Did Jeffrey Meet Jesus?

The man slumped to the floor, his glasses crushed, his head bleeding profusely. He looked up at his attacker, the man wielding the blood-soiled, solid-metal weight bar and said, "I don't care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me."

The man with the metal bar gladly met the bleeding man's demand and administered a vicious adrenalin-infused blow to the man's head. The bleeding man was rendered unconscious as his attacker countinued bludgeoning until he had pulverized the man's head. The man's body survived long enough to make it into the ambulance where he was pronounced dead from severe head trauma.

What do you feel for this bleeding man as he is experiencing this attack? Pain? Sympathy? Anger at his attacker?

What if I tell you both men were prisoners and the bleeding man was serving a life sentence for murder? Do you still feel pain? sympathy? anger? Do you feel less of it because this man was a murderer?

Witnesses say that guards walked away from the attack, closing the doors behind them, allowing the attack to happen. Some say it was planned and that even the guards allowed the plans to play out. Witnesses also say that despite the bloody, gruesome scene, some time passed before the guards called for medical help.

What do you feel now? Anger? Apathy?

What if I tell you the bleeding man with the pulverized head was Jeffrey Dahmer? In 1991 Dahmer confessed to raping, torturing, killing, and dismembering 15 men and boys and murdering 2 other men. He also confessed to committing post mortem rapes and cannibalism on his victims.

What do you feel about this vicious attack now? Anything?

In the early 90's I was in my early 20's. I remember I couldn't turn on the news for months it seemed without being inundated with Dahmer details. We learned more than we needed to know about what this guy did, and the details were so disgusting and shocking that as time went on and more details emerged, the schock drifted into a complacency. Not because we didn't care but because the recent week's horrid revelation just didn't seem to out-disgust the one they shared the week before.

I probably should have been a psychiatrist because I've always been interested in what makes the darkest of the dark in humanity tick. And I truly thought I could never hear a another detail that would surprise me about Jeffrey Dahmer.

But this past Saturday, I did.

I wandered across an old prime time news program that consisted of a 1994 interview with Dahmer shortly before his death. The interview shocked me - not because of any of the horrid things I already knew about him but because of one shocking thing I'd never heard.

Dahmer who had believed in the theory of evolution and felt that it made him his own god - Dahmer who also believed he was the devil - had prayed for the salvation that only Jesus Christ offers and was baptized - both while incarcerated. Dahmer's father had shared creationism and Jesus with Dahmer after he went to prison, and according to Dahmer, his heart accepted it.

If his heart truly was right with God and if there are no unforgivable sins, this means Dahmer slipped out of his flesh and into the arms of Jesus.

Now, what do you feel?

I leave you with these questions:

1. Are there any unforgivable sins?

2. Do you think when Dahmer slipped out of his flesh that he landed in the arms of Jesus?