{"id":552,"date":"2011-07-07T03:06:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T07:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/philosophicalfragments\/?p=552"},"modified":"2011-07-07T03:06:47","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T07:06:47","slug":"her-blood-cries-out-casey-anthony-caylee-and-the-justice-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2011\/07\/07\/her-blood-cries-out-casey-anthony-caylee-and-the-justice-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Her Blood Cries Out: Casey Anthony, Caylee, and the Justice of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cYour brother\u2019s blood cries out to me from the ground.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u2014 Genesis 4:10<\/p>\n

<\/strong>
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n

She was, when she died, almost precisely the same age as my daughter is today. \u00a0Two years and ten months. \u00a0Children at that age are miraculous creatures. \u00a0They\u2019re boundlessly energetic and inquisitive, wellsprings of laughter and affection, young enough to want nothing more than your attention and your approval and old enough to run into your arms and squeeze your neck and surprise you with their insights, their creativity, and their expressions of uncomplicated love. \u00a0That\u2019s why the pictures of the sweetly-smiling little girl named Caylee still hit me like a punch in the gut.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot guilty.\u201d \u00a0The words sank like millstones. \u00a0That precious little girl whose pictures I had seen on the television, whose body was found decomposing in a swamp six months after her mother refused to report that she was gone \u2014 where was her justice? \u00a0It did feel, in that moment, as though her blood cried out from the ground. \u00a0There was something primal about it. \u00a0The dagger of her death twisted a little further into our viscera. \u00a0It felt as though this woman who had concealed the truth and deceived her family, who had celebrated and posed so joyfully and so infuriatingly while dancing and flirting and posing for sophomoric photos with strangers in the days and weeks after her daughter\u2019s death, was going to get away with it. \u00a0She misled the investigators long enough that by the time they found that painfully small skeleton it was too far decomposed to determine the cause of death.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Caylee Anthony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Humanly speaking, no living person except Casey Anthony herself knows exactly how her daughter Caylee died. \u00a0I have my suspicions. \u00a0We all do. \u00a0But I can\u2019t say that I know for certain. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to imagine that a mother would murder her own daughter and dispose of the body so callously. \u00a0But\u2019s also hard to imagine that a mother would frolic at parties mere days after her daughter has died, and yet it happened.<\/p>\n

What is<\/em> certain is that Casey partied like an off-the-wagon Hollywood starlet before Caylee was long gone, and that she lied completely and pathologically to her family, police and the investigators. \u00a0What\u00a0seems<\/em> certain is that Casey duct-taped her daughter\u2019s mouth and eyes, threw her body in a bag and dumped it in a swamp before the partying started. \u00a0These things alone were enough to convict Casey in the eyes of most. \u00a0How could anyone but a monster do these things? \u00a0Yet what is not<\/em> certain is how precisely Caylee died, and whether her death was intentional or accidental. \u00a0Did Casey \u2013 who looked up \u201cneck breaking\u201d and \u201chow to make chloroform\u201d on her computer around the time of Caylee\u2019s death \u2013 take her life? \u00a0Or did Casey find her little girl drowned in a pool, panic, dump the body, throw herself into a snowballing series of lies and deceptions, and anesthetize herself with drunken carousing?<\/p>\n

I think Casey is probably guilty, but probably<\/em> isn\u2019t enough to condemn a woman to death for the murder of her daughter. \u00a0All of the other information in the case pointed to a fundamentally selfish and dishonest woman, unstable and morally adrift, 120 pounds of narcissism with hair. \u00a0But the only really essential question \u2014 whether the death was accidental or intentional \u2014 was exactly the question that could not be answered. \u00a0We just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But God knows. \u00a0And God is not mocked.<\/p>\n

One little-known fact about the Bible, outside scholarly circles, is that the oldest biblical texts scarcely ever mention what happens to the human person after death. \u00a0When the earliest references appear, they are to a pit, Sheol, a gloomy half-existence where the souls of the dead wander about, unremembering, undifferentiated, seemingly unable to act or remember or give witness to God. \u00a0This was not eternal life<\/em>, but merely an afterlife<\/em>, not the resurrection of the whole person in body and soul, but the persistence of some semblance of consciousness. \u00a0It was only gradually that the ancient Hebrews began to understand the implications of the vision of God they had received.<\/p>\n

The problem of evil, as we presently understand it (if God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil?), is not really the problem addressed in the Old Testament. \u00a0They had a ready explanation for evil in the story of the Fall. \u00a0They also had a ready explanation for the suffering of the wicked. \u00a0The wicked simply deserved it. \u00a0The central theodical problem in the Hebrew scriptures, rather, is this: Why do the righteous suffer and the evil prosper? \u00a0This question is repeated in manifold ways throughout the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

