I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Avoiding a Purpose Driven cliché in the title…
April 21, 2005
I normally don’t read Ann Coulter. As much of a rabid conservative as I (least among many others) consider myself to be, I find her a little roo far-right for my liking. That and her remark concerning Arab nations about killing their leaders and converting the people (implication: by force - how very Christian) to Christianity leaves a bad taste in this Catholic’s mouth. And at the end of the article I am about to cite, she’s still on about that exact topic, for reasons which mystify me. C’est la vie, I suppose.
However, one of her more recent articles did appeal to me, because it brought to light a touching story concerning an interesting and fabulous book that I once had the privelege of reading as part of a study group out of my parish (for those who are interested, that would be St. Joseph’s College Chapel on the University of Alberta campus). That book would be "The Purpose Driven Life" by Pastor Rick Warren, and it’s a rather fun and interesting read if you, like me, are looking for some spiritual guidance and a bit of help discerning what possible reason could justify your continued existence on this planet.
The relevant text of Ms. Coulter’s article is as follows:
I’ll leave it to the Catholics to explain the theological details, but we have a beautiful pair of bookmarks to the exact same incident illustrating women’s special skills and deficits. The escape and capture of Brian Nichols shows women playing roles they should not (escorting dangerous criminals) and women playing roles they do best (making men better people).
Nichols’ murderous rampage began when he took the gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother who was his sole guard at the Fulton County Courthouse. It ended when an otherwise unremarkable 26-year-old woman appealed to the Christian conscience of this same violent killer holding her hostage.
At 2 o’clock early one Saturday morning, Ashley Smith went out for cigarettes while unpacking her new apartment, yet another victory for tobacco pleasure. Returning from the store, Smith was grabbed by a man at her front door, who put a gun in her side and told her not to scream. He asked if she knew who he was. When he removed his baseball cap, she saw it was Nichols, the dangerous fugitive all over television who had escaped custody during his rape trial and had killed four people the previous day.
In Smith’s apartment, Nichols bound Smith’s feet and hands and put her in the bathtub. Later, at Smith’s request, Nichols allowed her to hop from the bathroom into the bedroom, where she began talking to him.
In short order, Smith was reading aloud to Nichols from the Christian book The Purpose-Driven Life–in direct violation of his constitutional right to never hear any reference to God, in public or private, for any purpose, ever, ever, ever! For more on this right, go to the "People for the American Way" website.
After reading the first paragraph of Chapter 33 aloud, about serving God by serving others, Nichols–the man pundits were calling an "animal"–asked her to read it again.
Nichols listened to the passage again and responded by telling Smith he was already dead, saying, "Look at my eyes." But Smith looked and told him God had a purpose for him, perhaps to minister to other lost souls in prison. Smith read to Nichols some more, both from the Purpose book and from another popular book that’s been dropped from all news accounts of this incident: the New Testament. (In the Hollywood version, Smith will be reading from the Koran.)
Smith knew all about Nichols’ violent depredations from television. Yet she saw him not as a monster, but as one of God’s creatures. Most Christians–most people–have trouble seeing the humanity of people who take our parking spots. Smith could see God’s hand in a multiple murderer holding her hostage. By showing him genuine Christian love, Smith turned Nichols from a beast to a brother in Christ. This phenomenon, utterly unknown to liberals, is what’s known as a "miracle." Top that, Paul Krugman!
Nichols told Smith she was "an angel sent from God," calling her "his sister" and himself her "brother in Christ." Nichols said he had come to Smith’s home for a reason, in Smith’s words, that "he was lost and God led him right to me to tell him that he had hurt a lot of people."
This trampling of our Constitution–I mean this conversation–lasted long into the night. They watched Nichols’ shooting people on television. Nichols said he couldn’t believe he was that man. In the morning, Smith made Nichols eggs and pancakes for breakfast. Then she walked out of the apartment to pick up her daughter and to call 911. The last thing Nichols said as Smith was leaving was to say hello to her daughter for him. When the police arrived, Nichols surrendered without incident, an utterly transformed human being.
So there you have it, really, and I don’t think I need to say any more on the subject - at least not in the way of analysis. What you have there is a shattering and powerful testimony to the power of faith. And not only the power of faith to provide one woman with the courage to stand up to an apparently violent man who, arguably, was one of the most wanted men in the United States at the time she met him. It is also a testament to the power of faith that the simple love shown by a single person in a situation where many would have resorted to spite, defiance, and/or pleading for mercy could so touch the heart of a man who had already ended four lives only a short while before that he would (a) allow Ashley Smith to leave the apartment (remember, she was his hostage!) and (b) surrender to the police without violence, without struggle.
In fact, as a report from CNN has it, he was so eager to surrender that he waved a white shirt as a makeshift flag. I find it rather unsurprising that nowhere in the article is mention made of the reason that Brian Nichols gave himself up so readily. The role of "The Purpose Driven Life" is downplayed in this later article but is given more detailed coverage here and here (respectively, interviews with Ashley Smith and Rick Warren, although the Rick Warren interview is from last November and does not specifically relate to this incident). More information can be obtained from the website of "The Purpose Driven Life", and in particular this article hosted there. You can also read the Chapter 33, the chapter Ashley Smith read from, online here.
It’s so funny. I had a friend recently remark to me that he would convert to Christianity if they replaced the bread and wine with Doritos and Kool-aid (as much as I like Bob the Angry Flower, I think too much is unhealthy for a person), and I can’t help but agree with Coulter again in her remarks that a secular person such as him, like many of my acquaintences, would be stone-cold dead by Nichols’ hands if they had been in the same situation. This one Christian woman was by no means perfect, and had many troubles of her own. She knew that. But, as the bumper-sticker notes, "Christians aren’t Perfect, Just Forgiven!" And she understood that. Scared and terrified, yet full of God’s love, she spoke with her captor, and read to him from a book she herself had been reading to better understand her faith and God’s plan. And she touched his heart.
I recently finished a class on the relationship between science and religion, and there were more than a few atheistic, dysteliological evolutionists taking the class. Now, as an evolutionary creationist, I do think that evolution as a process happened, although it is my belief and contention that it happened as a mechanism by which God created life. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened to Ashley Smith if she’d read from The Origin of Species instead. She’d probably be dead now, and (probably) so would Brian Nichols. His violent escape, and his attempts to flee the jurisdiction, would probably have ended in a standoff that would have seen its bloody end delivered by a sniper with a high-powered rifle and a good eye through a scope. So don’t just score one, but instead two lives saved by God that day.
