This sort of thing is always a moral dilemma for me. I believe in the sanctity of life, from one end of the spectrum to the other (i.e., conception to death). So if I honestly believe that all life is sacred, then I cannot condone capital punishment. Yet, what alternatives do we have to deal with those who have no respect for life and spend their entire lives and energies erasing lives of innocent people? As a global society, we need to come up with better solutions. It makes me yearn for the day when we can send them to penal planets, like they do in Star Trek. But even then we will have to deal with the inevitable escapes and further abuses. So it continues to be a moral dilemma.

What makes it moreso for me is my profound belief that God has created and loves each human person. I also believe that from the perspective of eternity, there is no such thing as being "beyond redemption". While I can and do make judgements on another person's actions when they impact on others and myself, I don't think I have everything I would need to make judgements on a person's heart or redemptive value. I think I'd prefer to leave that up to God. Which then makes me wonder how I can pick and choose who God should love...it would enrage me if I was told who I could love and who I must hate according to outward appearances and outward behaviours. I would want to delve into the heart of a person and sit there for awhile before I made my own decision on whether or not there was any redeeming value left in this person.

I'd like to believe that what we do here on earth is not the totality of who we are in the grand scheme of eternal life. I've made lots of mistakes too, not on the same level as Hussein or Hitler, but there are some out there who could declare me to be "beyond redemption" too. How tragic is that? I've been capable of change. Maybe one's death doesn't change the capacity to change. Maybe God's got other plans for those who didn't learn the sanctity of life while on earth.

It's still a moral dilemma. One that's hard for Christians especially to grapple with, because we're human, and our human-ness wants to see someone like Hussein pay for his inhumanity and blatant disregard for the sanctity of life. And yet our Christian faith does exhort us to love and forgive one another.

This morning, I was awakened with the burning call to pray for Saddam Hussein. That certainly wasn't from within my own mercy for him...the man's actions repulse me even now. Yet, there was no doubt that I was being asked to pray for him, just as I'm often awakened in the middle of the night to pray for any one of you or my family, or sometimes people I don't even know. I don't know the "why" of that call, I just know by now to "just do it" and leave it up to God to do what He wants with my prayer.

God has placed a deep burden of praying for this man on my heart. Why? I have no idea. But it gives me yet one more glimpse of the reality of God's mercy...why would He ask me to pray for someone if He has already condemned him?

It definitely leaves the door open to God's mercy and the very unpopular and perhaps undigestable notion that nobody is beyond God's redemption...