What Jerry Sandusky did was a horror. If that was my boy who came home with wet hair, and had been brutalized in that way, I am not confident that I would be able to restrain myself from calmly killing Sandusky in the middle of the night. Slowly. I am not trying to be funny. If that were my son--God help him.
Now--brothers and sisters--that horror we feel is right. The thirst for personally executed revenge is not right. But the revulsion, and thirst for justice, is right. We would be wrong not to feel it.
But the horror we feel over this is not only appropriate, it is also a glimpse into the horror of our own sin. I am not leveling out all sins. Some are worse than others. But the revulsion, the rage, that we rightly feel toward that sick man is a picture of the repulsiveness of our own sick rebellion against an infinitely beautiful One, and the rage he would be right to direct toward us.
That desire for an hour, just one hour, with Sandusky in a sealed off room with nowhere for him to run, and the rage that I would like to pour out on him, is a glimmer of the rage that ought to be poured out on me by my Creator. And was poured out on his Son.
I am more like Sandusky than different from him.
God help me.
He did.
I appreciate you writing this very real, heart-felt perspective. Thank you for your openness. We all need this refreshing reminder of feeling the horror, wanting justice, and recognizing our own true sinfulness.
ReplyDeleteI think we can get a related glimpse into the horror of our sin by considering the role of those who knew about Sandusky's actions. Though the details are not all out yet and it might be right to attribute at least some of the blame to a failure of a bureaucratic system, it seems apparent that there was some covering up that occurred. When I think about the number of people who were apparently aware of this and consider how none of them took appropriate steps to stop it, it makes me wonder if this is less a comment on those specific individuals and more on the human problem. It makes me ask myself if, given a particular set of circumstances, I might do the same. I'm reminded of the book Ordinary Men about men who committed atrocities under Hitler, but I digress.
ReplyDeleteAll that to say, I thought your last three sentences were important and powerful. Thanks!
Good post, Dane. This tragedy has really stirred me, and you are so right to point out our own brokenness. I left Wheaton in '07 to do my internship in California, and part of my duties included working with sex offenders. 4+ years later, and now I'm licensed as a psychologist here and still working with the offenders. I hate it. I want to do something else. But I know God brought me here, and I can say without hesitation that the offenders are not very different from any of us. They got caught up in the same pattern laid out in James 1:14-15. I am overwhelmed with the knowledge that, indeed, "mercy triumphs over judgement."
ReplyDelete