{"id":123,"date":"2009-06-10T10:35:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T10:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html"},"modified":"2009-06-10T10:35:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T10:35:34","slug":"jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just read&#160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0687647568\/1n9867a-20\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Osler&#039;s Jesus on Death Row: &#160;The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment<\/a>. &#160;It&#039;s worth your time for two reasons. &#160;One, anything that reminds us of what our Savior did for our salvation will only serve to draw us nearer to our most merciful God. &#160;Two, seeing Jesus as a death row inmate forces us to ask whether or not we are loving the least of these in our midst. &#160;It is on this latter point that this book provides much fodder for debate. &#160;As Osler writes, &quot;The more we focus on that story of Jesus, the more the idea of capital punishment becomes troubling.&quot; (p4)<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Osler says that the, &quot;example of Christ is but one of a number of reasons that the death penalty is not compatible with the Christian faith.&quot; &#160;He then reminds us of what Jesus did when he was asked about the death penalty in regards to the woman caught in adultery.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\">\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic\">In John 8, Jesus was asked to opine on a lawful execution that was about to occur. &#160;There was no suggestion that the defendant was innocent, or that the crime was minor by the standards of the day. &#160;Jesus did not shrug his shoulders, summarily conclude that the death penalty was necessary or approved in the Old Testament, and walk away.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, he challenged the gathered crowd: &#160;A person without sin should cast the first stone of the stoning. &#160;Famously no one did. &#160;They did not have the moral authority to execute another person even when human law called for it. &#160;Could his teaching be anymore clearer? &#160;Jesus came upon the death penalty, about to be conducted and stopped it. &#160;Imagine if he had come upon an abortion about to be committed and condemned it&#8211;I don&#039;t doubt that many would take that as an unambiguous moral statement. &#160;(pp4-5)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Whether we support the death penalty or not, I believe we have to wrestle with concepts presented in this book if we are going to seek justice AND mercy in our world. &#160;On the one had we have to take into account the rights of victims while living in a nation that now has a track record of sentencing innocent people to death row.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>You can interact with Professor Osler at his blog <a href=\"http:\/\/oslersrazor.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Osler&#039;s Razor<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just read&#160;Mark Osler&#039;s Jesus on Death Row: &#160;The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment. &#160;It&#039;s worth your time for two reasons. &#160;One, anything that reminds us of what our Savior did for our salvation will only serve to draw us nearer to our most merciful God. &#160;Two, seeing Jesus as a death row&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-music-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler - The Jazz Theologian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler - The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I just read&#160;Mark Osler&#039;s Jesus on Death Row: &#160;The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment. &#160;It&#039;s worth your time for two reasons. &#160;One, anything that reminds us of what our Savior did for our salvation will only serve to draw us nearer to our most merciful God. &#160;Two, seeing Jesus as a death row&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-10T10:35:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Gelinas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler - The Jazz Theologian","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler - The Jazz Theologian","og_description":"I just read&#160;Mark Osler&#039;s Jesus on Death Row: &#160;The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment. &#160;It&#039;s worth your time for two reasons. &#160;One, anything that reminds us of what our Savior did for our salvation will only serve to draw us nearer to our most merciful God. &#160;Two, seeing Jesus as a death row&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html","og_site_name":"The Jazz Theologian","article_published_time":"2009-06-10T10:35:34+00:00","author":"Robert Gelinas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/06\/jesus-on-death-row-by-mark-osler.html","name":"Jesus on Death Row by Mark Osler - 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Robert Gelinas on Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/5e3ecb360405bd8603a61c7115194e01","name":"Robert Gelinas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","caption":"Robert Gelinas"},"description":"\"For more information visit: Jazztheologian.com Robert Gelinas is Lead-Pastor (and resident Jazz Theologian) of Colorado Community Church\u00e2\u20ac\u201da multi-cultural, interdenominational community of 3000+ followers of Christ in the Denver area. Author of Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith (Zondervan) and the upcoming, Strange Fruit: The Cross as a Way of Life (2011). Founder of Project 127, a ministry dedicated to seeing the day when there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado's foster care system. Robert deeply desires to see the body of Christ mobilized to serve the least of these. The poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised and disabled, those deemed unimportant and the unborn. He believes that God loves all people yet he has a special heart for the poor and the poor in spirit, the miserable and the marginalized. A Contributing Editor for Leadership Journal and Urbanfaith.com. He acquired a B.A. in Bibilcal Studies from Colorado Christian University and a Master of Arts in World Christianity (Missiology) from Denver Seminary. Robert is married to the love of his life, Barbara, and they have six energetic children (3 boys &amp; 3 girls--one bio, five adopted--two from Ethiopia). Friend of God...Passionate about the Body of Christ...Lover of this thing called jazz! Please visit Jazztheologian.com for contact info., speaking schedule, videos, Facebook and Twitter.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/author\/rgelinas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}