"He took the blade. It was bright silver. He loved the way it glistened. It felt good in his hand. He cut deep into her chest again and again. He showed no emotion, no recognition of her humanity. She lay motionless, her life gone. He made no attempt to cover the body. Later that night over a beer he openly talked to a stranger in the bar about what he had done. The stranger felt ill.
What are we to make of this? Should someone have called 911? Should he have been ar-rested? Is this a Hannibal Lector story? It all depends. To make sense of it, this narrative fragment needs placing in a larger picture or frame of reference. We need to know more.
Now suppose I were to inform you that the setting earlier that night was a back alley late at night and that the woman had been alive but drunk when she entered it, then you would be entitled to think that this is a case for CSI. The man listening to the story in the bar ought to have called the police. However, if I were to say that instead of the alley, the setting earlier that night had been a CSI autopsy room, then the complexion of the event changes your reading of it. The man with the knife is no serial killer but instead a forensic scientist. Maybe he shouldn’t have talked about the details to a stranger over a beer. But if that was misconduct it was unprofessional, not criminal."
Continue reading Graham A. Cole's article called "DO CHRISTIANS HAVE A WORLDVIEW?"
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HT: Justin Taylor
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