Deserving Life Or Death

There is an enormous difference between not deserving to live and deserving to be killed by others.  In the first case, a person has simply done nothing to justify their existence (i.e., they refused to pursue truth and live justly), but they have not necessarily done anything that deserves capital punishment; in the second case, a person has committed some act that merits execution at the hands of other humans.  Being in the first category in no way establishes that one automatically belongs in the second category, and yet the typical evangelical Christian conflates them in a way that trivializes sin, capital punishment, and the genuine differences in the moral status of individuals.

Rather than claim that all people deserve to live or die in these senses regardless of their moral status, the Bible teaches that, while many people do not truly deserve to live (Romans 6:23), they do not deserve to be actively killed by other humans unless they first commit one of several capital offenses.  It is utterly contrary to Biblical Christianity to perpetuate the evangelical lie that everyone is equally deserving of life or death.  Few truly deserve to live, and this has nothing to do with whether they are saved, and many do not deserve to live, even though they do not deserve to be actively killed.

Even though it is entirely possible for someone to reason out these distinctions on their own, to have them explained to oneself and then reject them is treason against rationality and justice.  Unsurprisingly, the evangelical world rejects this distinction, holding that all people somehow deserve to both die and live at the same time--an impossible thing.  On one hand, they usually insist that all sins are equal and that everyone equally deserves death in an ultimate sense.  On the other hand, they usually insist on capital punishment being imposed on a mere fraction of the crimes the Bible actually prescribes it for (which is an entirely separate inconsistency).

There is little to no attempt on their part to explain these discrepancies, and thus almost none of them ever clarify the difference between deserving death and deserving to be killed.  If anything, they are likely to act like it logically follows from everyone deserving death that no one deserves to be killed by others.  This conclusion, as any rationalist can see, does not follow at all!  It is yet another example of the evangelical irrationalism that has become equated with Christianity itself in the eyes of many philosophically incompetent observers outside of the church.

Finding a person who deserves to exist is a rare phenomenon.  The emotional dislike of this truth drives many away from it, and it sometimes drives Christians to make claims about capital punishment and interpersonal relationships in general that do not follow at all from their premises.  That all people who have not committed a Biblical capital offense have a right to life does not mean they have any individual value beyond their human rights, nor does it mean they truly deserve to live.  It only means that they have not done anything to deserve premature death at the hands of others.