Born to Die, part eight

Death penalty…capital punishment…execution…it all adds up to one thing: death as the ultimate punishment. From Paul’s “where is thy sting, where is thy victory?” Christians have been talking a good game for the last two thousand years that they apparently don’t really believe in. This is, of course, all presupposed by the concepts of heaven and hell, which (as I have already mentioned) is the intriguing human propensity to qualify death. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. If you die repentant and saved, you are rewarded. If you die sinfully unrepentant, you are punished. And so, quite ironically, the same phenomenon is both aspired to and avoided. If you haven’t already gone to the link Mary provided in her February 12 comments, I encourage you to do so simply because it gives a fascinating insight into one aspect of the human mythology (dare I call it fantasy?) that has grown up around the ultimate destiny of each and every one of us. So, if I have even the slightest reason to believe that death may be negative, painful, punishing, then it is to be feared as my enemy, and to be used as the ultimate weapon against my enemies.