoon shooting

Fine Tuning

Saudi religious figure

It's still fun, but just sayin'

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't think that's the case. If you believe that the purpose of punishment is to hurt the criminal so as to make him spiritually atone for what he has done, then you'd be right. But that's not how criminal justice is supposed to work, at least not in civilised countries. We 'punish' people so as to prevent them from offending in future, or to undo the damage that they have done, or to discourage others from offending, or some combination of the three. Criminal punishment isn't some sort of final judgement or a kind of redemption through suffering.

 

[Borachio]

I think a large measure of criminal punishment is retribution, though. Public opinion demands that criminals are simply punished as a matter of what's thought of as justice.

 

[Berzerker]

I agree with your assessment of the quoted verses. It also seems to me that given the message of those verses, one would have to be against any form of man-made criminal justice system if they want to claim to be a true Christian.

yup, if Jesus wont condemn criminals we cant either - we are not without sin

 

[aelf]

It turns out some people are at least as ignorant about Christianity as they are about Islam. This probably includes the fundamentalists.

 

[Borachio]

One might even be led to believe that those proclaiming themselves to be Christian, or Muslim, the most loudly are probably some of those who know least about both those religions.

Not me, of course. I couldn't say one way or another. But it might apply to someone.