God's Justice System?

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

I read recently that the U.S. has roughly 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison inmates. This is a major burden on our society as prisoners are expensive to house. Across the country our prisons are overcrowded and more are being built all the time. We must be doing something wrong here.

Now some would say that the “war on drugs” and mandatory sentences are largely to blame for this problem, and they may well have a point. Nevertheless, the political conservatives are adamant that punishment is the path to righteousness and the war must be continued. So, where should we look for a solution?

Well, what if we were to take a solution from the Bible? When god found humans were doing wrongs left and right, he quickly found a solution; it’s called “scapegoating.” So that he could forgive all those wrongs against him, he found an innocent man, pinned all those wrongs on him, then tortured and executed him. Voilà, end of problem.

So, perhaps we should find an innocent man and torture and execute him so that he could pay for all those wrongs the present and future prisoners have done against our society. Then we could empty out all those prisons and put an end to our great social problem. If this is what god would call justice, should we disagree?

Of course, as the Bible tells us, we live in a wicked world, so it might be hard to find a truly innocent man. That doesn’t really need to be a problem though; surely we could find a toddler, 3 or 4 years old, perhaps, or a baby even, to torture and execute?

Here again, the Bible provides a clear precedent in 2 Samuel 12, where god is angry with King David for his adultery so he causes the infant son of David to be deathly ill for seven days and then die, as punishment for David’s wrongs.

So, what do you think, should we use God’s justice system as taught in the Bible? Are we guilty of hubris in thinking we might find a better way?

Actually, I hesitated to publish this since there are people out there who believe the Bible is the answer to all our problems. Some fool may actually think I have proposed a righteous and workable solution to prison overcrowding. I tell ya, religion stands logic on its head and makes the world a very scary place sometimes.

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