The Spiritual Logic of Containing Bloodlust

We are ensouled beings; souls with bodies.

Souls are immortal.

Death causes the soul to separate from the body.

 

If the above is accepted as being true, then what are the implications for the killing of innocents and for the execution of the guilty? Victims of murder, war and abortion are one thing; executing traitors like the Bushes, the Obamas, and the Clintons, Cheney, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, et al., requires even deeper diving.

 

And so, before being able to answer, certain clarifications are needed.

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Once a soul is freed of the body there are speculations as to its continuing odyssey. Theologians hold varying beliefs about the exact nature of a disembodied soul’s journey.

 

Whatever the theological hypotheses may be, contrast them to case studies of children who remember being someone else in a past life. There are many documented-yet-unexplained instances of this phenomenon. These cases provide evidence of, and thereby lend credence to, the reincarnation hypothesis: that at least some souls are regenerated into new bodies.

 

Now if that is true, the speculation is that this occurs because the soul is on a journey to perfect itself. This would suppose that, ideally, with each embodiment the soul learns certain lessons so that it can improve and purify itself. Logically, then, as long as the body lives, the soul is afforded the opportunity to make better choices and thus to become a wiser, purer, “better” soul.

 

Accordingly, if the body perishes so ceases the ability of that body’s soul, in that lifetime, to have the potential to improve itself. This, then, leads to the hypothesis that the violation of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, prevents a soul from improving because it cuts short a lifetime during which it has the potential for purifying, perfecting, i.e., “bettering” itself.

 

Lessons are often presented to us through adversity. Human beings have free will to react to adversities in any way they wish. Some challenge and overcome them, and some buckle under the pressure and allow themselves to be consumed by them. Presumably, in the former instance the soul inches forward on its “journey of apprehension” toward improvement and purity; in the latter instance the soul remains in stasis and fails to learn (at least as to that adversity) and may possibly fail to improve further in that particular lifetime as a result.

 

Adversities can be blatantly obvious or subtly deceiving. However they present themselves, they are temptations that appeal to weaknesses inherent in a particular individual’s spiritual development. For example, adversities may appear as opportunities to engage in lust or gluttony; these are really challenges to the soul because they are meant to appeal to a human being’s sensual, bodily pleasures rather than to the grace and goodness that feeds that being’s soul. These can be looked upon as the notion of “temptations to sin.” Again, falling into sin presumably stymies and deteriorates the soul’s development, while avoidance of sin helps to further the perfection of the soul. (Indeed, lust and gluttony are known as two of the so-called “Seven Deadly Sins.”)

 

However, when the body dies and (if) the soul is reincarnated the speculation is that it has yet another chance to rectify its past mistakes and failings.

 

The question to be pondered about such a soul is this: Is it an “improving soul” or not? That is, is it learning from its mistakes and failures or is it compounding the errors of its ways in lifetime-after-lifetime?

Stated differently: Is this a soul that has mastered itself at a certain sound, foundational level and is simply striving to overcome more petty shortcomings that tend to short-circuit its purity and perfection?—or is this a soul that must sink to the lowest levels of depravity (viz., “bottom-out”) in order to learn its lessons?

 

Understandably, we may ask ourselves whether a certain soul is simply “incorrigible,” i.e., so firmly rooted in evil and incapable of reform that it has become an irredeemably evil soul. It may be. But who among us has the capacity to know this?

 

As we learn from the gospels of Jesus: “Judge not lest you be judged; let ye without sin cast the first stone.”

 

The killing of innocents includes the following: 

Aborted babies, and;

Any persons killed (especially those killed without lawful due process and without receiving a just sentence), not the least of which include casualties of war.

 

The killing of the guilty refers to those whose sins condemn them in the eyes of the just, who take it upon themselves to execute them after lawful due process and the imposition of a legal death sentence.

 

And so, the rationale for believing that capital punishment is an anathema is this:

 

Whether innocent or guilty, a soul is thereby prevented from perfecting itself any further in this lifetime.

 

Who knows what the ramifications of this are? Could prematurely separated souls be detrimental to society and the world?

 

Are those souls who are, one might say, “pre-disposed toward goodness,” somehow put off by a sudden, untimely death and their soul’s journey is set back as a result or perhaps put on the wrong track?

 

Are those souls who are, one might say, “pre-disposed toward evil,” regenerated with a raging hatred still burning in their craws toward continued evil-doing, thus perpetuating evil in the world?

 

Can we afford to take the chance that either of these outcomes might be nurtured by killing and execution?

 

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Besides being arguments against abortion and war, the above reasoning is a strong argument against capital punishment. Instead of "hanging 'em high," the better course is imprisonment (viz., separation from society) but with opportunities afforded for reformation of the soul until the body dies a natural death. Whatever the period of incarceration it can also be a time for contrition, for a wrong-doer to reflect upon his or her past life; and not only a time for repentance but also a time for those who had been injured by the convicted evil-doer to come to terms with the injury and to learn to forgive their trespassers.

 

It is a Christ-like way forward: just as he listened to the crucified criminals to his right and to his left, and forgave the one who showed true repentance—even for a lifetime spent in doing evil—it is in the imitation of Jesus that we can find our own and the world’s salvation. Perhaps this means that the traitors and felons among us might spend  their “next lives” doing restitution for those wrongs instead of perpetrating more devastation in the world-to-come (if indeed the world survives their wrongdoing).

Such is the spiritual logic of containing bloodlust.