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About That “Spark of Divinity”
I agree with Nancy Pelosi. There’s a “spark of divinity” in every person on earth, even the worst.
One reason I stopped listening to Mark Levin is that I couldn’t stand his habit of calling bad guys “cockroaches.” It reminded me too much of Rwanda. The frenzy of murder that overcame that country in 1994 was preceded by a radio campaign denouncing the Tutsis as cockroaches.
All mass-evil starts that way, doesn’t it? First, you dehumanize. You treat whole groups of people as something less than individuals created by God and endowed by Him with unalienable rights; you treat them as a menace. You make it okay to loathe them and heap contempt on them. You make it even seem like anyone who denounces and kills them is doing society a favor.
There’s an argument to be made that when we’re talking about actual, violent criminals, we are doing society a favor when we kill them. But, personally, I think even there—barring the case of stopping a crime-in-progress (like a school shooting)—we actually do more harm than good to society when we give the state power to put people to death.
I don’t mean that violent criminals don’t deserve death; they do. The fact that they’re persons—that they have reason and free will; that they’re made from love and for love—means that they’re capable of real evil. Animals aren’t. I think it was Shakespeare who wrote: “Lillies that fester smell worse than weeds.” The more dignified a being is on the ontological scale, the worse its corruption. But the power to kill is corrupting too.
On the whole, I think our society would be much better off if we were to recover the conviction that each and every person, even the worst, most destructive criminals, carries a spark of divinity. So, I’m with Nancy Pelosi on that point.
I propose that we all agree to stop dehumanizing M13 criminals by calling them “animals,” if the Democrats will agree to stop dehumanizing babies-in-the-womb by calling them “clumps of cells” and stop treating them in law as anything less than individuals who come with a spark of divinity and an unalienable right to life.
We’d be so much better and more humane a society.
Published in General
No doubt. But I’m not here concerned with their intent, only their words.
Because they’ve put themselves beyond God’s reach, not because God hasn’t tried…
Yes, yes. As WC stated. The reason to send the man or woman of God to the Gallows to give the sentenced one last opportunity to repent, and choose Christ’s redemptive atonement.
This is where we disagree. I think not executing a heinous murderer signals that we value the life of the murdered and the berieved less than the life of the murderer. It’s not sophisticated theology (I leave that for Prager, Feser, And Bessette), but kind of kindergarten fairness, which is where I think our society is. I don’t think the vast majority of people see keeping a heinous murderer alive as respecting the dignity of all human life. Just the opposite.
As for the state being given the power of the executioner, it is built-in to the justice system. Who else would be given the authority? I agree it should be limited to slam dunk heinous murderers, but I totally disagree it should be blanket prohibited.
I completely respect your view and the views of all the religious folks on this site. I believe in god with all my heart, but my belief lines up more with quantum entanglement than with historical religious faith. So perhaps it will not surprise you that I reject the proposition that every person has a “spark of the divine” or even that every human has a soul–though I’ve known many a four-legged who seemed to. And, while I agree it would be far better if we did not call each other dehumanizing names, I think intent is much more important than words themselves. Now, cockroach, as C.S. Lewis notes via Screwtape, is such a name, yet to me, it fits this group well. I am not someone who believes a “civil and humane society” can be established, though I try to treat people as if I did. I believe that such a society can only be the result of a majority of folks intending to do well.
Dogs need to stick together. We are divine too.
Yes. Animals have the “spark of the divine” too. I might have a harder time executing an innocent animal than a cold-blooded torturing human. I even have trouble swishing bugs.
Honestly this new-found concern makes me lose (even more) respect for the pious moralists who believe their fellow man capable of being easily incited by metaphorical language. This is warmed-over liberalism if you ask me.
But let’s suppose the theory is valid. Where was the outrage when innocent voters were called deplorable and worse “irredeemable” how about “wackobirds” “crazies”.
If the author of this post was actually concerned about this phenomenon ( and I would agree that if there is a near-universal din of opprobrium and invective hurled at one person that might push a fringe hater over the edge to be a hero/martyr) then what we hear about MrTrump daily from supposedly responsible people should be worthy of a reference or two.
By the way, Saint John of McCain wrote in his new book that those who disagreed with him on a certain issue could “ go to hell”.
Nicolae Ceaușescu probably had a spark of divinity. Discuss.
Yes, we disagree there. I think mere mortals should not arrogate to ourselves the power of life and death, except in cases of self defense or to protect the innocent (which include just war.)
It’s not like we’re choosing whom to kill: the victim or the perp. Rather, we’re deciding not to kill, ever, if we can avoid it, because to kill a human being is a terrible thing.
As I see it, in not killing as a punishment for crime, we’re
I could go on. None of it applies to cases where the only way to protect the innocent is to kill. I’m thinking, for instance, of the one portrayed in that Gregory Peck WW II movie whose name escapes me at the moment, where a spy is identified in the midst of a special ops team on a clandestine mission. They couldn’t keep her alive without jeopardizing the mission and themselves, so she had to be executed on the spot.
I am also open to execution in cases where, say, a terrorist or violent gang member is shown to be recruiting in jail. That we can’t tolerate.
The Guns of Navarone. That’s the movie I meant.
I can’t. I’m LOLing too much.
I don’t think incitement is exactly the worry. That example of Rwanda, though, sets one end of the spectrum powerfully. What’s the other end? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure, though, that the OP is not talking about extreme examples. I see the point – I don’t think it’s something to protest over, but we can notice a negative trend and say something about it without being hysterical about it one way or the other.
As far as other dehumanizing namecalling, I agree with katievs and I was against “deplorables”, “irredeemable”, “wackobirds”, “libtards”, and whatever else.
Probably. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t also be evil.
