Discussing
Kelly Gissendaner and amazing grace

An agent of change behind bars, Kelly Gissendaner received no amazing grace from any earthly institution. She was executed Sept. 30.

Imperfect people are incapable of making perfect justice. Injustice is a fact of our world, but death is irreversible justice and fails all the time. Divine justice is enforced after grace is offered, Divine recovery is expected as a function of grace and with recovery, reconciliation. Man's justice must however, require a consequence, therefore life in prison. Then recovery, reconciliation, responsibility and reversal are possible. This side of the cross man must not choose death, but life.

Unfortunately, in spite of my sympathies with Gissendaner and my personal lament over her execution, I DO actually think justice was done in this instance. I don't think the tragedy is that the one who pulled the trigger is still alive while the one who coordinated the effort is dead. It's that the evil of one act has destroyed more than just one life.

I would also refrain from commenting on the appropriateness of the death penalty here. I have my thoughts, but they're not what's important in the aftermath of something like this.

What I think we have to remember is that God's grace is predicated on Christ's satisfaction of God's justice. Gissandaner's death would be a considerably greater tragedy had she been forced to face it without the amazing grace that was made available to her by one who had already faced cold, hard justice on her behalf. Had God withheld from Christ what we wish the state would have withheld from Gissendaner, none of us would be saved.