When Did Execution Become Entertainment?

Yesterday evening, just as I was preparing to begin worship with SALT, I saw a breaking news alert that stopped me cold. The Pentagon reportedly plans to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter by firing squad.

My first response was horror! And as I pondered it, my mind went to the cross.

We Christians know something about public executions. Crucifixion wasn’t simply a means of killing someone. It was the Roman state’s way of making a spectacle of death, displaying its power, humiliating the condemned, and warning everyone watching what happens when you challenge authority. BE CEAR – I’m certainly NOT equating the Fort Hood shooter with Jesus. But I am asking us to consider what happens when the state turns killing into a public spectacle.

Then my thoughts went to the Jim Crow South, when lynchings became community events. People gathered to watch. Families brought children and fried chicken picnics. Photographs were taken. Postcards were sold. Human suffering became entertainment, and the crowds helped normalize the horror.

I thought about medieval executions, when townspeople gathered in public squares. And ancient Rome, where emperors filled the Colosseum with spectators eager to watch human beings die.

And I keep coming back to one question.

WHO have we become?

What does it say about us that we would consider broadcasting an execution to anyone with an internet connection? That children might stumble across it? That someone’s death, however terrible their crimes, could become another piece of content to watch, share, and discuss?

I understand that people have strong and differing convictions about capital punishment. I’ve wrestled with those questions myself. But this is something beyond the death penalty.

This is about what we are willing to make into a spectacle. 😳

As Christians, we worship a Savior who was publicly executed by the state. Surely that ought to make us particularly cautious about celebrating the state’s power to kill.

The cross should never make us comfortable with public executions. It should make us question them. And perhaps the most troubling question isn’t whether the government should livestream an execution.

It’s why anyone thinks we would want to watch.