I love Sojourners!
An excellent article by Benjamin Corey reblogged from their website:
Our jails are overflowing, people are receiving life sentences for minor crimes under three strikes laws, racial disparities leave minority populations disproportionately represented in the incarcerated population, and we’re so obsessed with killing that we’re now using untested concoctions of drugs that recently took a condemned inmate more than 20 minutes to finally die.
Our system isn’t working.
It might surprise you however, to understand how we arrived at such a broken justice system.
We got here because of poor theology.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
Good article.
I grew up with an understanding that the Old Testament “God” was a wrathful, vengeful god, and Jesus was loving.
Now I am actually reading more, I find that is also totally untrue. We need to reread the OT with new eyes. And find how much God’s people knew that God loved them. And that repentance involved restoration, not punishment. So when you read the OT with this frame of reference you start to see that God’s anger was not at the sin, but at our continued pride in sinning.
Having said all that I am only just starting to get some clearer understanding of the relationship between repentance, sacrifice and atonement in the OT. And looking forward to learning more.
Absolutely. Studying Judaism and learning Hebrew gave me a heightened appreciation of Christianity’s rootedness in Judaism. The popular notion of “mean OT God” and “nice NT Jesus” is sloppy, untrue, and heretical by patristic standards.