Serial killer chic and the lies of the administrative state (UPDATED)

It is one of the perverse ironies of our age that the popular interest in serial killers was driven, in part, by the FBI. The Bureau, in a real sense, served as a press agent for these perverse monsters.

The serial killer “menace” was hyped by the FBI at a time when its mission was shrinking and its reputation was in tatters. At just that moment, the FBI discovered a new threat to America and its children.

As the FBI told it, dozens, maybe over a hundred, relentless killers roamed our highways and stalked our neighborhoods. They crossed state lines which made it almost impossible for local police to stop them. They were smart amd could evade conventional police work.

Fortunately, America had an organization that was ready, willing, and able to take on this scourge. The Federal Bureau of Investigation could operate nationally, their labs were cutting edge, their computers would make linkage blindness a thing of the past.

Best of all, they even had an elite cadre – the Behavioral Science Unit – that had made a special study of this type of criminal. The Bureau, it seemed, was the only law enforcement agency in the country with serial killer experts.

How fortuitous.

As Phillip Jenkins noted in Using Murder “the FBI was in effect making a power grab, claiming jurisdiction over crimes which were beyond its legal scope, and this could only be achieved by presenting the offenders as itinerant, and therefore violating state boundaries.” In doing so they were doing what they had always done. In the 1930s it was “automobile bandits” and kidnappers. Then Nazi spies, then Russian spies.

Times changed but the song remained the same. The FBI was always ready to hype any menace and jump on any bandwagon if that led to bigger budgets and more power for the Bureau.

Quite literally the FBI wrote the template for the growth of the administrative state. Hoover and the DOJ saw the war on John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd as a means of promoting the New Deal and the benefits of federal power.

The War on Crime would become a centerpiece of Roosevelt's push to centralize many facets of American government. It would be a focal point of his State of the Union Address in January. Thus a little known bureau of the Justice Department became a cutting edge of Roosevelt's New Deal policies. If Hoover and his neophyte agents could defeat "name brand" gangsters, it would be immediate and tangible evidence of the new Deal's worth.

The image of the serial killer that the Feds crafted in the 1980s was adopted by fiction writers and journalists alike. This is not surprising; public relations and image management have always been a core competence of the FBI. It may be the thing it does best.

"A typical reporter on deadline calls a couple of people and slaps something into the paper the next day."
--Scott Shane (New York Times reporter)

Journalists writing against deadline needed experts and statistics to write their stories. The FBI had a near monopoly on both. In the 1980s and 1990s there were almost no outside experts who could challenge the official orthodoxy.

For novelists and screenwriters like Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs), the Bureau offered access, a chance to add verisimilitude to stories, the opportunity to suggest that a work of the imagination was laden with inside dope and closely-held secrets. Most importantly, the “mindhunters” of the BSU had already crafted their histories in a fiction-friendly form.

Philip Jenkins:

The experts who gained the widest acceptance did so not because of their academic credentials, but because of their personal narratives of traveling to the heart of darkness that is the mind of the 'monster among us'. This is the language of shamanism rather than psychology.

This created an odd, even perverse dynamic. The BSU could make itself look good by exaggerating the skill, cunning, and intelligence of the criminal.

It takes a special kind of hero to catch catch genius criminals like Hannibal Lector....

Only a few brave souls have dared to point out several obvious but often ignored facts.

Like the fact that the FBI has an abysmal record catching actual serial killers. Or even identifying that a serial killer is at work. Or that most serial killers do not roam across state lines but instead operate close to home.

The killers, when finally caught, never live up to the FBI-created image. BTK was evil but no genius and Samuel Little was a small time criminal.

The press is rarely interested for more than a day when a criminal profile turns out to be radically wrong. (Remember the wild goose chase for a white man in a white van during the DC sniper spree?)

A reporter on the FBI beat runs great risks delving into these sorts of questions. Life is easier if the FBI takes your calls.

