TRUST ME - THIS IS A KILLER

Yes . . . It’s a guilty pleasure . . .

 

I will admit that I watch “Dexter.”  For those unfamiliar with this show: it is the story of a mass murderer trying to live a normal life – except for those pesky murders.

 

For those familiar with the show: Don’t worry.  I will not be giving anything away.  I’m only on season three. 

 

Now, let me say from the start that much of the show is reprehensible.  That is the great thing about Netflicks: the “ff” button.  I do not recommend the show.  That being said if one pays attention carefully (at least in the three seasons that I have seen) they do grapple with lots of hot button issues concerning life, love, the role of faith, the dignity (or lack thereof) of the human person and so forth.  I rarely agree with the title character no matter how sympathetic they try to make him with swelling music, kind words, and someone saying to him, “This is the right thing.”

 

Dexter supposedly is unable to have feelings; particularly complicated feelings such as love.  He works hard then trying to figure what to do to express love to those close to him and make them feel love.  It is a radical decision for the other with little consolation to himself.  Inside his head he is saying, “This is all fake.  If they only knew I don’t know a thing about love.”  From a spiritual standpoint he is in the deepest throws of love.  If he acted lovingly toward those for whom he had great feelings of love, big whoop.  As Scriptures says, “even the pagans do the same.”  But he overcomes his deficit to love mightily.  His is probably the purest love in the show. 

 

Well, except for those murders.

 

That is the part of the show that peaks my interested.  The producers go through great lengths to make Dexter a lovable character.  And he had a code by which he lives; he will only kill those who kill and have escaped responsibility for their murders and who will most likely kill again.  So if you would become friends with Dexter, you most likely would never experience the dark side of him that “needs” to kill.  You would only know this great guy.

 

Think of that for a moment.  Allow Dexter to not be safely on the other side of the screen.  Suppose he was a true friend of yours and you know about his propensity for snuffing out life.  Could you be his friend and allow him to live his life as he allows you to live yours?  Though a bit odd and maybe a tich distant, he is thoughtful, friendly, pleasant, helpful, and fiercely loyal.  And really, he only takes the life of those many would say “deserve to die.”  Some would day that he is making the world a better place.

 

But he is in your living room having a beer with you and you can sense that you about to have a severe disagreement about something.  Though he says he would never turn his butchery on you, do you completely trust him?  Can you?  Would you not have some fear that the line that separates the “worthies” from the “worthless” might slip – maybe even for just a moment – and in a moment of passion you would become a victim instead of one of the protected class?

 

I submit that this is a wonderful analogy for our modern state which Pope Benedict calls a throw away culture.  The list grows of people we can discard – that are on the wrong side of the line.  This week was a story that there are more people on death row in Ohio than in a long time.  There is physician assisted suicides, euthanasia, abortion, and now we are on the verge of federal mandates forcing churches to be direct agents in actions they believe to be violations of human dignity.  There are questions about how we treat the poor, the insane, the refugee, the addict, the ignorant, the disenfranchised, and even the criminal. 

 

For every person added to this list of undeserving of life, the line that separates each of us from the undesirables creeps up.  It may seem a far distance away, but it is only an accident, a false accusation, or change in government away.  Many priests talk about the future and wonder if we will now end up in jail some day for teaching something that has been a part of our core beliefs for 2,000 years.

 

It’s the Dexter effect.

 

And it makes me wonder.

GUEST BLOGGER: CHESTERETTA

The staff of Adam's Ale has just returned from their concert tour in Italy but thanks to CK, a regular contributor to this blog we (I) can have one more day to get over jet lag because CK had graciously provided today's blog for just such an event.  If you enjoy her writing I highly recommend that you check out the links to more of her writing.  Or of you REALY dissagree with what she says, I highly recommend that you check out the links to more of her writing.

A few months ago I asked a friend to read something I wrote defending the teachings of the Catholic Church. An argument ensued that was more about my snotty attitude than the subject at hand, and my friend blew his stack and accused me of being closed-minded and orthodox. He explained (with no sense of irony) that he was open-minded and that is why I was to never again present him with ideas he didn’t like.

I was being a bit of a jerk that day, and I don’t mind if he’s mad at me, but I do mind if my bad example has soured him on the faith. I have no intention of broaching church-y subjects with him unless he invites me, but if I had a chance to defend orthodoxy I would use a story he once told me as a sort of parable:

My friend was vacationing on a Caribbean island. One afternoon, while walking on the beach, he saw an older man in the water far from shore calling for help, clearly on the verge of drowning. My friend is a poor swimmer, so he punched the nearest young man on the beach in the arm and snarled, “Do something!” Fortunately, someone came by on a jet ski and saved the poor old man’s life.

