By Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach
We all owe a debt of
gratitude to Dr. William
Petit who, in his
extreme hour of grief, taught us a valuable lesson about the nature of evil,
forgiveness, and the problem of suffering.
No, not what you
would expect. In speaking of the man convicted of killing his wife and two
daughters, Petit did not deliver an amoral, slobbering speech about forgiving
his wife and daughters' murderer and how all suffering teaches us some valuable
lesson, enriching us in the process. On the contrary, he said that the
murderer deserved his
sentence of death and that the loss of his family would
leave a gaping hole in his heart that would never close.
What a relief.
Finally someone who does not excuse gross evil, who refuses to forgive monstrous
acts of human cruelty, and who says that suffering is not only not redeeming but
leaves a permanent wound that never heals.
The facts of the
case are by now well known. On Nov. 8, 2010, Steven Hayes was convicted of
murdering Petit's wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit and received the death penalty. The
jury found him guilty for his crimes in a horrific home invasion in
Tuesday, on the
courthouse steps Dr. William Petit, who was savagely beaten in the attack but
survived, said this: "We thank the jury for their diligence and consideration.
We feel that it was an appropriate verdict. There is some relief, but my family
is still gone. It doesn't bring them back. It doesn't bring back the home that
we had."
He spoke eloquently
of how, although some of the jagged edges of his heart would smooth over
slightly with time, the essential hole in his heart and
soul would never close. "It's helpful that justice has been served with an
appropriate verdict," he said. "I don't think there's ever closure. I think
whoever came up with that concept is an imbecile... And I think many of you know
it who have lost a parent or a child or a friend,
there's never closure. There's a hole, you know. The way I've imagined it
straight through, it's a hole with jagged edges and over time the edges may
smooth out a little bit, but the hole in your heart and the hole in your soul is
still there. So there's never closure. I was very much insulted when people
asked me last year that if the death penalty were rendered would that somehow
give me closure. Absolutely not. You know, this is not
about revenge."
Over the past few
years many of us have lost our moral bearings on the subject of evil and human
suffering. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters take Jesus' teachings about
forgiving our enemies completely out of context. Jesus said to forgive your
enemies. Your enemy is the guy who steals your parking space. But God's enemies
are men who can rape and slaughter two young women and their mother and torture
them before doing so. In Ecclesiastes King Solomon famously says "there is a time to love and a time to hate." This is that time. We
must love the Petit family and hate their murderers.
Yes, hatred is a valid emotion when directed at the truly
evil.
No, I do not believe
in revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of evil compels us to
fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our
disposal.
When I lived in
England during some of the worst years of the Northern Ireland troubles I once
heard a man whose father was killed by the IRA for no reason other than he was a
Protestant immediately say that as a Christian he is compelled to love his
father's murderers. He said he forgave them for killing his father. But no human
being, even the man's son, can confer such forgiveness. The act of taking a
human life is a crime against God who created life and endowed it with infinite
worth. And such acts of misguided magnanimity and forgiveness make a mockery of
human love and a shambles of human justice. Murder in cold blood dare not be
forgiven. Murderers who have erased the image of God from their countenance
through savage acts of brutality have removed themselves from the human family.
They are not our brothers and we are under no obligation to love them. Indeed,
any love we have in our hearts must be directed at the victims of violence
rather than at their culprits.
Yes, Jesus said
'turn the other cheek.' But is anyone so morally lost as to suggest that he
meant if someone rapes your wife, give him your daughter to rape as well? Of
course, what Jesus meant was to forgive the petty slights that people enact
against you. If a friend pretends not to notice you at a party, forgive them. If
your husband loses his temper and yells, yes he must apologize. But be quick to
forgive. But Jesus never meant that we should not dedicate ourselves to fighting
evil.
Psalm 97 makes it
clear. "Let those who love the Lord hate evil." It's
repeated again in Proverbs Chap 8: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Yes,
hatred has its place, but only under a single condition that was met in the
terrible Petit murders: the human confrontation with
extreme evil.
Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach heads This World: The Values Network, an organization dedicated to
promoting universal Jewish values to heal