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.