Do Christians Believe? -- Karla Faye Tucker

First of all, the disease of religion can attack and overwhelm even a healthy person.  A person with good self-image, a strong ego, and a healthy view of the world is probably less susceptible to succumbing to this mental disease.  But under the right conditions and social pressures even strong individuals can fall victim.

      It is more likely that a strong individual, coming into contact with a group of mentally diseased people, might feign acceptance of their ideas, even pretend to go along, as long as he saw some advantage to himself.  As the aphorism goes: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."  This was probably the case with the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Constantine used the growing power of the church to bolster his own political power, but there is little in his personal life that suggests he was motivated by Christian values.

      It is not unusual to see the leaders of religious organizations act in ways that suggest they do not fully believe their own dogma, or that their understanding of the beliefs they espouse is somewhat flawed.  For example, a few years ago a woman on death row in Texas became a prominent because she claimed to have a whole-hearted conversion to Christianity.  As her execution date drew closer, more and more evangelical christians began asking for a pardon.  She became a cause celebre for several Christian groups and for several television evangelists.  Eventually she was executed, as Gov. George W. Bush was unwilling to contradict his "tough on crime" agenda by sparing her.

      I would suggest that, by asking for a pardon, many christians were false to their own belief system.  That is, if she had in fact accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior, then it was probably for the best for her immortal soul that she be executed and sent to her Maker.  By releasing her from prison, or even changing her sentence, it only gives the opportunity for backsliding.  So why then were so many Christians asking that she be pardoned?

      The answer is that these Christians were not operating within the original scheme of belief, but instead working from a sentimental 20th century view, more typical of liberal Christianity.  A person who truly believed in salvation and forgiveness would not have tried to free her from the death sentence which had been rightfully imposed by the state.  The Christians who died as martyrs in the coliseum in Rome always welcomed death as a doorway to freedom and a new life in heaven.  A first century Christian would find this 20th century squeamishness a bit confusing.

Earl Lee is the author of Libraries in the Age of Mediocrity (McFarland 2001)