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In 1981 Gary Haugen received life in prison for beating to death his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Mary Archer. After 22 years of indolence and basic comfort at taxpayer expense, in 2003 he bludgeoned and stabbed to death a fellow inmate, and incurred the death penalty.

Now Governor Kitzhaber thwarts a predictably lethargic criminal justice system to grant Mr. Haugen about thirty additional years to murder again. Kitzhaber’s profound personal conviction finds the death penalty morally wrong and unjustly administered, and he does not believe executions make us safer or nobler as a society.

Kitzhaber expresses morality sourced in human reasoning, but one can expect liberal Christian churches to align with him. Their Christian identity means finding affirmation within the larger social and academic humanistic culture. They backwards engineer selected scriptures through cherished homilies to arrive at preordained points of departure such as the Governor’s.

The death penalty issue reminds me of this Catholic nun holding a sign saying “Thou shalt not kill”. Here was an example of someone for whom embracing a morality fabricated by human intellect prevented objective study of her tradecraft. She treasured acceptance within the larger social and academic humanistic community by allowing others to write her definitions and set her agendas.

Quoting “Thou shalt not kill” simply does not work. There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. The scriptures use the word for murder one in Gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. To examine the Old Testament one can complete a fairly thorough analysis just by reviewing Strong’s Concordance. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” uses the word ratsach, which by my count appears 33 times in the Old Testament, and always refers to what our civil courts would interpret as committing first and second degree murder. I find two others words for kill and slay, muwth and harag, and three for destroy, shamad, shachath, and charam. These appear over 230 times and encompass all accounts for application of justice and conduct of warfare.

I contrast her with the position of C. S. Lewis, who experienced two world wars and a depression during his distinguished academic career. In terms of pure intelligence few surpassed him. After serving in the trenches during WW I, Lewis entered Oxford as an undergraduate student, where he won a triple first; the highest honors in three areas of study. Such was the beginning of an outstanding career. As a Christian few have surpassed him for accurately tempering a superior intellect with the wondrous mystery of the Lord’s existence as absolute righteousness and absolute love resulting in perfect justice.

The quote I remember comes from Mere Christianity and says,

“Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment – even to death. If one has committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the bench and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian solder to kill an enemy.……We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate or enjoy it.”

Kitzhaber expresses a moral position exclusively sourced in human reasoning detached from the law imposing a proportional judgment. The liberal Christian churches will align with him, because their definition of Christianity means finding areas of compatibility with the missions of organizations they value. In their world success comes from achieving a steady state by jumbling together acceptable Christian traditions with human philosophical traditions.

When faced with the liberal church represented by individuals such as the nun who possesses a fledging intellect and life experiences as one dimensional as her sign, I would always choose to take my council from people like C. S. Lewis. Lewis expressed a durable morality earned in the ultimate bloody deluges and the great economic tragedy of the 20th century.