Well said. Not sure I agree, as I have always supported the death penalty in extreme cases, but these points are certainly ones that force me to reconsider.
This is just me, but usually anything that involves organized crime or totalitarian government is just sick. Acting otherwise isn’t helpful.
You make an important point, Leslie.
I want to say three things in reply.
By the way, I’m not claiming anyone is being hysterical here. Just that I don’t think katievs is making her case based on outrage or an immediate call to action in response.
I used to support the death penalty too. Staunchly. It was JP II’s encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, promulgated in 1995,that first gave me pause.
It’s not just that I’m Catholic; I’m also a student of the personalist philosophy he elaborated as an ethics professor in Soviet-dominated Poland and that undergirded his whole, great papacy.
That he opposed the death penalty made me think. I’ve since come to see his opposition as of a piece with the non-violent resistance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Solidarity Movement, both of which put a stop to terrible evils without bloodshed.
Maybe the best reason for wanting to keep the death penalty—at least the one that gives me most pause in my opposition—is that too-absolute a prohibition on killing might have the effect of rendering us effete. We might get so unaccustomed to violence that we can’t defend ourselves and the innocent forcefully enough.
Whittaker Chambers contrasted himself with his brother who killed himself and with other super humane and sensitive types by saying that he had in himself a saving fierceness—an ability to kill, if he must, in defense of the good.
I agree with him that we need that as a society. And abolition the death penalty might make that harder to maintain it.
On the other hand, it indirectly proves the point that laws and customs shape our convictions and influence our behavior.
So, on the whole, I think we would do best to uphold and teach that violence is justified only defensively.
Mock, if you like, but I think he did. I think every human person has it by virtue of being a person. It’s almost the definition of a person. It’s what distinguishes us from animals.
Nor is it some kind of outlandish, naive, way-out-there item of sentimentality. After “there is one God”, it’s the bedrock doctrine of the Judeo-Christian tradition on which our society is based and which accounts for its superiority over all others.
You can find it in the first chapters of the Bible. God “breathed his spirit” into Adam. He created man—male and female—”in His image and likeness.”
It’s the basis of the 10 commandments, and it’s the fundamental moral insight of the American founding. Also the Enlightenment, for any atheists out there who prefer to worship that.
Let’s look at the larger Rwandan context of “cockroaches”:
Clearly, use of the word was meant to make killing Tutsis easier… but the underlying dynamic was:
“Cockroaches” was a rhetorical device used as part of a rhetorical campaign to weaponize victimhood and weaponized victimhood is considerably upstream of “cockroaches.”
Can sociopathy be engendered and created this way? What is to be done?
I’m not sure I follow you here.
But, if I do, I would say that while using cockroaches as a deliberate tool for stirring up resentment and inciting murder is an extreme case, it still illustrates a dynamic that has lesser manifestations.
That Bible verse where Jesus says if you harbor anger in your heart toward your brother, you commit murder, isn’t just rhetoric. He’s pointing to a real psychological dynamic. Evil acts begin as evil attitudes and thoughts.
Obviously (I hope!) we don’t want to criminally prosecute thought crimes. But we can discourage (culturally) the kind of rhetoric that inclines our hearts toward contempt for others.
Four percent of the population has narcissistic personality disorder. Almost one in 20. Then throw in the sociopaths and the psychopaths.
There is almost no talking to a person with narcissistic personality disorder. Forget the others. What happens to a person that is in MS 13, or a Mexican cartel, the mafia, or totalitarian structures? What is to be done? Discuss.
Consider this: people with narcissistic personality disorder have to get good at faking like they care about people. They have to do this, to live with the personality disorder which is their objective.
No, it was, by definition, rhetoric: “Rhetoric is the art of discourse, wherein a writer or speaker strives to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.” We all have ideas and feelings which we resonate with especially well. An effective speaker is able to reach a wider audience than an ineffective one.
It is by no means clear that Jesus intended to impose legal penalties on you if “you harbor anger towards in your heart toward your brother.”
No question, but I read the verse as a call to self-examination; the “particular audience” of the definition of rhetoric was something like “people who are horrified (or who can be persuaded or induced to be horrified) by murder.” Unfortunately, there are people who, by some combination of nature and nurture, do not share that horror.
If the police officers who shot the Tsarnaev brothers were motivated by anger, even unrighteous anger and that anger was cold enough to help them shoot faster and straighter – then I’m glad they were angry. Perhaps it might have been better for the officers’ souls to do it more in sorrow than in anger, but if they weren’t in that place, thank G-d for their anger and I am grateful that they shouldered that burden when they were sworn in.
It is evident from Christian scriptures that not everyone was receptive to Jesus’ message. It is my understanding that in Christian theology this non-receptivity is ascribed to the influence of Satan; such phrases as “synagogue of Satan” suggest that this concept has been considered to be, er, Gospel truth in the case of Jews of Jesus’ time. The continuing recalcitrance of subsequent generations of Jews who failed to convert to Christianity was (and in some circles still is) seen as ipso facto proof of ongoing satanic influence.
[to be continued later]
I didn’t mean to mock. It was just amusing to me how RJ said it — “Discuss.”
I will concede, I’d have even more confidence in my position if our society was more Christian and more commonsensical than it is. But, I reject the idea that we’re going in the wrong direction because of the death penalty.
I said that in a funny way, but I really wonder how to think about these things. Where is the cut off? I know for a fact this economy rewards sociopaths. Their output is positive. You can find articles all over the place, but there are clearly a lot of sick (expletives) on this planet.
If Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™ are you a sociopath if you try to fit in and take advantage of it? What if that’s the best option? Some people have least worst options, like joining gangs. Where does it start? How does it stop? How much is Murray Rothbard really wrong about?