A friend of mine recently was given eight consecutive life sentences.
He was basically told to rot in prison until he died. As the prosecutor put it: “We should make sure he never, ever sees outside a prison cell again.” In response to my friend’s desire to become a Christian minister, the judge said, “You can minister, but you’re going to do it from the inside of a cell.”
My friend’s attorney asked that the life sentences be arranged in such a way that there is the possibility that he could theoretically get paroled in 75 years, at the age of 112. The judge thought even that was too short a term; the request was denied.
A couple of weeks later, my friend asked to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming that he had been denied right to counsel. The lawyers battled it out for the better part of an hour, questioning four witnesses, including my friend. The judge gave his ruling with an anti-climactic “I’ll deny it.” My friend was dispatched back to jail.
I recount this not to besmirch the criminal justice system, though Lord knows it isn’t perfect. I agree with the rulings. My friend richly deserves every day in jail he received. One life sentence isn’t enough. What he did was absolutely beyond the pale; it was so terrible even other criminals don’t want anything to do with men like him.
My friend sexually abused his own daughter.
I trusted this man implicitly. His number was on the emergency call list that my kids had in case something bad happened. We sent the children to his house at least weekly. I’ve fed his children meals, sent them to the corner, and was generally a good friend. I was glad that our families were close enough that we could trust each other with our children.
By all rights, I should hate this man. But I don’t.
I feel betrayed. I resent having to ask my 11-year-old daughter if he’d ever done anything to her (he didn’t), as well as the tension he’s created in my marriage as my wife wants to become overprotective of the kids. I became almost physically ill at the way he blamed his victim. I was angry when his parents (perhaps understandably) tried to minimize his crimes. Even now, more than a day after his latest hearing, I’m fighting a migraine—my first.
But I can’t hate him.
It would be easier if I could. I visited him in county lockup and listened for half an hour to him blather on about how he’s rediscovered God and going to jail in the fulfillment of a lifelong plan God has had for him to minister to bad guys. The worst part was when he told me that he read the story of Joseph and Potiphar in the Bible—and was convinced by it that he would only be in jail for two years. After I left, I vented to a mutual friend since my wife is so distressed by this that I shouldn’t vent to her. But I was so shaken that when I got home I vented to her anyway.
Part of the reason I can’t hate him is the fact that what he did is totally incongruous with my good friend and neighbor. Slightly annoying know-it-alls you spend New Year’s Eve with don’t hurt their children. Guys who are so bad with money you let him mow your yard for 20 bucks every other week don’t hurt their children.
When I think of my friend, I mostly think of the slightly annoying know-it-all, not the monster. As a result, most of what I’ve felt has been a sort of disgusted calm.
I saw him at his sentencing hearing. He looked like the man I’d always known: calm and unshaven. He could just as easily been pushing his mower across my yard. We weren’t allowed to talk to the prisoners in the courtroom, so I prayed.
I prayed and meditated. I didn’t know what else to do.
My stomach turned because in my prayer, I got a mental image of what he did to his poor daughter.
Growing up Catholic, I was only rarely bothered by the Problem of Evil. I never agreed with C.S. Lewis when he said that the Problem of Evil is only a problem after you become a Christian. St. Augustine said that a good God is so good that He can bring good even out of evil, and that idea has always worked for me. The goodness of God is such that He can turn evil actions inside out.
As an adult, this belief bore fruit in the realization that Jesus Christ identifies with helpless victims. When He died on the cross, He was a helpless victim too. We do not have a God “who is unable to sympathize” with us. When we are harmed unjustly—God is there suffering with us.
This belief even allows us to participate in our own salvation. St. Paul tells us,“I rejoice in my sufferings for by my sufferings I fulfill what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ.”
Unjust suffering, in other words, can make us godlike. When this poor girl was being hurt, God was allowing Himself to be hurt alongside her. This is radical identification with the innocent.
The idea that God would degrade Himself in this way may be scandalous to some—or even blasphemous. But I have always taken it for granted.
I couldn’t get this mental image out of my head while I was meditating, but the idea that God suffered with this little girl provided a measure of comfort.
But the next thought was horrifying.
Christ identified with the perpetrator as well—my friend, my annoying neighbor, this monster.
St. Paul says elsewhere, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.” That’s supposed to be comforting, but at the time it was like ice water in my veins. I’m comfortable—maybe too comfortable—with worshipping a God who identifies with victims. But I want no part of a God who also identifies with evil men. The very idea is revolting.
But that’s the foundational idea of Christianity.
Maybe I have a constitution that makes me better than most at compartmentalizing the evil deeds of people I like. That’s probably the origin of the smug superiority I sometimes feel toward “tough-on-crime” types. But Christianity demands that I go further. It requires me to look in the eyes of my friend and see—not a friend, not a neighbor, not a monster—but Jesus Christ.
I can’t do that. It would be easier to hate him
.
I bristled when speaking with the Protestant former prison chaplain. He preached at me over the phone until my cell battery died. He said, “Jesus already paid it all! And our friend knows God and has already gotten his forgiveness.” I wanted to scream at him, “Don’t you know what this man did?! How can God forgive this?”
Not that I haven’t tried to see Christ in my friend. I recently got irritated with my parents. When I told them that I was visiting my friend in jail, they called it an “act of charity.” It’s not an act of charity, I thought. It’s an act of justice. I was going to the jail to visit Jesus Christ. Doesn’t Jesus deserve to be visited?
But even then—I was thinking selfishly, like I was doing something heroic by visiting him. I wasn’t. Visiting him is an acknowledgement that I’m weak too. The only thing that separates him from me is the fact that the sins I want to commit aren’t as bad. My sins are socially acceptable, maybe even socially praiseworthy.
My sexual appetites are normal, but that doesn’t make me better than my friend. It just makes me lucky.
If I wrote off my friend and mentally consigned him to hell, I would be no better than he. I would be treating someone as something other than the sacred image of God—just like he did.
If there is no hope for him, then salvation is determined by luck of the draw on what you’re tempted to do. There is no justice in that.
So I must look at my friend—this vile human being—and see Jesus Christ. I can’t do that yet.
But I can’t hate him either. His hope is my hope. His hope is his victim’s hope. God—in His cruel love—has put all of us in this process together.
And just when I want to turn that realization into hatred of God Himself, I remember that He’s here too—struggling and suffering to figure it out with us.
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