How can Christians call for death of Sadaam Hussein?

My View

The Amish often set the example for Christians. Their forgiveness of the murderer in the recent school tragedy in Lancaster County, Pa., was persuasive.
And then to witness their invitation to the family of the killer to attend the funerals was almost unparalleled.
Amish Christians practice what they preach. They take seriously Jesus’ message of mercy and returning good for evil.
Rarely do average Christians do that when it comes to radical forgiveness and reconciliation. It still seems incongruous to me that so many Christians want to speak of America as “a Christian nation” while consistently voting to maintain capital punishment.
Strangely, Iraq and the United States are two of the only nations still permitting capital punishment.
I know our government talks loudly and boastfully about not wanting to interfere with decisions of other states. But we’ve already egregiously shown that to be a lie.
The truth is that it is very likely that the majority of Americans agree with the sentence of death for Sadaam Hussein. Here in Texas we still perform state executions and invite families and privileged others to witness the ritual injection of lethal drugs.
In interviews with family members who have waited sometimes years to see “justice done,” we hear them say that they can now bring closure to their grief. All the hatred and malice they have harbored in their hearts for so long can now subside.
These survivors can truly bury their loved one, now that the one who robbed them of that adored one has been put down. Many survivors even declare their hope that the killer will rot in hell.
That kind of language, coming so often from churchgoing, even born-again Christians, misses the whole point that the Amish were expressing.
It ignores the central message of our faith. It puts the gospel aside and makes it irrelevant. It misses the opportunity to act nobly.
I can understand why Pope Benedict XVI has called for clemency for Sadaam Hussein. The pope is calling for magnanimity, for loftiness of heart from the human race. He is asking for people to use this opportunity to show true grace and greatness of soul.
What better way in the world today for the leaders of two esteemed world religions to practice what they claim to be the essence of their faiths?
What possible good can emerge from the barbarous act of hanging? No one doubts that Sadaam Hussein is guilty of some of the most heinous acts of cruelty in history.
It seems to me that hanging him will do absolutely nothing to further the cause of peace and the evolution of the human spirit.
Put simply, it will be an act of vengeance. There will be absolutely nothing virtuous in such an event.