Note: Well, readers, I learned that President Trump halted plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan … but I already had this piece ready to publish today. I still think the post is worth consideration, as it addresses issues of justice, vengeance, mercy, and a Christian’s posture toward a cultural moment like this … whether it’s livestreamed or not.
The news that former Army Major Nidal Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad, and the public response to that announcement, has weighed heavily on my mind. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. His crimes were horrific, and the pain left behind by that day is not something to be minimized. For the victims’ families, the survivors, and the men and women who lived through that terrible afternoon, the wounds are far more than a headline or a political talking point.
Recently, Charles Fain Lehman published an essay in The Free Press titled “I Support the Death Penalty. Don’t Livestream It.” Lehman argues that even those who support capital punishment should oppose turning an execution into online entertainment. His concern is that a livestreamed execution would transform a solemn act of justice into a spectacle, dishonor the victims, and encourage the kind of public celebration that undermines the moral seriousness of the punishment itself.
I find much to appreciate in his argument. But reading it also brought me back to something I wrote more than fifteen years ago, when Osama bin Laden was killed.
I remember the strange mixture of emotions I felt that night. I was relieved that a man responsible for so much suffering could no longer direct acts of terror against innocent people. I hoped his death would bring some measure of closure to those who had lost loved ones. I was grateful for the military personnel who had carried out their mission, and I understood why so many Americans felt that justice had finally been served.
But I was also troubled by the celebrations that followed. I wondered whether the death of a man who had committed such terrible acts was really something we ought to celebrate. I wasn’t questioning whether his actions were evil or whether the world was safer without him. I was wrestling with a different question: What happens to us when our response to evil begins to look like a celebration of death?
That question has returned to me as I consider Hasan’s scheduled execution and the public response surrounding it.
When Justice Becomes a Spectacle
Lehman makes an important distinction between the administration of capital punishment and the public spectacle that might surround it. He acknowledges the traditional argument for retributive justice: some crimes are so serious that society believes they warrant the ultimate penalty. But he argues that such a sentence demands sobriety and moral seriousness. An execution intended to communicate the gravity of a crime loses something essential when it becomes material for online mockery, memes, and political point-scoring.
His historical example is telling. Lehman recounts the 1936 execution of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, where a crowd gathered to watch a hanging. Some spectators jeered even as Bethea prayed. The event became a public spectacle, and the resulting condemnation helped bring an end to public executions in America. Lehman contrasts that episode with the stated purpose of public punishment in earlier centuries, when executions were sometimes understood as solemn occasions intended to demonstrate the seriousness of wrongdoing.
His point is not simply that public executions are distasteful. It is that the manner in which justice is carried out, and the attitude of those who witness it, can undermine the very purpose justice is supposed to serve.
I think he is right to raise that concern.
There is a difference between recognizing the gravity of a crime and taking pleasure in the suffering of the person who committed it. There is also a difference between affirming that justice has been done and celebrating the death through which that justice was administered. Those responses are not necessarily the same.
It’s understandable that victims’ families would feel relief when a long legal process reaches its conclusion. We can be grateful that a dangerous person will no longer harm others. We can believe that a just sentence has been carried out. None of those responses necessarily reflects cruelty or a desire for suffering.
However, relief that justice has been done is not the same as delight in another person’s pain. And celebrating the protection of the innocent is not the same as celebrating the death of the guilty.
This is an important distinction because justice and vengeance, though they can look similar from a distance, are not the same thing. Justice seeks to address wrongdoing, hold people accountable, and protect those who might otherwise be harmed. Vengeance seeks personal satisfaction through the severity of the offender’s suffering. Justice asks what is right; vengeance asks what will satisfy our desire to see someone pay.
Of course, I have to confess that many of us, myself included, have motives that are not always so easily separated. A person can sincerely desire justice while also harboring resentment or taking pleasure in an offender’s suffering. That is precisely why this question deserves our attention.
Lehman also makes a point deserving attention: an execution is not merely about the condemned person and the state’s authority to punish. It is also about the victims. Their lives should not become a backdrop for triumphant political fist-pumping or public entertainment. If the final moments of the person who killed them are reduced to online content, the victims’ suffering risks becoming part of the spectacle rather than the reason we take the crime so seriously in the first place.
I find this to be a useful corrective to the way we often talk about notorious criminals. Our attention can become so focused on the offender that we forget the people whose lives were destroyed. The victims of Fort Hood deserve to be remembered for who they were, not merely as the reason a particular sentence was imposed.
Yet I find myself wanting to take Lehman’s argument one step further.
