This is an update to an earlier JMBzine post
This last week I’ve been thinking a lot about the murder of Jamie Rose Bolin that has been on the news so much here locally. About 6 or 7 years ago, I would have dismissed this crime as the sick act of an evil evil human being who doesn’t deserve to live, but today it just isn’t that simple.
I must believe that Kevin Underwood (the alleged murderer) is a human being made in the image of God. I do not understand how any person could commit such a horrendous and unfathomable crime, but I don’t think this lack of understanding is a reason to deny even this man’s humanity.
Tonight though when thinking about this and the enigma of it all, I was reminded of a song by Sufjan Stevens, ” “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” (you can hear it for free at NPR.org)
The song tells the story of the notorious serial killer (click here to read the Wikipedia article about him), but then closes with what some might say is crazy, but I think is better a realization that all human beings have a dark side and are capable of doing evil…
. . . And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid
I know that for Sufjan (who I think identifies himself as a Christian), this paragraph also says that even those who commit the most horrible of crimes are not pure evil (just as those of who don’t commit such crimes are not pure good), and the truth is that we as human beings have more in common with each other than we might think.
So, what does all of this mean? You got me. I guess I’m just trying to make sense of all of the conflicting emotions I’ve felt in hearing about this case.
There’s just too much to fathom. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the father of Jamie (this NewsOK story is so horribly sad in telling of the father’s grief) with that gaping hole in your heart. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be her classmate or her teacher. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the family of Kevin either. It all is just too much to understand, and I frankly am angry with God that He let it happen. I know, I know, there’s a lot of ways to explain evil (C.S. Lewis did a pretty good job of it), but all of the explanations just seem like crappy excuses to be able to sleep peacefully at night.
After everything else is stripped away, the question remains: What is the Christian response to evil?
As human beings we find the commands of Jesus — forgive seventy times seven, bless them that curse you and pray for them who despitefully use you, judge not, etc, — to be repellant, if not impossible. Those commands, if nothing else, must be of Divine origin. Such humanly irrational expectations could never rise in a purely human heart.
The choice of evil seems to be the price we pay for the gift of free will. I heard an example lately of a child who had destroyed an expensive wrist watch. Someone said it was the fault of the parent for letting the child have the watch, but that is as far as the parent was culpable. It was the child who was destructive, not the parent.
To the extent that God is responsible, his culpability ends when he allows free will. We can only argue that he should not do so because as a creation we are not yet ready to use that gift responsibly.
As a Christian, my response to such cases is that we must isolate the evil for the protection of others and pray for an individual remedy.
I heard this morning that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging the insanity defense. They will be making a determination, not on the efficacy of the defense, but on whether the question should be decided at the state level or made a federal issue. That strikes me as a legal punt, but it may be a step forward.
When the decision was made several years ago to empty state mental hospitals, there should have been a concurrent commitment to state-supported after-care. Unfortunately that did not happen, and by allowing mentally ill people to “choose” not to take their meds, allowing them to become the human wreckage that we see among the homeless and destitute, the state threw off one of its most compelling responsibilities, providing for the common welfare.
Great thoughts. It is a difficult thing to consider.
I’m curious about your worldview with regards to the existence, or not, of the devil. Are your fairly similar to traditional Christian beliefs or are they somewhere else. This complaint about the world that you seem to have very closely resembles the age-old “problem of evil” that is often seen in theology and phil. of religion.
I was in a course last year over the philosophy of religion. There were several excellent articles over the problem of evil by some very good philosophers that you might be interested in. I might list off some of them to you if I can find the book. Then maybe you can locate the articles through a library reserve or online. If you haven’t read them in your bible college days, they might be worth a look.
JMB:
Here are a couple of good ones. The first I like more than the second and it seems very “on the money” when it comes to addressing your recent concerns, but both are very much worth a look if you have not seen them before. Either way, they are very smart and thought-provoking articles.
William P. Alston, “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition”
(located this one in OSU’s J-store online — check your jmbzine.com email for the .pdf)
Eleanor Stump, “The Mirror of Evil,”
http://www.faithquest.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=78
I’m not sure if the question regarding the Devil was directed at me or someone else, but in my case I must plead being agnostic. As far as I am concerned the question is not relevant. I do not trouble myself with the origin of evil any more than the origin of gravity. I am able simply to accept that it is real, regardless of where it comes from, and my job is to act responsibly as far as I can determine what that means. I saw a tract once for young people with the most compelling title: If the Devil made you do it, you blew it! I don’t know what was in the tract, but the title alone was all the lesson I needed. Pointing a finger at a Devil is no different, in my estimation, than blaming a parent, or the government or twinkies or (lately) McDonalds or the allignment of the moon and stars. In the end each individual must be accoutable for what he does. Sadly, even the best of good intentions cannot protect us from the consequences of our actions. How many times have I tried to intervene in a situation only to make things worse?
And all that still doesn’t address the question of how a deliberate LACK of action resulting in evil plays into our culpability, both individually and collectively. (That, incidentally — the “collective” part — was part of my choice to have my draft status changed to conscientious objector years ago. As an individual I might or might not be obliged to kill someone, either to protect myself or someone else, but in no case could I knowingly place myself under otders to kill with the decision being made by someone else. And when later I saw the level of moral carelessness and lack of remorse typical of the average Army sergeant I knew I had made the right decision.) “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” and all that…