Evidence of the death penalty goes back almost as far as recorded human history. From as early as the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon four thousand years ago, humans have determined (and debated) the validity of killing a guilty person for their crimes. Governments have legally impaled, drowned, burned alive, shot, injected, crushed, beaten to death, electrocuted and crucified those they find unworthy to continue living. Jesus was given the death sentence for blasphemy. As were the Rosenbergs for spying, Ted Bundy for killing, Anne Boleyn for cheating and Socrates for corrupting the youth. We don’t like thinking about the fact that such different ‘crimes’ can easily warrant the same, most gruesome and most permanent punishment. So, most of the time, we just don’t think about it.
Until it might be live-streamed.
On October 7 of this year, United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the United States’ first planned public live stream of an execution. Former U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, the man awaiting execution, has been convicted of the premeditated murder of 13 fellow soldiers (one of whom was pregnant) and the wounding of over 30 others in a mass shooting at a Texas military base in 2009. People on all sides of the political spectrum despise Hasan’s actions (myself included). Yet, when Trump’s administration announced the live stream of his execution, people on all sides of the political spectrum fought back (myself included). Their backlash was heard. The live stream was canceled, and it seemed that America could let Hasan be executed in private and move on with their lives.
Myself not included.
Our country has had a long and conflicting relationship with the death penalty. Back before the United States was united into states, death penalty laws varied between colonies. While some, like Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale, thought that death was a good solution to those caught doing such horrid actions as killing chickens or stealing grapes, others, such as Benjamin Franklin, thought that execution actually increased brutality in crimes. Today, even though a 2026 poll from the Pew Research Center found that approximately 66% of Americans favor the death penalty for murderers specifically, 23 states have abolished the death penalty completely.
Ironically, even after two hundred years of debating, our nation’s disagreements around the death penalty are still alive and well.
For a Christian, the question of whether execution is moral or not gets even more dicey. On one hand, the Bible teaches that all humans are created with inherent value in the image of the Most High God. Every person we meet is more precious than we could possibly imagine, and when Jesus himself was given the chance to help stone a guilty woman caught in adultery in John 8, he responded by showing mercy instead, calling out those willing to put her to death for their own sins.
Yet, while the heart of Jesus’s teachings centers around forgiveness and mercy, the Old Testament is filled with explicit support for the death penalty. Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12 and Leviticus 24:17 all condone capital punishment for murderers, and other passages go even further to include adulterers, children who curse their parents and those who work on the Sabbath as those who should be put to death.
I do not think it takes much to see the difficulty here. Taken literally, the Old Testament’s instruction to Ancient Israel would result in 99% of Asbury Students being put to death. Yet, as believers, we cannot in good faith look at a single act of Jesus as our only guide. Even in the New Testament, God strikes down Ananias and Sapphira for lying about their offering, a crime we would never consider to be justification for capital punishment now. Yet God saw it as such. And so, in trusting God, we must believe that He sees and understands things we are not always able to.
I am not writing all of this to lead up to some sort of grand revelation that ties up the question of capital punishment in a nice little bow. There is no bow large enough in the world to fit on such a complex topic, and, if there were, I can assure you I would not be the one to find it. Instead, all I can do is leave you with one thought and one image.
Since 1973, at least 203 people have been exonerated after being convicted and already sentenced to death. That is 203 innocent people whom we, the all-knowing people of the United States, were ready to take the lives of. It is impossible to know how many of those actually executed during that time may have been innocent. Maybe none of them. Maybe.
Who but God can tell?
On December 3rd, Nidal Hasan will undergo the first American military execution by firing squad since 1945. Paralyzed from the waist down after being shot during his own mass shooting, he will be rolled to the place of his death in a wheelchair. If you do not want to watch even a guilty wheelchair-bound man be shot by the United States government, I do not blame you. I don’t want to either. But if you can’t face the punishment your country condones, perhaps it is time to ask whether it’s worth condoning.