His principal concern is that livestreaming an execution would undermine the moral seriousness of capital punishment. My concern extends beyond the method of execution or the medium through which it might be viewed. I am troubled by what our desire to witness and celebrate another person’s death reveals about us, regardless of whether the execution is conducted privately or publicly.
The problem is not that every expression of satisfaction over an execution is necessarily cruel. It is that we can become so convinced of another person’s guilt, and so certain that their death is deserved, that we stop examining what our own response reveals about us.
What Does the Gospel Ask of Us?
As a Christian, I cannot consider these questions without returning to a passage in the Old Testament that speaks directly to the heart of this matter.
In Ezekiel 33:11, God declares: “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” (ESV)
The context is God’s warning to Israel and the prophet’s responsibility to call people to turn from their wickedness. The chapter emphasizes that people are accountable for their choices, but it also makes clear that God does not desire their destruction as an end in itself. He calls them to repent and to turn from the paths that lead to death and embrace life.
The context is essential to consider here because God isn’t denying the reality of judgment or suggesting that wrongdoing has no consequences. Nor is he saying that repentance makes the damage caused by sin disappear. God is revealing here something about his own heart: his desire is not simply to see the wicked suffer, but to see them turn from their wickedness and live.
I think we sometimes read passages like this too quickly, particularly when we are thinking about someone whose actions have caused terrible suffering. We understand God’s judgment against evil, and we affirm that those who commit acts of violence must be held accountable. But do we give the same attention to what God says about his own desire?
He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He calls them to repent.
Since this is God’s disposition toward the wicked, what should it mean for those of us who claim to follow him?
Because this is God’s heart, what does it require of mine?
Oof, now it’s getting personal … I can hear the voice of a crusty fellow from my home church who’d complain when the pastor’s sermon hit too close to home … “Watch out, brother, now you’ve gone to meddlin’!”
I recognize that Lehman and I are approaching this subject from different starting points. He explicitly defends capital punishment as an appropriate expression of retributive justice, particularly in a case as serious as Hasan’s. I’m not trying to settle the Christian debate over capital punishment in this piece. Faithful Christians have reached different conclusions about whether the state may rightly impose the death penalty, and Ezekiel 33:11 alone does not resolve that question.
Other biblical passages can help us understand the relationship between justice and vengeance. Romans 12:17–21, Paul instructs Christians not to repay evil for evil, not to avenge themselves, and not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. He calls believers to leave vengeance to God rather than taking it into their own hands.
But in the very next chapter, Paul turns to the governing authorities and describes their responsibility to punish wrongdoing. The authority does not bear the sword in vain; it has a legitimate role in maintaining justice and restraining evil. Romans 13:1–4.
So, which is it?
These passages are not contradictory. Paul is distinguishing the Christian’s personal response to wrongdoing from the governing authority’s responsibility to administer justice. Romans 12 does not require us to pretend that evil is harmless or that accountability is unnecessary. Romans 13 does not give us permission to indulge personal vengeance simply because someone has done wrong.
Don’t overlook this distinction. The state may have a legitimate responsibility to punish wrongdoing, but that does not mean Christians should take personal delight in the suffering of those who are punished. Even when we believe a sentence is just, we remain responsible for the spirit in which we respond.
Jesus makes this challenge even more personal when, in Matthew 5, he tells his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. These are familiar words, but familiarity can make us forget how demanding they are. Jesus does not reserve his teaching for situations in which the offender is misunderstood, the crime is minor, or reconciliation seems easy. He calls his followers to a way of life that refuses to let hatred have the final word.
Loving our enemies does not mean pretending that evil isn’t evil. It does not require us to abandon the pursuit of justice, ignore the needs of victims, or leave vulnerable people exposed to further harm. It does mean that we resist the temptation to let our opposition to evil become an excuse for taking pleasure in another person’s suffering.
The Cross Leaves No Room for Self-Righteousness
One of the uncomfortable truths of the Christian faith is that the cross exposes both the seriousness of human evil and the depth of God’s grace.
We tend to be much more comfortable talking about grace when we are the ones who need it. We are less comfortable extending that same theological reality to people whose sins seem so much worse than our own. Or as one pastor I know puts it, “I want justice for you, but grace for me!”
Yet the New Testament does not allow us to divide humanity into those who need forgiveness and those who have somehow risen above that need. Paul writes in Romans 3 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He is not suggesting that every sin has the same consequences, that every person is equally dangerous, or that the differences between murder and lesser offenses are unimportant. They are important. The harm done to victims is real, and accountability remains necessary.
Paul reminds us that none of us stands before God by the merit of our own righteousness.