In 1992 Robert Ressler, one of the first of the FBI's “Mindhunters” warned America that the serial killer menace would turn our streets into a real life “Clockwork Orange”. When, instead, murder rates fell for over two decades, he was never asked to explain his failed prediction. It wasn't as if the press did not have the opportunity-- he gave interviews as he toured to promote his string of books on his heroic fight against human monsters.

FBI profilers are still treated as uniquely skilled experts even though their record in catching actual serial killers is weak. Luck still plays a larger role than FBI expertise. DNA has been the game changer not the pseudoscience of the BSU.

Thus, the press becomes an enabler of the bureaucracy. It eagerly hypes the panics that lead to large budget and more laws. It is much less interested in assessing the performance of the agencies on an on-going basis. The watchdog can be turned into a lap dog with a little access and a good narrative.

Hoover blazed a trail, not just for the FBI but for all the ambitious federal bureaucrats who came after him.

UPDATE (12/5/22): There is a new biography of Hoover out. Eli Lake interviewed the autho for his podcast.

The author highlights that Hoover's FBI was the avatar for the ideal of progressivism: power in the hands of dispassionate experts who were beyond the control of politicians.

Hoover believed in the administrative state—in the power of independent bureaucrats.

The New Criterion has a lengthy and insightful review of the book:

Federal foes

The trouble with True Crime: Assassins and serial killers

While history ignores the assassin, justice at least has it that no assassin can become more famous than his victim. By way of proof, who can recall, off-hand, the identities of those who killed Thomas à Becket, or Mahatma Gandhi?

Brian McConnell, The History of Assassination

It is good that this is so. We should remember and celebrate builders , not destroyers. That seems to be a very basic requirement for a healthy society.

David Gelernter:

What matters is our communal response to the crime. Evil is easy, good is hard, temptation is a given; therefore, a healthy society talks to itself.

Such ritual denunciations strengthen our good inclinations and help us suppress our bad ones. We need to hear them, and hear good acts praised, too. We need to hear the crowd (hear ourselves) praising good and denouncing evil.

So what should we make of popular true crime? Here, the victims are almost forgotten and nearly nameless. The killer is the star, often gifted with a headline-grabbing nom de guerre which adds a touch of unearned glamour to their infamy.

Simone Weil:

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

Popular true crime follows popular fiction. Mindhunter is Silence of the Lambs with a patina of history and a large dose of truthiness.

We draw so many of our ideas about the world from what we see in the mass media and mass culture. One of the most disturbing aspects of this is the manner in which serial killers are often glorified and glamorized--through a process in which they are depicted as Super Males, even Supermen....Dr. Hannibal Lecter bears no resemblance to the defective, limited, unfeeling, and ungifted persons who are the overwhelming majority of multiple killers.

Elliott Leyton, Hunting Humans

Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy are dead and yet they are the stars of movies and streaming documentaries. They are celebrities in the truest sense of the word.

Aaron Haspel:

In an age of almost unimaginable abundance, celebrity is the last scarce good. Is it any wonder that people pursue it, and proximity to it, so assiduously?

We know that for some killers posthumous celebrity is something they think about (The media's vile calculus: If it bleeds, it leads and leads to more blood .) More than one serial killer was willing to risk capture in order to grab press attention and notoriety.

Is this good for society? Or does it suppress the social immune system Gelernter writes about?

A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham's law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.

Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left of It

From the annals of regrettable forecasts

Prime Minister William Pitt, February 1792:

There never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation in Europe, we might expect fifteen years of peace than we may at the present moment.

Within a few weeks Europe would be at war with Revolutionary France. Instead of fifteen years of peace, England endured over two decades of war and preparations for war.

Pondering: Learning from disaster

After the Fall of France and the retreat from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill moved quickly to avoid recriminations and focus the nation's attention on what lay ahead.

