toeing the fetid wallow of human depravity

This morning I saw on facebook a posting my little sister made, about the most horrible piece of "news" I have ever heard. Please stop reading now if you are not inclined to delve for a moment into the cesspool of sinfulness--I am using the most descriptive language I can to convey my seriousness. If you do keep reading, do so knowing I do not want to wallow in the depravity, I will just toe the outskirts, to consider the condition of my own heart.

What caught my eye in my sister's posting was her opinion--that the man who had committed the crime should be "let loose in a room with other parents so we can tar and feather his ass and watch him die a slow and painful death." Yikes! Ok, my sister is not usually this violent, although she is always this eloquent, and not knowing the story, I was momentarily shocked at her vehemence. So of course I then clicked on the news video link to see what the man had done to deserve it.

While geting my headphones plugged in (having a feeling what to come was for adult ears only) I missed the very beginning of the segment, so still did not know his crime when the news interviewers started sharing the "man/woman on the street" perspectives. A seemingly young, lower-income white woman said she thought the man should die for what he did. Then an older black father also gave the opinion that somebody should kill the man. And then the newscasters jumped back to the story itself and I finally figured out why all these different people are so angry. The 18-year-old man has been accused of raping and beating (to the point of cracking open the skull of) his daughter. Who is 8 days old.

And now I understand why everyone is so far having the same violent reaction. This is the very basest depth of sin, and so wrong on so many levels. The man clearly desired to hurt his child, he purposefully unleashed all his aggression on her, something so tiny and helpless and fragile. He did this when there were other people in the house, including the 15-year-old mother of the baby. We all have secret, depraved selves, the depths of sin to which we sometimes fanticize about going, out of anger or lonliness or sorrow or a desire to hurt as much as we have been hurt. This is not that. Because despite our emotional/psychological urge, we still have some hold on logic, on reality, and can imagine the consequence and choose not to go there. We can imagine the interpersonal backlash--what would they think of me? We certainly don't let our depravity out when we might be caught at it, and condemned for it. And because most of us are not truly as base as our worst thoughts, we don't act on them.

This guy acted on them. He indulged in them, not having the rationality to see his actions for what they were, or think he could get away with it. Or he knew what he was doing and did not care. Which scenario is worse? Which answer is least scary for his future in the world, where the rest of us live too? How do we as a society respond, both to the act and the need to ensure the act is not repeated? I found myself at the exact same place as my sister and the persons on the street--I think if he is found guilty then he should be killed, and quickly. I am not saying I completely approve of capital punishment. But I do believe there are, and must be, fitting occassions for it. I cannot see how would it really be a better, just solution to put him in jail for life, where, yes, he might be completely rehabilitated and might even find his way out of his psychosis of sin, praise Jesus--but where he might even more easily sink further into the evil mire of his soul because of his enviroment, the result of the prison sentence given out of "mercy" that only gives him greater loss of selfhood, perspective, and connection with the real.



Oddly enough, this morning I had a song whispering in my mind, out of the blue, and it is a fitting companion to that first story. The song is "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." by the brilliant Sufjan Stevens. The title of the song prepares you for its subject matter, but not its emotional honesty. The song is gentle, so sad, and Sufjan's quiet keening evokes perfectly how I think God must feel when He watches us hurting and being hurt, hating and being hated. Sufjan is not blithely demonizing Gacy, although Gacy's demons are clear in Sufjan's lyrics. Instead, he takes the listener into the very moment of betrayal, of innocence struck down by a perverted pretense of innocence. It is a disturbing song, to say the least, and one I have only just now listened to for the third time ever. To listen to it feels like willingly, willfully entering with John Wayne Gacy. Jr. into his secret depravity, those moment of despair and mockery and torture and stillness.

I usually choose not to go there. But I am glad Sufjan Stevens went there. He has purpose for drawing the listener in not just to the facts, but to the ugly moment. He wants us to imagine Gacy's purposefullness, his forethought, how he followed some twisted script of his own imagining and killed, and killed again. How he chose to act upon his evil urges, how he enjoyed it, how he could not forever hide his true nature or his sins, however whitewashed and painted over and buried over they were. How our own secret, depraved selves are no better or worse than his. How he did not deserve the wages of death any more than you or I do. As Sufjan says in the lines of the song: "In my best behavior I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid."

The bottom line of salvation is this: that I am as capable of as much depravity and evil as these men, that I am as unfit and unworthy of the presence of the Lord of the Heavens and Earth. That it took nothing less than God sacrificing himself, killing a living piece of his own infinite being, to make it possible for me to stand in His presence. To be in relationship with Him. To accept his love and to love Him back by loving others in His name. There is no depth to which we can sink where He is not, and from where He cannot rescue us. And that is the other aspect of Sufjan's song--that not only we are with Gacy at that moment, but God is there too. The One who made Gacy, who gave him the freedom to choose love or death, who grieves at the hurt, the hurt--He is there. He sees, He knows. He brings to justice, and He redeems, even if we do not see how. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, or hide us from his wrath.

So where does this leave me? Still thinking that first man deserves death (which he will not get, at least not at the hands of the courts, as the story said his crime is being considered a sexual assault). But is that ok for me to think, to want? Where is my own heart this week? What secret lusts and rages am I indulging in? Ok, honestly, none that seem at all in the same league as these other examples. But is that the way it looks to God? Sin is sin, and there is death in my heart for sure--just more of the musty, mousy kind of ancient grumblings and petty tyrranies.

If you made it all the way to the end here of my wanderings, I thank you. My heart is so sick over these things, and other sad, bad things happening all over the world. Sometimes I keep it all tuned out, and sometimes it forces its way into my mind and then I wonder what God wants me to think about it, how He wants me to use it for some good. So writing all this helped me think and start to process.