I would ask my friend if he remembered the man he punched on the beach. Perhaps that young man looked out at the old man who was drowning and said to himself, “Eh, is life worth living?” Or perhaps he asked himself, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Perhaps he thought the world is overpopulated and that it is good that a “useless eater” die. Or maybe he was a Darwinian who believed that natural selection was just weeding out a weak man and preventing him from passing on his inferior “bad swimmer” genes that are so detrimental to survival.

With one punch in the arm, my friend wordlessly declared, “Life is worth living! You are your brother’s keeper! Even if the world is overpopulated, murder by neglect is not the answer!  Forget Darwin! The lives of old men and bad swimmers are just as sacred as anyone else’s!” My friend is not as ambivalent on these subjects as he supposes. Not only did he demand that this young man accept his orthodoxy, he demanded it on the threat of violence!

My friend and I are both machine designers. He would never dream of building a machine out of butter and telling a customer that it would impose no load on the ground because we designed it to hover. This would be quite an unorthodox, open-minded engineering design, but it would also defy the laws of strength of materials, thermodynamics, and gravity. We know from basic human experience that such a design is doomed to failure.

Just as engineering demands “orthodoxy” to succeed, I have discovered by studying history, science, medicine, and many other subjects, that there is such a thing as truth – that reality demands orthodoxy. There really is a difference between right and wrong and it changes neither between individuals nor with the times, and when we stand by debating open-mindedly as to what that truth is, in the meantime people die (as in the drowning man example).

I have discovered that the Catholic Church just happens to have always been right when it has closed-mindedly warned us against ideas that oppose truth and goodness, as with its opposition to communism (and its ensuing millions of deaths), euthanasia (employed by the Nazis and now getting out of control in the Netherlands), and contraception (and its necessary backup plan, abortion). The Church throughout history has warned us in advance when an “unorthodox” idea is going to lead us down the path of misery and death. This has been the case too consistently for me to call it coincidence. I suppose someone could argue that the Church has just been lucky in her predictions – that sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut – but if that is the case, the Church is a magic squirrel.

I think my friend’s real beef is that he thinks orthodoxy is restrictive – that it limits the expanse of logic, inquiry, and creativity and that it leads to a life devoid of pleasure. I, to the contrary, have discovered from experience what Chesterton said so well: "People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."

FAIR NAMES TO FOUL DEEDS

In a comments section last week it was stated that a short series would begin today. With Thanksgiving tomorrow and a few other things on my plate, that will have to wait until next week. Fortunately CK, a regular guest blogger on Adam's Ale, sent an excellent post in so that I could have a little break today. Thank you CK! I hope everyone finds it as useful and well said as I did.

On November 6th, The City Club of Cleveland sponsored a talk by Barbara Coombs of the euthanasia advocacy group “Compassion and Choices”, formerly known as the Hemlock Society. In her speech Ms. Coombs claimed that her group promotes dignity and truth and religious groups, on the other hand, are in favor of dogma and guilt.

She told sad stories of patients who suffered because their end-of life wishes were ignored. But in all of her stories, the patients’ requests would have been acceptable to every major religious denomination, including the Catholic Church. None of them expressed the desire to poison themselves.

She claimed to be on the side of truth, but went on to say that poisoning yourself is not suicide, and a doctor prescribing poison is not euthanasia, it is “aid in dying”. (I recall a certain priest cleverly suggesting that if we call toxic waste “drinking water” we still should not dump it in our rivers.)

She claims that Churches and those with conservative values impose guilt and shame, but her group advocates for advanced directives that ask a patient if they want to be a “burden to their families” by extending their lives and or if they want to live lives that are “useless”. Who is causing guilt and shame here?

Contrary to what Ms. Coombs claimed, the Catholic Church does not demand that death “always be fought” (an extraordinary accusation to launch at a Church full of martyrs). In all of the examples she sites, the Church would have allowed the cessation of the extraordinary means she described. The Church even allows as much pain medication as necessary to eliminate pain, even if it shortens life, but doesn’t directly cause it. The Church only demands that you allow the patient to die of their disease or condition, not of poisoning or dehydration.

If someone in unbearable emotional pain tries to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, we don’t stand back and say, “Well, they are exercising their autonomy.” We run to their rescue. If they poisoned themselves instead of jumping off a bridge it still would not be a “death with dignity”. The Catholic Church tries to end the pain, not the person.

It is Christian churches who have true mercy on the dying by lavishing their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ with a love that makes many patients change their minds about suicide. The Catholic Church asserts their inherent dignity, even when the patient’s life is seemingly unproductive and full of suffering, like Christ on the cross. Euthanasia is the false mercy that releases the living from their duty to care for the dying and to suffer with them, the true meaning of empathy. It is my hope that Catholics succeed in showing the world who is really on the side of truth and dignity here.