If we open a quarrel between the past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

It was the right decision at the time. For Britain, the supreme crisis of the war was at hand. What was required was unity and focus on the tasks at hand.

Six weeks that saved the world

The US took a different tack after the Pearl Harbor disaster. The quarrel went on for years as investigation followed investigation. Though they never threatened the war effort, they did manage to harden party lines and distract the Republican base.

After Prussia was crushed by Napoleon in 1806, its army decided to risk the quarrel and set about to determine the causes of defeat.

Commissions of enquiry at the end of a war, especially one ending in defeat, are not uncommon. But the investigation'sscale and intensity were unprecedented at the time and may not have been equaled since. The commission began work toward the end of 1807 and continued until the summer of 1812.
Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War: Prussia 1806

The Prussian army benefited immensely from the effort. In less than a decade, a prostrate nation-- little more than a French satelite – was a vital part of the coalition which crushed Napoleon and sent him into exile.

A century later, the Prussians (Germans) did it again. Defeated in 1918, they interrogated the past to create the future.

[Hans] Von Seekt organized no fewer than 57 committees to study what really happened on the battlefield of 1918 in excrutiating detail. [He wanted] short, concise studies on the newly gained experiences of the war" especially "which new problems put forward by the war have not yet found a solution.
Williamson Murray, "Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs"

Whereas the Germans assigned experienced officers to analyze tactics -- the lowest ranking army officers assigned to tactical doctrine studies in 1919-1920 were experienced captains who had been admitted to full membership to the General Staff corps -- the British War Officer in 1920 assigned the task of rewriting the infantry tactical manual to Basil H. Liddell Hart, a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant of limited experience.
James C. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform

The French became too pedantic, too theoretical, and not practical enough; their doctrine was more suited for the classroom than for the battlefield. And in their classrooms, officers were not rewarded for being innovative; they were rewarded for absorbing huge amounts of information and learning to apply a series of fairly standard responses (one could almost call them formulas) to particular situations. Sadly for France, memory became a more precious quality for officers than judgment.
Robert A. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-39

#ad #ad

Lincoln: Practical greatness

Die when I may, I would like it to be said of me that I always pulled up a weed and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Abraham Lincoln

No president ever faced greater challenges than Lincoln when he came into office in 1861.

No democracy had ever waged war on such a scale. No nation had ever before waged a modern war where mass armies, mass production, mass media, and machine transport came into play. Lincoln, unlike his opponent Jefferson Davis, had no military education, possessed little military experience, and had never held a policy-making position in Washington.

And yet, it was the ignorant neophyte Lincoln who guided his nation to victory.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

While Lincoln never lost sight of his goal of victory and reunion, he also stayed true to his chosen epitaph. The War President did not fail to plant flowers.

Lincoln asked for and got what Adam and Clay would have envied: internal improvements, including a railroad to the Pacific, the cheap sale for settlement of western public lands, subsidized state universities, a protective tariff, a centralized banking system, and even, while the war lasted, a federal income tax.

John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy

Gertrude Himmelfarb summed up Lord Acton's approach to writing history-- “Acton had the highest ideals and the most modest of expectations.” That assessment could just as readily apply to Lincoln and his statecraft. He lacked Napoleon's megalomania which eventually drove the Emperor into Russia and disaster. Nor did he have Wilson's unbending self-righteousness which turned potential allies into real enemies.

Lincoln: "Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong." Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 16, 1854),

When Lincoln found Grant he found a kindred spirit and the fate of the Confederacy was sealed.

 

Grant seems a very modern man, with the problem-solving approach of a practical engineer. He can be imagined in charge of developing an oilfield; or sorting out a loss-making major industry. That cannot be said of Lee any more than of Washington or Wellington.

Correlli Barnett and The Lord Dannatt, Leadership in War: From Lincoln to Churchill

Civil War 2.0: A Biden when we need a Lincoln

The Twitter Kids running the Biden Regency keep ratcheting up the divisive and eliminationist rhetoric.

