Letters: Execution teaches soul that actions have consequences

I believe in karma. Or whatever it is called: justice, fairness, balance.

I believe that doing good things for other people will result in good things happening in return. I believe that the reverse is also true: Doing evil to others brings evil into your own life.

But then things get sticky … why do some evil people seem to “get away with it?” Why do good people have to suffer? How can a God allow a child to die?

The only answer, on a spiritual level, is to try to understand the concept of continuous life. Some use the word reincarnation.

My belief is that the purpose of life is to rise in our spiritual awareness and understanding, to become vessels through which goodness may flow. It’s not easy.

But, if it is so, if life goes on and on, and we only retain our soul from incarnation to incarnation, then how does the soul that is on an evil path ever learn to make a correction?

There are a number of valid reasons to maintain the unpleasant practice of execution. And there are an equal number of reasons to end it.

My contention is that, in the greater sense, it is a kindness to the soul of the criminal. If a person is punished for an action, in due course, not dragged out over years, and not so quickly that exculpatory evidence is not uncovered but in a timely way, then the soul retains a kind of memory: Evil actions result in punishment.

Taking another person’s life in certain ways is evil, so executing a murderer teaches the murderer’s soul that actions have consequences.