The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Tuesday evening, Oct 30th, with only minutes to spare, the U S Supreme Court issued a Stay of Execution for Mississippi prisoner Earl W Berry. The Stay was issued pending a determination the high court will make on a related case from Kentucky involving a challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection as a means of execution.
Mr. Berry was convicted some twenty years ago for the kidnapping and brutal beating of Mary Bounds, leading to her death. Ms. Bounds, fifty- six at the time, was on her way home from choir practice.
It is impossible for me to imagine the pain and suffering of the Bounds family. Perhaps the best I can do is to recognize the depth and reality of their pain, and acknowledge the depravity involved in such a crime. I can imagine no sufficient defense for such an act. I am sure that Mr. Berry has numerous mental and emotional issues in his past, but at the end of the day, he made the decision that night, and now he must live with the consequences.
But should death by the state be the consequences? Clearly killing Mr. Berry will not bring back Mary Bounds, nor will it prevent other similar and terrible crimes. Life imprisonment would protect the public from Mr. Berry, and while many still claim that the death penalty is a deterrent, studies show that simply is not the case. No, the death penalty will not make us safer… and yet we still hold on to what Walter Wink and many others have called the myth of redemptive violence.
This pervasive myth is taught to us from an extremely young age, through our cartoons, stories, and even sometimes through our misguided theology. The basic message is this: violence has the ability to bring salvation. When our favorite super hero finally wins the day by destroying the enemy, our culture breaths a collective Yes! It runs so deep that we don’t even see it. I recently watched a movie in a packed theatre, and at the point that the ‘hero’ (an FBI agent) was finally able to defeat the ‘villain,’ (a terrorist) in a terribly violent and graphic way, the crowd of movie goers cheered. As I thought about this response, someone behind me, in a sincere moment of mindfulness, whispered under his breath, “I can’t believe we just cheered that.” It literally made my skin crawl. The myth can bring us to cheer the brutal taking of a life, without any reflection upon the fact that God created that life. The myth tells us that our enemy is another person, and blinds us to the fact that our real enemy is the evil that distorts our humanity and the humanity of the other.
In reality, history and experience has shown us that violence never brings salvation. It might produce very temporary safety, but in the end violence only perpetuates violence. Is it possible for us to completely free ourselves from violence, from war making and the taking of lives? I don’t know. We live in a fallen world, and perhaps it is true that, on occasion, we have to do terrible things to provide for immediate safety of someone or something. But there is really no reason for the state to perpetuate this myth of redemptive violence through the killing of prisoners that can be separated from society. The only reason I know of to kill Mr. Berry is for retribution, and that is just a fancy way of saying vengeance. But according to scripture, vengeance should be left to God. As humans we simply are not equipped to make those decisions, and in truth cannot fully understand the consequences.
I hope we all continue to keep the Bounds family in our prayers, as well as the family of Earl Berry. The tragedy in these lives is too much to comprehend. But let us also continue to search for the right answer to matters of capital punishment… the Godly answer… and not continue on mindlessly believing the myth of redemptive violence.