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Hospitality to the Imprisoned ˜ 173
by women and discredited. It is amazing that four remarkable accounts got
through, containing almost more detail than we can tolerate. The story of resurrection
doesn’t usually survive. We rarely tell it, and we rarely hear it. We don’t
like to be laughed at or easily dismissed. We do not fancy being pushed aside as
the lunatic fringe.
How amazing God’s grace is, then, that resurrection happens again and
again to remind us of the hope we have for life and liberation. I know it’s true.
I’ve been privileged to see it, and I want to run with all my might to tell you.
Hating Our Children: The Execution of Chris Burger
as Metaphor, by Murphy Davis
J u l y 1 9 9 4
Though she was an experienced teacher, it was her first month of teaching
in a new middle school. When I saw her, I asked how it was going. Well, there
was lots to get used to and all. Then she spoke of the adolescent boys who were
causing discipline problems in some of her classes. She sighed wearily: “I guess
building more prisons is about the only thing we can do. Don’t you agree”
I tried, I really, really tried to keep my mouth from falling completely open
or from fainting dead in the driveway in front of the school. Finally I caught my
breath and controlled my voice enough to say, in a carefully measured tone,
“No, I really don’t agree. I think it would be a much better idea to pay you a decent
wage, limit your class size to fifteen, and buy books and materials for the
school library.” This time it was her mouth that flew open. “Well, my goodness,”
she exclaimed, “I’d never thought of that.”
And maybe that is the problem. We’re not thinking. The hack politicians
fill our ears with garbage about how punitive we need to be, and we don’t think.
We go along. And our children are going down the tubes.
Nobody short of Ebenezer Scrooge would come out and admit to hating
children. It doesn’t take much to make even the hard-hearted misty-eyed with
stories of sick, injured, neglected, or violated, suffering children. Most of us
think of ourselves as people who love children. But at the same time we get excited
about stories of individual children and what we might do to help, we are
actively, or at least by our silence, participating in the creation of public policy
that is nothing short of hateful toward children.
On December 7, 1993, Christopher Burger was executed by electrocution
by the state of Georgia. I first met Chris in 1980 or 1981, within the first couple