Sister Helen Prejean’s chat with the Boston Marathon bomber

This past week, our local New Orleans newspaper ran a story about Sister Helen Prejean’s testimony to try to save Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, from the death penalty. Prejean is the anti-death-penalty activist nun made famous by the movie Dead Man Walking. She had a series of conversations with Tsarnaev at the invitation of his defense team. She claimed that Dzhokhar showed remorse for what he had done. He had said, “Nobody deserves to suffer like that.” Prejean said his voice had pain in it and he seemed truly sorry.

Prejean’s testimony ultimately failed to persuade the jury who sentenced Dzhokhar to die. She didn’t have much to go by. Tsarnaev gave her just a sliver of human decency to champion on his behalf. What was moving to me was how hard she tried to humanize a man whom everyone else was content to see as a monster. It was the ultimate Christian witness of how to love your enemies. Setting aside for a moment the debate about whether the death penalty ought to exist, I’m interested in the model of loving your enemies that Prejean provides for us fellow Christians in her conversation with Tsarnaev.What would happen if in our conversations with our enemies, we listened closely for some sliver of evidence of their human decency? Usually in our conversations with enemies, we’re looking for logical inconsistencies and evidence that they are despicable people whose humanity can be dismissed. Imagine how different our social media would be if we listened to others with the posture of Sister Helen. How much could we deescalate contentious conversations just by making gestures to affirm the other person’s dignity?
Shortly after I read about Sister Helen’s story, I came across an online kerfuffle. One of the guys on the other side of the theological battlefield had written a couple of blog posts that were being widely panned by my side. I decided to reach out to him, channeling my best Sister Helen. We actually had a pretty decent conversation. We remain in disagreement but I felt like we gained a sense of respect for each other.It doesn’t need to compromise anything about our values to talk to our enemies the way that Sister Helen would. It’s definitely more satisfying to mock them and use their words to show the world what idiots they are. But it might just bring us closer to God if we search persistently for something to love in people who make no sense to us. Thanks for your witness, Sister Helen.