The right kind of fear is useful too

The delegate stood up to speak as registered on the agenda:

• Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee, distinguished delegates, I propose retaining the death penalty. As a delegate from the Ministry of Justice, I have followed the figures on criminal cases, especially serious ones, over the last three years. Since we began a trial of greatly reducing the offences punishable by death, under pressure from other countries, serious crimes have shot up to five times the earlier level. Clearly, when people no longer fear the death penalty, the evil in them shows itself.
  Before, the evil may still have been there, but people did not dare to commit crimes aggressively for fear of the highest punishment. Now, knowing that however grave their crime they will not die, people commit crimes all too easily. Murder, raping children, drug trafficking, corruption on a vast scale... they fear nothing.
  Our law has fairness, but it also has the character of deterring others. Now that we are lenient with those who commit grave crimes, our law immediately loses its deterrence. The consequence is that the number of serious crimes has soared in the three years of the trial.
  Another delegate asked to respond:
• The civilised world today is moving towards abolishing the death penalty altogether, on the reasoning that everyone has the right to live, even the most wicked. Imprisonment is enough.
• Sir, the wicked hold other people's lives as cheap as duckweed and kill in great numbers without a flicker of feeling. The technique of holding such extremely dangerous offenders is complex and costly. The cost of that special detention comes from the people's tax money. Holding one such major offender for 15 or 20 years costs an amount enough to put 30 children through school. I have the full figures. But my point is that I need the other wicked people still out there to fear the strictness of the law and not dare commit crimes. If they fear the death penalty, they will not dare do wrong and cause suffering to other innocent people. We only know how to be lenient with the wicked and forget how many other lives should have been living in peace. Because a wicked person acted, one person dies and a whole family falls into tragedy. And we talk about the right to live of the wicked. Clearly this is not fair. If the law is not fair, it loses the ability to regulate society's behaviour. We need the law to be fair. We need the law to be able to deter. We need other wicked people not to dare act, so that other lives can live in peace and happiness... They may still be wicked, but if at least they dare not act, society is under less pressure and the people's tax money is not wasted. 👨‍🎓

The superiority of the law of karmic cause and effect is that it makes people fear bad karmic results and hope for good ones. It is this balance in the mind between fearing suffering and liking joy that lets those who believe in cause and effect adjust their own behaviour. Going higher, those who believe in cause and effect learn to adjust their minds towards morality, that is, to love what is Good naturally, no longer out of fear of anything.

When we were small, we did not yet understand right and wrong, but out of fear of a painful beating we dared not do wrong. Grown up, we no longer need the rod; we know right from wrong ourselves because we have enough reason, so we know to avoid evil and do good.
In the old days the punishments of kings were cruel: cutting off hands, slicing off ears, gouging out eyes, all only to make people afraid so that they would not commit crimes. But that deterrence was too terrifying, so in more civilised times people only imprison. The death penalty is for those who no longer have a good heart with which to live among others. But to abolish the death penalty altogether would be too lenient, losing deterrence and strictness, failing to make bad people afraid. We need bad people to be afraid so that they do not harm the innocent, first of all. The death penalty has quietly saved countless innocent people out there, whom we cannot count.

Religion maintains the balance of the mind, or the fairness of heaven and earth, by presenting the concepts of hell and the heavenly realms. People need to fear hell and long for the heavenly realms in order to choose their present behaviour. Religious belief in hell and the heavenly realms has probably also quietly saved countless innocent victims whom we cannot count.
In the same way, the law's protection of people's freedom of belief brings great benefit to the peace of society. However, we also need religious belief not to become superstition, not to obstruct science, not to divide the nation, not to turn its back on the homeland.
Belief, fear and hope, if placed in the right place, will lead the way to ethics and wisdom.