What if he had found God sooner?
Kevin at TSM echoes Roger Ebert's sentiments about Clint Eastwood's The Changeling in a recent post. In his full review, Ebert draws a comparison between the real-life killer in the movie, Gordon Northcott, and some of our most notorious killers of recent times
Northcott comes over in Harner's portrayal as a man like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer: irretrievably evil, inexplicable, unreachable from the sane world.There is only one problem with this. Anyone who has ever watched interviews with Dahmer or his father knows that Ebert has mischaracterized him. Someone pointed me to this video a while ago, and it's haunted me ever since. Dahmer was not insane, not inexplicable, and nor, it seems, was he irretrievably evil
4 Comments:
[This comment originally appeared in the post below this one. I moved it here, since presumably that was your intent. --Ed.]
Jeff Dahlmer was an EVIL person. That he was beaten to death with a broomstick is poetic justice in it finest.That being said, the wardon of this prison should take note. People can kill you with any damn thang.
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littlejbg
It is beyond argument -- if you believe in any kind of absolute morality -- that Dahmer's acts were evil, but I said that Dahmer didn't appear to be irretrievably evil. In the video he shows what looks to me like genuine remorse.
Considering what he did, Dahmer suffered a merciful fate. I'd rather die than spend the rest of my life in prison, especially if I had to live every minute with the realization of just how evil my acts were and that there was nothing I could do to set things right.
I had a pastor back in the late 1990s who related the story of Dahmer's salvation. He said (in a story of his talking about Dahmer in another setting) a woman once came up to him and said she couldn't believe in a God who would save Jeffrey Dahmer. Roy told her (and us) that he couldn't believe in a God who couldn't or wouldn't save Jeffrey Dahmer.
Before I converted I would've agreed with that woman. Now I side with your pastor.
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