The cross, then, is not an excuse for evil. It is God’s answer to evil. At Calvary, we witness the devastating consequences of sin, the injustice of human systems, people’s willingness to inflict suffering, and the extraordinary love of God for a world that has turned against him. In no way does Christ make light of sin; he himself bears its cost to make reconciliation possible for humanity; see 2 Corinthians 5:11-21.
God’s grace does not make evil less serious. It makes repentance possible. It offers life where judgment is deserved, not because sin doesn’t matter, but because God’s mercy is greater than our capacity to comprehend it.
That grace is not something we earn, nor is it something we can reserve for the people we consider deserving. If we believe the gospel, we must acknowledge that the possibility of repentance and redemption belongs to the very heart of God’s dealings with humanity.
We do not know the full story of another person’s relationship with God, and we are not the final judges of another person’s soul. We can recognize guilt, acknowledge the consequences of sin, and entrust the administration of justice to the appropriate authorities. But we cannot presume to know everything God knows about a human life, nor should we presume that the death of a sinner is something God delights in.
Jesus did not respond to the violence inflicted upon him by becoming a reflection of the violence around him. He entrusted himself to the Father, even as he prayed for the forgiveness of those responsible for his death. I don’t believe this to be weakness; rather, it is a different kind of strength, one that refuses to allow evil to dictate the terms of our response.
These truths confront us with an uncomfortable question: When we celebrate the death of someone we regard as evil, are we celebrating the defeat of evil, or are we simply enjoying the suffering of someone we believe deserves it?
I can’t answer that question for everyone who welcomes Hasan’s execution. Some are thinking about justice for the victims. Some are expressing relief that a terrible chapter may finally be closed. Others may believe the sentence will serve as a warning to those who would commit similar acts. Those responses are understandable, and I do not want to assign motives to people I do not know. Nor do I believe Christians must suppress every expression of relief or every acknowledgment that justice has been served. There is a legitimate place for gratitude that the innocent are protected and that wrongdoing is taken seriously. But there is a difference between being grateful that justice has been done and taking pleasure in the death of the person being punished. The first need not involve the second.
The question is not whether we may affirm justice. It is whether our response to justice leaves room for the mercy, humility, and love of Christ.
What Will We Celebrate?
When I wrote about Osama bin Laden’s death in 2011, I remembered the days following September 11, 2001. I remembered people rushing into collapsing buildings to save strangers. I remembered friends who served in uniform in the subsequent war on terror, including one who lost his leg to a roadside bomb. I remembered a church filled with people praying for victims and their families, and a community that set aside its differences to care for those who were hurting.
In the midst of terrible evil, I saw people demonstrate courage, generosity, sacrifice, and compassion. I had seen the best of humanity rise in response to the worst of it.
Those are the things I wanted to celebrate then, and they are the things I want to celebrate now.
I want to celebrate a nation that takes the lives of innocent people seriously. I want to celebrate a justice system that holds people accountable and protects the vulnerable. I want to celebrate the courage of those who intervene when others are in danger, the compassion of those who sit with grieving families, and the faithfulness of people who continue to care for survivors long after the headlines disappear.
And I want to celebrate a church that can look directly at the darkest expressions of human evil without surrendering its commitment to the love of Christ.
Lehman concludes that celebration is not just, even for those who believe the death penalty is warranted. I agree that turning an execution into a spectacle of mockery or political triumph is wrong, though my reasons reach beyond the public administration of punishment. For Christians, the issue is not simply whether a spectacle undermines the legitimacy of an execution. It is whether our response to the death of the wicked reflects the heart of the God who calls them to repent and live.
I recognize that people of good conscience will disagree about whether Hasan’s execution is justifiable. But I hope we can agree that justice should never be an excuse for cruelty, and that the punishment of an offender should never be an occasion to forget the dignity of human life.
Perhaps the most important question is not whether we are pleased that a terrible criminal will face the consequences of his actions. It is whether, in the process, we remain the people Jesus has called us to be.
No doubt, there is plenty of evil in this world to grieve, plenty of injustice to confront, and plenty of suffering that calls for our attention. In the midst of it all, I hope we can still recognize the things worth celebrating. As Christians, we have something better to offer the world than the satisfaction of seeing an enemy die. We have the witness of a Savior who confronted evil without becoming evil, who extended grace to the undeserving, and who calls us to love even when love is difficult.
That doesn’t mean we look away from injustice. It means we pursue justice without losing sight of mercy, speak the truth without surrendering compassion, and remember that the measure of our faithfulness is not only how firmly we condemn evil but also how faithfully we embody the character of Christ in the face of it.
Source
Lehman, Charles Fain. “I Support the Death Penalty. Don’t Livestream It.” The Free Press, October 12, 2026.