WH adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms says 'MAGA Republicans' want to 'destroy the United States of America'

Bottoms continued the Biden administration's warning that Trump supporters are a threat to the nation

They keeps doing it because all too many in the media cheer them on.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

 George Orwell, Inside the Whale

The Solemn Keepers of the Sacred Norms are strangely silent even when the rhetoric results in real world harm.

Democrats need to stop urging political violence

The media forget themselves on political violence

Pro-life volunteer recovering after being shot while passing out pamphlets in Ionia Co.

None dare call it stochastic terrorism.

Quite a contrast with how Lincoln confronted the possibility of civil war on the day he was inaugurated in 1861:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." Those are the words of a statesman eager to preserve unity and peace in a time of crisis. What we are getting from the current White House is something decidedly different.

Mediated democracy and the temptations of Leninism

The past isn't really past

Stalin: his own avatar by Gary Saul Morson

Like other liberal and radical leaders of tsarist Russia, Stalin grew up in an ideologically charged milieu. Ideas mattered, and one’s attitude to literature and “science” defined one. According to Lenin and Bolshevik theory, Marxist scientific socialism had proven that maximum violence against one’s enemies was not a regrettable necessity but a moral imperative. To spare a class enemy was to commit treason to the workers. Any tendency to compassion or pity (vices in Soviet thinking) indicated that one still clung to outmoded religious ideas about the sacredness of human life, which explains why, when Stalin ordered the arrest of thousands by quota, local party bosses demanded to arrest even more. The term “merciless” was one of the supreme words of praise in the Soviet lexicon.

It is easy to dismiss these local party bosses as craven cowards who were desperately trying to appease the crocodile. But that is simplistic and misses the fundamental nature of the Stalinist mindset.

Dostoevsky understood the appeal of ideology to the mediocre and morally weak: "causes' are attractive for another reason, because they provide an excuse for behaving badly."

If it were only ignorance and the fear of the NKVD which fueled Stalin's cheerleaders, then we would expect intellectuals outside of the USSR to be early and vocal critics of the Soviet Union. The opposite was true.

Tony Judt:

Western intellectual enthusiasm for communism peaked not in the time of 'goulash communism' or 'socialism with a human face,' but rather at the moments of the regime's worst cruelties: 1935-1939 and 1944-1956. Writers and professors and teachers and trade unionists admired and loved Stalin not in spite of his faults, but because of them. It was when he was murdering people on an industrial scale, when the show trials were displaying Communism at its most theatrically macabre, that men and women were most seduced by the man and his cult. Likewise the cult of Mao in the West.

The Soviet Union may have lost the Cold War, but the Stalinist mindset is alive and thriving in the West.

Related:

Mediated democracy and the temptations of Leninism

The birth of the hive mind

Christians and journalism in light of James 4:11

Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.

William Barclay's commentary on this passage brought me up short:

The word James uses for "to speak harshly of" or "to slander" is "katalalein" .... "Katalalia" is the sin of those who meet in corners and gather in small groups and pass on confidential tidbits of information which destroy the good name of those who are not there to defend themselves. The same sin is condemned by Peter.

(Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. I Peter 2:1)

This is a much needed warning. People are slow to appreciate that are few sins which the Bible so unsparingly condemns as the sin of irresponsible and malicious gossip.

As any carful reader of the news will recognize, a great deal of modern journalism qualifies as gossip by this standard: "pass[ing] on confidential tidbits of information which destroy the good name of those who are not there to defend themselves."

Edward Jay Epstein noted the close connection between gossip and journalism decades ago:

Only two forms of knowledge cross this principle: gossip and journalism. The gossip purposely obscures his sources, saying in effect, 'Don't ask who I heard it from,' to make the story more titillating. The journalist obscures his sources out of self-interest, claiming that unless he hides their identities, they will not provide him with further information. This claim assumes the sources are acting out of altruistic motives. If, however, they are providing the information out of self-interest-- and much information comes from publicists and other paid agents-- then their motive is part of the story.

