The Most Despised Person in the US

What might it be like to have the status of the most despised person in the US? Right now, that position belongs to Ethan Couch, with the secondary position going to his enabling mother, Tonya.

Everyone knows the story by now. At age 16, Ethan steals beer, drives his pickup along a dark road, hits and kills four pedestrians, rolls the truck, paralyzing and leaving permanently brain-damaged one of his friends in the car. Even hours later, his blood alcohol level was above 2.0 (.08 is considered too drunk to drive).

Tried in Juvenile Court, he is given probation as his sentence after his attorneys presented his case using “affluenza” as his affliction, saying he has never been taught the difference between right and wrong.

Ethan and Tonya, after a going-away party, headed to a Mexican resort city about a month ago where they apparently planned to live on a cash-only basis and with no documentation.

And now they are on their way back to the US. Personally, I wish they had served some time in what I understand are notoriously nasty Mexican prisons.

Ethan, a nice little white boy and surrounded by high-priced attorneys, will probably still get off lightly. As for Tonya . . . well, I bet she is more than capable of glamming up for the court and pleading the power of a mother’s love for her beleaguered son. After all, who is not going to buy into that story?

OK now that I’m getting the poison out of my system, time for me to be a Christian, a thoughtful pastor, a sinner in need of grace–those are ways I identify myself.

So, what WOULD Jesus say here? Seriously.

How do we cast out the demons of too much money and too little parenting?

How do we say, “Stand up, take up your mat and walk” to someone who may have never had a moment of self-responsibility in his life?

Dare we say, “Father, forgive them–they don’t know what they are doing”?

Justice might say that they must spend the rest of their lives being the caregivers of the brain-damaged, paralyzed friend, but I would not want to inflict such irresponsible people on an innocent young man. Greater justice might say that all the family wealth go to making sure that young man, as well as the families of those Ethan killed, are properly cared for the rest of their lives. That might be a better start.

But will any of my fantasy solutions (and/or extended and basically useless jail time) actually bring about repentance, a profoundly changed heart, one that cries out, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me?”

As I reflect on this, the great book, movie and stage productions of Les Miserables comes to mind. I’ve written a more extended reflection on that story here, and I’ve long called it the greatest redemption story ever written.

This desperate, nasty, degraded, barely human man, Jean ValJean, hardened by 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, has his life forever changed by an elderly priest. The priest effectively buys ValJean’s soul by offering total forgiveness and a pair of invaluable silver candlesticks as well as the rest of the family silver for a crime ValJean clearly committed.

This moment of completely undeserved love pushes ValJean to his knees and he emerges a man changed forever.

So I go back to Ethan and to Tonya. How does one heap totally undeserved love and grace upon these two totally despised creatures, themselves barely able to be called “human” by their lack of willingness to acknowledge their grievous wrongs?

I don’t know.

Help me with this. What would such acts of love look like? In any fair world, Jean ValJean should not have been set free, but in the world of the mysterious grace of God, he was–as are we.

What can you suggest?