December 31, 2013
Senseless
A homeless man living under a bridge in a
neighboring community was asleep in his sleeping bag when he was attacked and repeatedly
stabbed. Sometime later the attacker returned to the scene of the crime and
found his victim still breathing. He then used a rock to bash in the man’s head
before throwing him into the river to finish the deed. The murderer flippantly
confessed to his family that he thought he could get away with it and there was
a thrill to the act. He told one of his friends that the bum woke up during the
attack asking, “Why brother, why?” So senseless, and yet it brings to mind the
first murder recorded in the Bible, the story of brothers Cain and Abel. Abel’s
offering to God was acceptable, but Cain’s was lacking. In anger Cain took his
brother out into a field and killed him; you can almost hear Abel asking “Why
brother, why?” The Lord stepped in to confront the murderer Abel and said,
“What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the
ground.” (Gen 4:10 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I recently read a book titled: The Science of Evil; On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, by Simon Baron-Cohen. The book’s thesis, of course, was quite simple. Evil is the lack of empathy, and the more empathy is lacking, the worse is the evil. While reading this, I kept wondering why the author was spending an entire book on such a narrow idea.
-----To think that this murderer actually thought there was a thrill to the act of stabbing such a pitiable fellow and beating in his head! Surely it could only happen by dismissing all thought of the other person’s feelings.
-----Or so it would seem. Maybe the thrill was completely relating to the horror his victim was feeling and knowing he himself was the cause of such atrocity. The mind is very much like an old vinyl album - easily warped and plays terrible thereafter. Thrill and happiness and desire and such are merely emotions. Most of us start life with a bit of pre-wiring connecting goodness to good emotions and badness to bad ones. But the more life goes on, watch out!
-----The mind looking to blame others, absolve self, deny right, and validate wrong can cross-wire a lot of good and bad amongst feelings and ideas. Cross-wiring is easy. Several times I’ve faced painful events that just had to be. I was able to convince myself that the pain would feel good because it would be caused by good needing to be done. And I was amazed at how good the pain actually felt. The same principle works the other way around. In my deeply depressed states, I relished the pain of depression. It was the radiant splendor of all the rotten things people had done to me and all the ways they had held me down and kept me from being what I could be. It was all I had; I thought. I fear for my loved ones at how easily a good soul can get messed up by a little careless thinking or feeling.
-----In two different books on the psychology of deceit I finally read verification of a theorem I proposed when boxing my way out of manic-depression: Everybody lies. Everybody. We’ve heard that often in such sayings as the guy who claims he never lies just lied. But my next theorem was that we do not take the former theorem to heart as much as we should. Most of us are pretty good at squeezing the truth out of ourselves for serving to another. And most of us are pretty good at staying the center of our conscious minds upon the truths we know. Yet our deceit stirs at the edges of consciousness where thoughts and feelings begin to blur into all of the shadowy, subconscious murmurings. Even high degrees of empathy for others will not waylay the last of evil, for if the mind has tricked itself into believing bad things are good, empathy will be delighted to serve it to others.
-----As simple as was Mr. Baron-Cohen’s book, even more simple and profound was Jesus’ proclamation, “I am the way, the life, and the truth.” The warm weight of applied truth slowly straightens warped albums. For while you choose truth, the way you're walking is toward Christ, and so you live guilt absolution. The warping pressures to find and cast blame die. And although the last of deceit will not press out of us until we’ve laid down these faulty bodies, in the meantime, the further into truth we venture the more our empathies serve up purity.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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