I've never understood the journalistic argument for concealing sources except that it is self-serving. While a source might talk more freely if he need take no responsibility for what he says, he also has far less incentive to be completely truthful. The only check on the source's license to commit hyperbole, if not slander, under these rules is the journalist himself. But the very premise of concealing sources is that the journalist needs the cooperation of the source in the future. This makes the journalist himself an interested party.

Related:

The problem with sources

Where does that leave us as Christians? When we engage with these stories, especially when we accept the substance of the unsourced revelations, are we not guilty of katalalia?

It's simple really

Roger Scruton:

Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.

They think they will be in charge because they see themselves as superior to the vast body of their fellow citizens. Related:

The continuing appeal of the hive mind

Worth noting, now more than ever

The rule of law is no simple achievement, to be weighed against the competing benefits of some rival political scheme. It is the sine qua non of political freedom, available only where law is independent of the executive power and able to stand over it in judgment. Without a rule of law opposition has no guarantee of safety, and where opposition is unprotected it also disappears.

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left
Roger Scruton

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize perverse incentives

This scheme was Big Pharma’s holy grail. Vaccines are one of the rare commercial products that multiply profits by failing. Each new booster doubles the revenues from the initial jab.

The Real Anthony Fauci
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The fine line

The world would be a poorer place without those who blazed against the abuses and tyrannies of sin. But too often this is made an excuse for petulant and self-centered irritation.

William Barclay
Letters of James and Peter

How technology makes us stupid and angry

Weak Men Are Superweapons

The straw man is a terrible argument nobody really holds, which was only invented so your side had something easy to defeat. The weak man is a terrible argument that only a few unrepresentative people hold, which was only brought to prominence so your side had something easy to defeat.

From the dak ages of this blog:

In the bad old days, you had to build your own strawmen when arguing politics. Now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can just pick one off the cyber-shelf.

How disasters become catastrophes: Seeds of destruction

When analyzing the grotesque failures of our COVID response, I think it is useful to keep this quote from Sir Michael Howard in mind:

This is an aspect of military science which needs to be studied above all others in the Armed Forces: the capacity to adapt oneself to the utterly unpredictable, the entirely unknown. I am tempted indeed to declare that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. I am tempted also to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.

Michael Howard, "Military Science in the Age of Peace"

One can forgive early mistakes when confronting a novel threat. What matters is how quickly an organization can recognize its mistakes and make corrections. This is where Fauci and Co. failed and failed grievously. As the mistakes piled up, they insisted that they had all the answers and were well nigh infallible.

This is a recipe for catatrophe.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

Americans used to be good at learning on the fly when the balloon went up:

Despite the shock of Pearl Harbor, which crippled the battleship fleet and rendered the existing warplans obsolete, the Navy moved swiftly and with strategic focus.

We fumbled and we failed but we learned:

Bernard Lewis:

One was that they were unteachable. When America entered the war, we in Britian had been at war for more than two years. We had made many mistakes, and had learned something from them We tried to pass these lessons on to our new allies and save them from paying again the price that we had paid in blood and toil. But they wouldn't listen -- their ways were not our ways, and they would do things their way, not ours. And so they went ahead and made mistakes -- some repeating ours, some new and original. What was really new and original -- and this is my second point lastiing impression -- was the speed with which they recognized these mistakes, and devised and applied the means to correct them. This was beyond anything in my experience.

Our most successful organizations consciously tried to learn from failure:

Every action-report included a section of analysis and recommendations, and those nuggets of hard-won knowledge were absorbed into future command decisions, doctrine, planning, and training throughout the service.

Ian Toll, Pacific Crucible

We also understood the need to clear the decks by removing failed or compromised leaders.

We did none of these things with COVID.

