Christian Hypocrisy
about Criminals
CS LEWIS - VIRTUALLY BLESSES REVENGE
It is fair to consider CS Lewis, an enormously popular Christian writer even among Catholics as speaking for them and their religion. They would sell revenge just as he does.
Lewis says that revenge is not totally bad and praises it for wanting the evil of the bad person to be to him, bad, the same as to everybody else. He points out that is why the avenger will not let another attack him but do it himself so that the victim will suffer at his hands and thus see why he is being attacked.
This is what a passive-aggressive religion would say. It
leads you to revenge without you even realising it and it takes no
responsibility and goes off to celebrate with hymns and feastdays.
FAITH GIVES NO LIGHT IN DEALING WITH CRIMINALS
We have to live in a real world. Secularists and Christians alike don't really
know how to handle crime. You never know if a court does the right thing.
Criminals should be bitter at how people as bad as they are or worse get away it
and if they don't and go to jail. Funny how Christianity for a divinely inspired
religion has huge hole where we need advice and guidance on handling criminals.
It is useless in things that count but good if you want to do wrong and need a
spiritual placebo. And why has the whole Catholic priesthood turned a blind eye
to clerical sex abuse? It took secularists and unbelievers do take action.
Religion and being a good person are not the same thing.
THE TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS
Criminals break the law of society and have to pay the debt for it. Only they
can pay it so fines paid by friends can no longer do unless the criminal will
have to pay them back.
Hurting criminals merely to reform them is idiocy for all they have to do is
change and you can’t make them do that. It is sheer sadism. Anybody could say
they have changed for the better and why should we believe somebody that has
broken the law? The more harm they have done the less we should trust them.
Retributionism teaches that suffering is the wages of crime. We do not believe
in retribution for you don’t have free will and so don’t deserve to pay a
penalty for your crimes. Retribution says that if a crime is not punished then
it is rewarded. This forbids mercy so retributionism commands that we all slice
bad people up – alive.
We don’t believe that punishment is all about deterring others from crime for
that advocates extreme brutality. We would have to crucify thieves to scare
would-be thieves. Such a practice would really lead to criminals planning their
crimes better to avoid capture.
We don’t believe that punishment is just for protecting society because we are
all potential monsters.
Making criminals pay is not about protecting us but about safeguarding the law.
If there is no price for breaking the law then the law is a law in name only and
is not a law at all. It is really offering an encouragement for wickedness. The
amount of suffering that has been inflicted has to be inflicted in return. The
killer should be behind bars for life but then we must still keep our minds open
to any new light. When you take a life you have to pay for it for the rest of
your life, all your days, for you have taken all the rest of the victim’s days
from her or him.
When you steal or harm another wrongly you have to make amends or restitution as
far as you are able. A person who steals and says they are sorry can’t be really
sorry if they are keeping what they took instead of returning it. You have to
make compensation not only for what you too but also for the sorrow you caused.
What is so special about preserving the law of the land by paying back criminals
for breaking the law? Is it to keep public order? The Church disagrees for it
upholds the example of the apostles and the early Christians and Jesus himself
who broke the law when it conflicted with their religious beliefs. For example,
Jesus claimed to be the Christ, Christ means anointed one or king, and this was
treason against Rome which ran the country and illegal. He got his apostles to
support him and break the law. They broke the law not to speak of Christ after
he died. St Paul forbade the Christians to use pagan judges which showed
contempt for pagan judges despite him saying that God put pagan magistrates in
place to punish the wicked. So the Church thinks that it is better to cause
public chaos and give bad example to other would be lawbreakers. The Church
regards its own law as superior and authorative. If this is true, then the law
has no right to punish criminals. What right would a human authority have to
make rules and then punish the lawbreakers? The right to do that can only come
from knowing what is right and the Church evidently thinks it alone knows that
and that the state gets any authority it has not from the state itself but from
God. God is the Church’s concept, and every religion has its own different
version that it contends is the right and the best one, so what this really
amounts to is that the Church thinks the law has no authority except in so far
as the state takes orders from it. The state having the same laws as the Church
would make means nothing for the question is the authority: how do we make laws
laws or laws that should be obeyed? It is hypocrisy for Christians then to
become lawyers in a secular state or to support the state. When they work to get
criminals jailed it is revenge they are after. Why? Because they teach that
paying a person back for doing wrong without the backing of proper and
legitimate authority is revenge.