Death or Life?

NOTE: This is about the death penalty but it is not about the death penalty. This is not meant to be a political statement. If you prefer, please skip below the second line ______ and continue from there.


I saw the repost of part of my blog on the public group associated with this page. Reading back over it, I thought of the man I heard speak last night, an activist and pastor in the local area.

In 2022, this man, Darryl Gray, was requested as spiritual advisor for a man on death row for murder. The difference between that former pastor I was subjected to and Rev Gray is astounding. Consider part of an article written about his and Kevin Johnson (death row inmate):

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…Gray said he also didn’t want to engage with someone who wasn’t sincerely seeking spiritual help. “I take ministry serious. I don’t do drive-bys and it’s not a drive-thru,” Gray said. “And I was being asked to walk with someone through the last steps of their life. This had to be real.” Gray agreed to meet on Sept. 19, 2022, 71 days left before Johnson’s execution date.

…Gray turned the conversation: “Tell me where you are with the crime,” he said.

“I did it,” Johnson replied. “You know if I could take it back, I would. It was one of the worst days of my life.”

Gray asked him why he wanted a spiritual adviser. Johnson said he’d often had a fractured relationship with God, but wanted to make a connection while he still could.

“A fractured faith is better than no faith at all,” Gray told him.

…

About a month before Johnson’s execution, Gray got an unexpected call from prison chaplain Mark Wilkinson.

“I have good news,” the chaplain said. “Kevin wants to be baptized.”

About a month before Johnson’s execution, Gray got an unexpected call from prison chaplain Mark Wilkinson.

“I have good news,” the chaplain said. “Kevin wants to be baptized.”

…

[Gray was in the room with Johnson during the execution, putting a hand on his shoulder, trying to hold it together. After the execution, which people did try to stop] …Guards ushered Gray into another room. “I sat in the chair and I just cried,” he said.

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To add to the story, at least four of Kevin’s family members have now also been baptized.

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I’m not sure I realized until now why this affected me so much. Why watching a man who’s over 60 cry even months later while speaking about the life and death of an inmate really impacted me as it did. Yes, that anyone would be put to death is sad, and being a part of an execution like that would be beyond difficult, but it was more than that.

I realize now that I was condemned to eternal hell by a pastor once for whispering a verse to someone sitting by me in church, and another time for supposedly thinking a “bad thought”. I watched others condemned for wearing the wrong clothes or having the “wrong” appearance or simply for being who they were in any other way. Not bad people. Not people who were harming anyone. Just people being people.

And now I’d met a pastor who met a man who confessed to and had been condemned to death for murder yet he loved that man unconditionally and went to great lengths to comfort him and help him find a less fractured faith in his last days.

There’s a lot to be said for that difference. A whole lot.

Those former pastors said they did what they did out of love. For a long time I believed them. BUT… which of these, my former pastor or Rev Gray, seems more loving? Which had the most positive spiritual impact on people? Which seems more grace-filled, more like Jesus?