Kaus-Reynolds with a vengence*

We are paying a high price for these failures. When the general public understands that it did not have to be this way, the fallout may be earth-shattering.

Related:

When do disasters become catastrophes?

Why bureaucracies fail (II): Can experts admit to mistakes?

Why bureaucracies fail: Politics and enforced solidarity

The hubris of the learned and the perils of technocracy

Watergate: A legend turns 50

50 Years Later, the Motive Behind Watergate Remains Clouded

Despite the abundance of transcripts, FBI reports, and memoirs from those involved, we still know more about the cover-up than we do about the infamous political scandal.

One strange thing about Watergate, the scandal that led Richard Nixon to resign as president, is that 50 years later we still don't know who ordered the core crime or why.

Watergate as legend and myth is too important to be researched or scrutinized. So the MSM repeats the same old (discredited) cliches.

Watergate and history

Americans Aren’t Getting The Real Watergate Story From John Dean And CNN

"Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. “

One tweet that cuts to the heart of the fatal flaw of NeverTrump. "Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. “ 

On reflection, I think the difference is:

my goal is results, through the best available process

French's goal is good process, even if it doesn't get results

I dislike his process b/c there are no results. He dislikes the results b/c they used the wrong process.

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) April 13, 2022

The whole thread is well worth pondering.

GK Chesterton:

When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. There cannot be any better proof of the physical efficiency of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of the world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency of a nation than that it talks constantly of a journey to the end of the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and the New Jerusalem. There can be no stronger sign of a coarse material health than the tendency to run after high and wild ideals; it is in the first exuberance of infancy that we cry for the moon. None of the strong men in the strong ages would have understood what you meant by working for efficiency. Hildebrand would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for the Catholic Church. Danton would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for liberty, equality, and fraternity.

The populist right often often taunts the establishment wing with the jab-- “What has Conservative, Inc. actually conserved?” The French Davidian wing's obsession with processes and “norms” suggest that they recognize that conserving anything of substance and value is beyond their power.

Oddly enough they are certain of one thing. Though they may be weak, exhausted, frightened, and out of ideas, they still presume that they are the natural and ordained leaders of the American right.

Is it any wonder that so many red state conservatives view them as Cromwell viewed the Rump Parliament?

It is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God go.

#ad

Tories contra Chicago

Thomas Carlyle:

If the cotton industry is founded on the bodies of rickety children, it must go; if the devil gets in you cotton-mill, shut the mill.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8d to 6d. But suppose in doing so you have rendered your cvountry weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all.

Rejoice! He has risen!

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

And they remembered his words,

And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

Luke 24: 1-12

"Wood and nails and colored eggs"

First Posted 22 March 2005 ​

This passage from Martin Bell's remarkable little book The Way of the Wolf: The Gospel in New Images seems especially timely this Easter season.

God raised Jesus from the dead to the end that we should be clear-once and for all-that there is nothing more important than being human. Our lives have eternal significance. And no one-absolutely no one-is expendable.

Colored Eggs

Some human beings are fortunate enough to be able to color eggs on Easter. If you have a pair of hands to hold the eggs, or if you are fortunate enough to be able to see the brilliant colors, then you are twice blessed.

This Easter some of us cannot hold the eggs, others of us cannot see the colors, many of us are unable to move at all-and so it will be necessary to color the eggs in our hearts.

This Easter there is a hydrocephalic child lying very still in a hospital bed nearby with a head the size of his pillow and vacant, unmoving eyes, and he will not be able to color Easter eggs, and he will not be able to color Easter eggs in his heart, and so God will have to color eggs for him.

And God will color eggs for him. You can bet your life and the life of the created universe on that.

At the cross of Calvary God reconsecrated and sanctified wood and nails and absurdity and helplessness to be continuing vehicles of his love. And then he simply raised Jesus from the dead. And they both went home and colored eggs.

​

Palm Sunday

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

GK Chesterton