10/10/2026
Thirteen lives were brutally taken at Fort Hood. Thirty-two others were wounded. Families were shattered, and grief continues to bear witness to the terrible consequences of that violence. Nothing can excuse or diminish such evil. Justice matters. Accountability matters. The lives of those who were murdered matter.
But when the state announces that it will broadcast an ex*****on for public consumption, we have crossed a troubling moral threshold. We have moved beyond the administration of justice into the dangerous territory of spectacle, where the taking of human life becomes a demonstration of political power. As a pastor of a church I condemn this action of this administration as amoral and cruel to publicize this ex*****on on television.
The biblical prophets knew something about crossing the moral threshold. They knew that empires have an extraordinary capacity to baptize their violence in the language of righteousness, to confuse vengeance with justice, and to persuade the public that the exercise of overwhelming power is a sign of moral authority.
Yet the God of the prophets is not impressed by displays of power. The God who declares through Ezekiel that there is no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) does not invite us to gather around the machinery of death as spectators. And the God who speaks through Amos demands that justice roll down like waters, not that vengeance be packaged as public entertainment.
We must ask ourselves what kind of people we are becoming when the deliberate killing of another human being is offered as something to watch. We are not being asked to defend Hasan. We are being called to examine what the state's proposed spectacle reveals about us.
The church must rise up and resist the temptation to confuse the power of Caesar with the righteousness of God. For at the center of our faith stands a crucified Christ, himself the victim of a public ex*****on intended to demonstrate the terrifying authority of the state.
While the cross exposes the moral bankruptcy of the spectacle of death. It does not sanctify it.
We can grieve the victims, condemn the murderer, demand accountability, and still refuse to celebrate another death. Indeed, our faith requires precisely that refusal.
Justice without mercy becomes vengeance. Power without moral restraint becomes tyranny. And when death becomes a spectacle, something sacred in our common humanity is diminished.
The question before us is not whether murder has consequences. Of course it does.
The question is whether a nation that claims to value human dignity can demonstrate justice without inviting its citizens to become spectators to another killing.
As Christians, we ought to know the difference. But do we?
