After what happened in Tennessee this week, I want to ask you to examine your conscience about capital punishment. Not your political side. Not a quick emotional reaction. Your conscience. The state attempted to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection. She was convicted of a horrific murder. After two doses of the drug, she remained alive and was taken to a hospital. None of that makes the question morally simple. Do you believe executions truly make society safer? Do you believe they are necessary for justice? Or have we come to think that killing even the great criminals among us is something to be satisfied by? Be honest with yourself. There is danger in growing comfortable with another person’s death, even when that person has done something monstrous. It does not heal a victim’s family. It does not restore the dead. And it can poison our moral judgment. In 2025, executions were carried out in only 17 countries worldwide, not counting the hidden numbers in China. Look at governments most eager to execute: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Korea, and others. Is that the company we want to keep when speaking of justice? The United States recorded more than 20,000 homicides in 2024, a rate near six per 100,000 people. The European Union, where every member has abolished the death penalty, recorded about 3,930 intentional homicides in 2023, under one per 100,000. That does not prove abolition causes less murder. It does show that killing prisoners is not necessary for a society to be safe. The National Research Council found that existing research cannot tell us whether the death penalty deters murder more than long imprisonment. The idea that people about to commit murder calmly decide not to because they may someday be executed is not established by the evidence. “But it is in the Bible.” Yes, the Bible contains capital punishment. It also gives us the crucified Lord. Christ tells us to put away the sword, to love our enemies, and to leave vengeance to God. Scripture recognizes the state’s authority to punish crime. But Christians are not called simply to reproduce every ancient civil penalty in a society that can securely imprison its most dangerous offenders. None of this excuses murder or diminishes the suffering of victims and their families. They deserve justice, care, truth, and to be remembered. But when a person can safely be kept in prison for life, why take away every remaining possibility of repentance, faith, and even some small good done from within a prison cell? We have the capacity to protect society without killing prisoners. To be pro-life must include refusing to kill even the great criminals among us when it is not necessary. A life sentence protects society and leaves room for God to work. That should matter to Christians.