Prisons and Death Penalty

Hello everyone, this thread will be a bit controversial as will many of my threads. I am sorry if it offends anyone.

What are your guys feelings on the death penalty and prisons in general?

I feel that the death penalty should be abolished since it isn't up to us to decide who lives and who dies.

Also, I am against the structure of prisons. I feel that rehabilitation centers should be the permanent alternative. Prisons contain their criminals in concrete cells with steel bars like those people are animals at the zoo; I fail to see anything good about this. Being very compassionate, I always see the human in even the worst of humans and believe, as Luke and many other books say, we should love our enemies. My feeling is that throwing people in cages leaving them to rot is not showing much love. In addition, Prisons are proven to worsen the mental conditions of their inhabitants. It, in turn, makes things worse for the prisoners. Rehabilitation centers, even if prisoners need to stay in for the rest of their lives, do a much better job at providing the attention that many criminals need to bring their eyes to Jesus.

I think most folks are very humane and I think as Christians we are obligated to treat others as we would treat ourselves, so we have no argument. Please don't confuse, however, whose decision it might be as to who live and who dies (and rights thereof). Those decisions are made everyday by mankind, either through war, self defense, or choice or punishment. It could be argued that death itself was a choice when there was a perfect world. The plight of the immortal soul is not a mankind decision but the plight of the flesh is up for grabs.

Please also don't confuse forgiveness with pardon. Our perfect God of Israel has the divine countenance to both forgive the sinner of his sin and to forget the sinner's inequity. But make no mistake - this same God does NOT forgive nor forget the sin itself. If a murder is committed the murderer can be forgiven and his sin forgotten, but the murdered is still dead. The consequence of his actions still remain.

This is the sentence imposed on you too. You are on death row. The wages of your sin is death which is a consequence of your sin nature. You will pay the price with your death of flesh. If you understand this consequence, you might better understand punishment by worldly standards. Consequence is imposed in such ruthless ways by man because of mankind's unwillingness to live by God's standards, all of which were written in stone to us and presented by Moses. Indeed, our deepest logic is folly to God, but we must impose consequence on fellow brothers ultimately so as to keep ourselves from being such an atrocity before God. This is our moral dilemma.

There is nothing unbiblical about the "death penalty." In fact, there are at least three instances where it was applied.

Rehabilitation Centers? Yeah, how's that working out? The liberal movement in America has been preaching this idea for many years now, and it hasn't shown any acceptable amount of success.

People go to prison now days and they have:

Free Housing, free clothing, free meals, free medical, free dental, free telephone/internet access, free Cable/Satellite access, free Library, free Gym membership, free Continuing Education, and pretty much anything else their little criminal hearts desire. And yet.............what we end up with are Prisons full of "GANGS" and gang violence. Where those who go in become even more violent and committed to a criminal lifestyle when they get out.......Yeah, that "Rehabilitation" thing is doing a BANG UP JOB.