Playing with Dynamite
A good way to threaten somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you call the guy and hold the burning fuse up to the phone. "Hear that?" you say. "That's dynamite, baby."
- Jack Handey
The bible says God has given rulers a job to do: punish evil with a sword: Romans 13. It also says that rulers tend to be arrogant fools who become infatuated with their sword, and boast about it: Isaiah 10.
There really are no rulers on earth today who obey God’s justice. Jesus told his followers that Christian rulers should be the opposite of gentile rulers–they should NOT lord it over their people–but 2,000 years later, Christian rulers still don’t have the least clue what God requires any more than gentiles do. This is why earth is full of prisons. The USA in particular has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy in the world.
There are no prisons in God’s law. Every prison in the bible is depicted as unjust: Joseph in Egypt; Paul in Rome; etc. One of the key mercy ministries in the new creation is visiting people in prison. If imprisonment was what God had commanded, God would never have told his people to visit the imprisoned, because they would just be getting what they deserved. The rest of the ministries listed alongside prison visits in Matthew 25 are all non-punitive conditions experienced as a result of the fall and man’s hardness of heart: hunger, thirst, sojourning, nakedness, and sickness. The addition of being in prison to this list of conditions is a telltale sign of how much God despises incarceration as punishment… because he never commanded it and it is a direct consequence of man’s hardness of heart.
Instead of incarceration, God’s law mandated either restitution for theft, execution for capital crimes, or occasionally corporal punishment and immediate release for some vices. There is no penalty anywhere in Torah which equates to incarceration. When the king wanted to shut up Jeremiah, he didn't even have a jail in his palace; he threw him into a well. This is telling, because the kings in Jeremiah’s time were quite up to their elbows in other types of iniquity, and even then they hadn’t yet thought to install a prison.
This means that prisons today are a direct violation of Exodus 21:16. They are kidnapping, AKA man-stealing.
The penalty for kidnapping, according to Jesus Christ, is death. Therefore, thousands of world leaders face a sentence of execution as I write this, for their high-handed crimes of stealing men.
One may protest, “but even if imprisonment isn’t proper punishment after conviction, you have to at least put people in jail while they await trial”.
The Bible does not say this, but even if it were true, the US constitution, Sixth Amendment, says: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.
So, even if man’s law were true (sorry, it's not), jailing in the US should be brief and transitory, at most. Not mass scale and long duration.
The Bible backs up the right to speedy trial. Moses was making parties to court wait in line all day long (not in jail all day long!), and his father in law rebuked him for this and made him hire more judges so that justice would be speedy. Not to mention: disobeying God is an exhausting discipline. Moses needed rest.
Today's rulers, under threat of being sentenced to death by God for their crime of kidnapping, are like the idiot in the Jack Handey joke who threatens someone with a stick of dynamite over the phone. Or like Wile E. Coyote, hoist on his own petard. If they remain in their high-handed arrogance, then I fart in their general direction.
Pétard: from the Latin word pedere, which means "to fart". The word petard was used to describe a small, explosive device that was used to blow holes in walls and doors.
If I am ever incarcerated kidnapped by the state, it will be rough. But I will have brothers to visit me, as Christ commanded… and it's vastly preferable to what the king has coming to him.
Maybe Christians should warn the kings? They are arrogant jerks, but shouldn't we try to save arrogant jerks? I mean, aren’t we arrogant jerks, but just with less authority?
We are supposed to be light. If rulers are going to be executed by Christ, it may be our fault for not teaching kings to obey everything Christ commanded. Not a good look, Christians. You're supposed to love your neighbors, including presidents, governors, etc.
What if Donald Trump is simply ignorant that deporting criminals who've murdered an American is actually a gross insult to the American families of the victim, who deserve to watch the criminal die on US soil? How is an American family going to fly to El Salvador and get justice for their dead son or daughter?
Seems like Donald would rather pocket the sales money, than get satisfaction for American families.
Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? -JESUS CHRIST, mocking the King of Assyria