{"id":620,"date":"2007-03-26T14:02:26","date_gmt":"2007-03-26T14:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=53"},"modified":"2007-03-26T14:02:26","modified_gmt":"2007-03-26T14:02:26","slug":"32107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"3\/21\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last post, I talked about being at a “Prayer Service to Abolish the Death Penalty.” \u00a0 \u00a0During the \u00a0service, facilitator Tim Musser read the following: \u00a0 Capital punishment is not what Jesus taught. \u00a0 It is what he suffered. \u00a0 But Pilate washes his hands and says: \u00a0“I am not responsible.” \u00a0 …The affluent Christian who spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours a year on sports, alcohol, fashion, drugs and entertainment says to the billions of people caught in the unrelieved miseries of poverty, hunger, disease and injustice: \u00a0 “I am not responsible.” \u00a0 …I \u00a0noted during the open forum part of the service that our family used to live in Bluffton, Ohio (pop. 4,000). \u00a0 The town was made up, primarily, of middle and upper-middle class people. \u00a0 We were there for four years. \u00a0 There was never a murder. \u00a0 Conversely, we moved to the inner city of Cleveland (the poorest city in the country) some three years ago. \u00a0 And I can’t remember looking at a Metro<\/em> Section<\/em> of the Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em> newspaper without reading about three to four murders — for the preceding day. \u00a0 The cycles of poverty here create a cauldron of hunger, despair, anger… murder. \u00a0 And for the “affluent” (by comparison) middle and upper middle class people in small town, and suburban, America who are thinking: \u00a0 ‘I am not responsible.’ \u00a0 Think again. \u00a0 By hoarding your resources in big houses, nice cars, IRA accounts… you allow these cycles of poverty to go on. \u00a0 And in a very real sense, you pronounce a “death sentence” to the child killed in a drive by shooting in East L.A., or the elderly \u00a0man killed in a robbery on the Southside of Chicago, or the mother of three who is raped and killed on the way to her night shift job on W. 25th in Cleveland… \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 If we want to end the “death penalty,” wouldn’t it make sense, common sense, to work at ending the systemic conditions that lead to \u00a0a lot of murders \u00a0in the first place? I doubt if God bought Pilate’s ‘I’m not responsible’ deal. \u00a0 And I doubt if He’s going to buy ours either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last post, I talked about being at a “Prayer Service to Abolish the Death Penalty.” \u00a0 \u00a0During the \u00a0service, facilitator Tim Musser read the following: \u00a0 Capital punishment is not what Jesus taught. \u00a0 It is what he …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}