Anti-Abortion and Pro Death Penalty

According to an online article by N. T. Wright: "You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty."

This is in many ways a typically pithy Tom Wright remark. Unfortunately, it is absurd. Maybe Wright cannot reconcile it in his mind, but I can't see anything inherently illogical about affirming both. What he seems to leave out of the equation is justice. He puts an absolute value on life so that it is wrong to take life no matter what the circumstances. Presumably Wright is a pacifist who would also oppose all military action or war no matter what the reason for it? Otherwise I would say: "Wright can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and the death penalty and pro-death on just war."

The Bible takes a different view and I would argue a more realistic view. The biblical teaching, it seems to me, can fully reconcile opposing abortion (with exceptions such as where the mother's life is physically in danger or where the pregnancy has been caused by rape) and supporting the death penalty for murder. The first opposes the deliberate taking of a baby's life that does not deserve to die; the latter supports the judicial taking of life in just punishment for having taken another person's life.

Now, that's not to say I would support re-introduction of the death penalty in the UK at this time. In our current system I wouldn't. We would need far greater safeguards than we have before I think the death penalty could be sanctioned (such as the death penalty for perjury where the false evidence results in someone being executed and the need for two witnesses before the death penalty would be justified).

I know many Christians and others take different views on these matters. That's okay. But it does no good to overreach ourselves in argument as Wright does from time to time. It's quite possible to argue against abortion and against the death penalty - that's fine. But it's not illogical to argue differently in the two different cases. On this one, Wright is simply wrong.

September 11th - Ten Years On

As in a previous generation everyone "knew where they were" when President Kennedy was assassinated or when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, for my generation, everyone "knows where they were" on 11th September 2001 when the planes were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I had just started working in a new job. I remember I was in the office and when a couple of colleagues came back in from lunch they told me what had happened having seen the news on a pub television.

That evening, going home, it was possible to listen to a running news commentary on events all the way from the office to my bus stop. It was a warm "Indian summer" evening in Glasgow and every vehicle in town had its radio on and the driver's window open and they were all listening to the news coverage. Already by 5.00 pm UK time there was a special edition of the Evening Times (Glasgow's evening paper) showing pictures from New York.

For the rest of the day I think I watched wall-to-wall news, finding it hard to comprehend what had happened and finding it impossible to understand. Of all the wicked acts that humankind has perpetrated on each other, this seemed to rank with the very worst. The visceral impact of global news including live footage and later capturing the planes crashing on camera seared the images into our collective consciousness.

Even though we are ten years on, I do not believe enough time has yet passed to be able to gain a true perspective on what impact the attacks will have on world history.