You may be right. And I may get crucified for this speculation, but just thinking aloud here - I’m not so sure that there is a clean binary cut between psychopaths and everybody else who is not. It wouldn’t surprise me if some psychologist could demonstrate that there is more of a spectrum and that all of us have somewhere between “a little” and “a lot” of the psychopath in ourselves, and that our environment and circumstances may steer us towards accessing and/or reinforcing that part of ourselves, whereas the (hopefully many) who grow up in better, loving environments learn to subdue that part of themselves and keep it at bay, choosing instead to cultivate empathy and other virtues (even if at first just to stay in the good graces of their tribe.)
I think that there is most likely a combination of nature and nurture at play.
Max, I think you’re putting your finger on the right tension, and there’s a distinction from C. S. Lewis that might help clarify it.
Lewis talks about the difference between the “bent” and the “broken.” The bent are those whose wills are twisted or disordered but still capable of responding to truth and goodness—they can, in principle, be straightened. The broken, by contrast, are those whose wills have become fixed in rejection of the good—no longer responsive, but hardened.
What’s important is that Lewis shifts the focus away from how bad the act is to what has happened to the will. That’s a deeper and more difficult question.
I think this helps explain why your reaction to the school shooter case is not weakness or confusion. You’re recognizing that even someone who has done something horrific may still be “bent” rather than “broken”—and therefore still a proper object of pity, even while being fully subject to justice.
At the same time, it also leaves room for the intuition others are expressing: that there may be cases where a person becomes so deeply corrupted that ordinary rehabilitation is no longer realistic.
But here’s the caution: Lewis doesn’t give us a way to confidently sort real people into those categories. And that matters. Once we start declaring that someone is “broken” in that final sense, we’re making a judgment we’re probably not in a position to make.
So it seems to me the most stable position is something like this:
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Justice is necessary and sometimes severe
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Rehabilitation should be pursued wherever it is still possible
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And even in the worst cases, we should be very careful about concluding that a person is beyond all hope
That preserves moral seriousness without collapsing into either sentimentality or dehumanization.
One thing that might help clarify this is the kind of work depicted in Mindhunter, which is based on the early FBI profiling program. What those profilers discovered is that calling someone a “monster” doesn’t actually explain anything—they had to study patterns, causes, and behavior to understand violent offenders. And what they found is that some individuals do exhibit deeply entrenched, recurring forms of violence that make them extremely dangerous and difficult to rehabilitate.
But even there, profiling draws a limit. It can help us understand how someone became this way and how likely they are to offend again, but it doesn’t claim to tell us who is beyond all hope. That seems to line up with Lewis’s distinction: we may be able to recognize very deep disorder, but we’re not really in a position to declare who is finally “broken” in that ultimate sense.
That’s true, Terry: ultimately, only God can judge that. We are, however, in a position to determine whether someone is exceptionally depraved (that is, even more depraved than those who are merely “ordinarily” so, even though depravity is not ordinary), and whether, in such cases, retribution should take precedence over rehabilitation.
These two principles exist in a certain tension, and I believe that when dealing with particularly depraved individuals, the demands of justice must outweigh the merciful ideal of rehabilitation, especially as a matter of justice for the victims and their loved ones.
There are cases in which prioritizing rehabilitation would not only amount to giving another chance to individuals who are highly likely to waste it, but would also constitute an injustice toward the victims.
Sometimes, when we place ourselves in the position of the victims and their families, the right course becomes clearer, at least in my view.
Very apt. We shouldn’t forget - God can fix broken things. Why doesn’t that always happen? …that’s above my pay grade.
My thoughts on punishment is that it should exist and it should be complimented by rehabilitation. Punishment can come in many forms. It can come from lawsuits, it can come from courts where you get sentenced to time in prison and it can come from social canceling. I don’t think Jesus was anti or pro punishment. I think it was not what he focused on.
I don’t support the death penalty but I do support self defense against violent dangerous people where you may have to kill them to be safe. But if the threat is naturalized without them dying, I don’t see killing them later on as punishment. I think violence towards another is only acceptable as self defense.
Let’s say a person breaks into my house and tries to kill me with a knife and I am stabbed, I’m bleeding, they are coming back at me or a loved one I will most definitely aim and fire. My training is stomach to chest. So most likely that’s where I’m shooting. If I shoot them, and they fall down and are bleeding and no longer a threat I’ll remove weapons from them, I’ll call 911 and I’ll try to keep up alive. I’ll hold a towel or whatever and so on.
If someone did this but then escaped, and I survived and then later on I saw them, I would not find it acceptable to shoot them then. I would call the cops.
Or if someone jumps me, and it’s not seemingly lethal. Irs punches and kicks. I’ll fight back. Let’s say I get beat up and they flee and I even know who they are. I won’t show up at their house or whatever and try to fight them. I’ll confront them, I’ll call cops possibly.
But self defense is not the same as punishment. I don’t see physical abuse such as violence including electric chairs or whatever as an appropriate response as punishment.
People who are a threat to society and do evil things should be legally punished and should know they will face social repercussions as well. The Bible mentions obeying the laws of the lands and evil doers fearing the authority. Paul mentions speaking out to those in prison.
You have to have at least some part of yourself, no matter how small, that remains open to being fixed; otherwise, how could God fix you without completely overriding your free will?
The real question, then, is whether someone who takes pleasure in the suffering of the innocent (and who rejoices all the more as that suffering increases) can possess that fundamental openness. In my strictly personal opinion, the answer is no, but only God can judge whether that is truly so.
To be completely honest, there is also a personal hope involved in this, since I admit that I want these people (the people we have talked about in this thread, the sewer rats from Hurt2thecore, Peter Scully etc) to be punished in this life, and even more so in the next. Yes, I do want that. I crave that. So there is some wishful thinking on my part here as well. I would, of course, accept God’s judgment, whatever it turns out to be, but I cannot deny my own wishes. Yes, as a Christian I should wish for these people’s salvation as well, but I am aware that, at least for now, I cannot.
Psalm 69: 22-28
“May the table set before them become a snare; may it become retribution and a trap. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them. May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents. For they persecute those you wound and talk about the pain of those you hurt. Charge them with crime upon crime; do not let them share in your salvation. May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.”
Of course there are bad Human Spirits, Jesus indicated “You Father is the Devil”. This means there can be many children of the Devil. I’m a Child of Our Father being Born Again. The Teachings of Christ as being Born Again can rid the Child of the Devil in Someone. Also Me being an example as best as I can.
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