In fact, in some ways, even the suffering of the righteous was not terribly difficult to understand. \u00a0The righteous are tested and refined in the furnace of affliction, or so that their suffering could serve God\u2019s redemptive purposes, and even when they could see the reasons why God permits their suffering they should be humble in the face of God\u2019s might and wisdom. \u00a0Rather,\u00a0the really hard thing to explain was why the wicked prosper<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We wrestle a lot with: Why does God let bad things happen to good people? \u00a0The ancients \u2013 who rarely saw people as truly good<\/em>, in any case, but who saw plenty of instances of extraordinary wickedness \u2013 wrestled a lot with: Why does God let good things happen to bad people? \u00a0We don\u2019t seem to feel the pinch of this question today \u2014 except perhaps in moments like this, when the blood of the innocent cries out for justice.<\/p>\n

The richly variegated vision of an eternal afterlife, in which the righteous go to be with God and the wicked to suffer apart from God, did not emerge until the Jews were taken into exile and realized that they would not see the reward for their righteousness, and the wicked would not see the punishment for their wickedness, in this world and this life. \u00a0It was then that they received the promise of eternal justice. \u00a0If the God who had revealed himself to them was truly a God of perfect Love and Justice, as they believed he was, then he could not let the righteous perish without the reward for their righteousness and he could not let the wicked perish without the punishment for their wickedness. \u00a0There must be an eternal reckoning. \u00a0This was the vision that prevailed in the later prophets and the intertestamental period.<\/p>\n

Morbid though it may seem to those of us who live in ease, the thought that justice should be delivered to their oppressors gave great comfort and hope to the ancient Hebrews. \u00a0I can understand that a little bit better on a day like today. \u00a0Whatever our own imperfect justice system determines, whatever the judges and the juries get right or wrong, God will sort it out in the end. \u00a0Justice will prevail.<\/p>\n

And yet, from the Christian perspective, even this was not the final word. \u00a0The knot that remained in the fabric was what we noted: that no one really is good, no one really is holy, and so no one deserves God. \u00a0Jesus speaks of the resurrection to judgment, of living eternally with or apart from God, and yet the hope of salvation is ultimately by faith in the mercy of God and in the gracious provision that God in his love has made for us.<\/p>\n

If Casey is not guilty of murder, then may God sustain her \u2014 for whatever else she might have done, she does not deserve, on top of the grief of Caylee\u2019s loss (however deeply buried that grief might have been), to be universally scorned as the murderer of her own daughter.<\/p>\n

If she is guilty of murder, then may God have mercy on her soul. \u00a0And I mean that literally. \u00a0Jonah did not want the people of Ninevah to repent and be saved (Jonah 4), and he was rebuked for it. \u00a0I am a Christian, and as such I should always hope for repentance, for mercy, for redemption and reconciliation with God. \u00a0God does not will that any should perish \u2014 not even a mother who murders her own daughter. \u00a0God can save Caylee. \u00a0God has<\/em> saved Caylee, and she is peacefully and joyfully present with him. \u00a0Yet God wishes to save Casey too. \u00a0God will see that the righteous are rewarded, but in the end the only one righteous is Christ. \u00a0God would see that the wicked are saved (and by the wicked<\/em> I mean all of us), and God went to extraordinary lengths to make redemption possible for those who would receive it.<\/p>\n

Some have walked further down the road to perdition; they\u2019ll have further to walk back along the path (sanctification) after their repentance. \u00a0But repentance is not walking down the path. \u00a0Repentance is simply turning around. \u00a0Whether we\u2019ve taken ten steps down the road, or ten thousand, it\u2019s in the turning around (justification) that we\u2019re saved. \u00a0In absolute terms, Casey\u2019s sins may be worse than my own. \u00a0But she doesn\u2019t need to live down her sins \u2014 to be sanctified \u2014 in order to be saved. \u00a0She just has to take refuge in the grace of God in Christ. \u00a0And in some ways, those who\u2019ve walked further down the path have it easier; they won\u2019t be tempted to believe they can walk back on their own. \u00a0The grace of God does not have to overcome our sinfulness. \u00a0It has to overcome our pride.<\/p>\n

So this may sound like a pious exaggeration, but theologically I sincerely believe it\u2019s true: if the grace of God were not this radical, then neither Casey Anthony nor I would have any hope. \u00a0That is, I\u2019d better hope that the grace of God is powerful enough to reach a mother who murders her child, lest it be too weak to reach me. \u00a0May God have mercy on us all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYour brother\u2019s blood cries out to me from the ground.\u201d \u2014 Genesis 4:10 She was, when she died, almost precisely the same age as my daughter is today. \u00a0Two years and ten months. \u00a0Children at that age are miraculous creatures. \u00a0They\u2019re boundlessly energetic and inquisitive, wellsprings of laughter and affection, young enough to want nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,1352,114,116,122,125,174,1326,253,255,322,344],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-bible","tag-casey-anthony","tag-caylee-anthony","tag-christ","tag-christianity","tag-eternal-life","tag-faith","tag-judgment","tag-justice","tag-perdition","tag-redemption"],"yoast_head":"\nHer Blood Cries Out: Casey Anthony, Caylee, and the Justice of God - 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