It is August, and so the universe decrees that our papers should be full of skateboarding ducks, ludicrous name-changes and Victor Meldrew’s face in the stars.

And they are. After a year of relentless breaking news, domestic and international, the sun came out and the nation went cold turkey from scandal. For three days. But yesterday, the political blogger and professional controversialist Guido Fawkes came to all our rescue with a very un-silly story.

Guido is campaigning to bring back the death penalty. He’s launched an e-petition which, should it reach 100,000 signatories, will force Parliament to debate the issue. He wants to restore the death penalty for the murder of children and police officers when killed in the line of duty. The campaign has branded itself as ‘Restore Justice’.

This is a knotty issue. The evidence is bent in both directions to prove that the death penalty does or does not act as a deterrent. Capital punishment has always been a difficult issue for Christians. The bible has been used to support both sides of the argument. Archbishop Cranmer, another blogger, carefully weighs the evidence and finds that theologically at least, it is justified. So why do so many feel so troubled by the concept of it?

Perhaps it is because foreshortening a still-redeemable life seems a very dangerous undertaking, permissible only under conditions of the utmost wisdom, caution and objectivity. This campaign does not sound like a call for dispassionate justice, but retribution. Guido only wants to punish by death murderers of children and police. Is the life of an adult less valuable than that of a child? Does a killer of a traffic warden deserve death any less than that of a police woman? He might as well have added paedophiles to the list: these are people whose actions disgust us in a visceral way.

If Christian faith does anything, it should engender humility, an awareness of our own foolishness and fragility. Although in theory capital punishment may sometimes be the most just course of action, the level of knowledge required to make the decision to end a life is surely beyond us. When God commands us to not “repay evil for evil” and to leave revenge up to him, how can we be sure our actions are not equally evil, not motivated by a desire for revenge?

This is no utopian argument- awareness of our own ignorance should not paralyse us into inaction. On almost all issues we must make culture as we want it, fight for justice as we see it, aware that we’ll never get it completely right.

However, in matters such as these we must recognise the limited nature of our justice system. Whether you imprison someone for life, or end it, the parents of the murdered child may have sated their (completely understandable) desire for retribution, but they are not repaid. In the case of this most irrevocable of decisions, humility should hold sway. Finally, as one who believes in an ultimate source of perfect justice, I’d prefer to leave it in those hands.

Elizabeth Hunter is Director of Theos