My mother is a Protestant Christian minister. When Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison, a major news story at the time, I was appalled at our "criminal justice" system, at yet another sign of the commonplace abuse that incarcerated criminals (and even just people accused of crimes) suffer in the U.S. To be sure, Dahmer was a murderer, hardly an upright citizen -- and he didn't kill as a political protest, at least not intentionally. But he was, and remains, a quintessentially sympathetic serial killer. Here was a guy who ate people because he just wanted to be close to someone. However psychotic the manifestation, his loneliness -- even his alienation and sexual self-hatred -- were identifiable traits. Maybe he should have been killed instead of incarcerated, no matter how sympathetic. I can respect that view, so long as it acknowledges that it does ill for the good of society, to put the money and time that went into feeding and generally dealing with Dahmer into, say, health care or educational grants. Hell, even space flights. But a system that doesn't kill -- at least in any systemically consistent and sane way -- and pretends itself to be morally superior cannot have men and women regularly raped, brutalized, and murdered while in the care of the state.

My mother had a different reaction. She went to church and gleefully, honestly full of joy, told the members of her congregation that she looked forward to -- no, couldn't wait to -- see Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven. See, Dahmer had been born again in prison, and all signs seemed to point to the genuine nature of his conversion. Perhaps needless to say, her congregation was less than equally gleeful. It might be more accurate to say that they were aghast. The thought of their sharing eternity with the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer appalled them. They did not know how to deal with a Christian who celebrated meeting a saved Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven. "That not my Heaven" was their unstated response.

No, it's not your Heaven. It's God's. To my mother, Jeffrey Dahmer's salvation was a sign of God's grace. She was consumed with joy at the thought that God would welcome Jeffrey Dahmer, that His grace was powerful and kind enough to make him her brother. And, my mother added, loving Jeffrey Dahmer as a brother, his sins redeemed by God's love through his acceptance of Christ, was nothing less than a Christian calling. "As Christians," she said passionately, "we are called to love Jeffrey Dahmer as a brother, to accept him in Heaven."

She's a cool lady, my Mum, among other things.

Hers was a radical statement, to be sure, but a powerfully right one. Didn't Christ spend his time with the poor and with lepers? Wasn't Saul a persecutor, a murderer of Christians, before God called him to the light? It's not your Heaven, filled with yuppies through the ages. If you're going to be a Christian, you have to accept Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven. To my mother, Dahmer was primarily a soul, and her religion had taught her how to deal with souls. To my mother, this was no different than taking time to speak to the local can man, an undesirable man who made his living collecting discarded soda cans, who smelled and asserted facts that showed basic misunderstandings of current events -- but whom my mother brought to church with her. To my mother, this was no different than writing the former principle of my junior high school who was in prison for molesting boys, telling him that Christ could forgive him. To my mother, this was no different than ministering to a multi-millionaire -- or to a leper. But there was something particularly beautiful about Jeffrey Dahmer, hated by all, scourge of the earth, archetypal sinner, being in Heaven waiting for her. Because, of course, if Heaven -- and God's grace -- was big enough for Dahmer, it was big enough for us all.

Of course, he had accepted Christ. A Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, an agnostic homosexual -- these might not get the same forgiveness. My mother would not presume to condemn them -- and would herself be aghast at the suggestion that she thought they were going to Hell --, but the implication's there. There can, as the flipside to grace, be an insidious way in which sin becomes irrelevant, and past sins not important to contemplate, because they can be so easily washed away; this insidious flipside to God's kindness is present in every Christian who, like the two finalists in the most recent Survivor series, simply brush aside their sins, their treatment of others, with the idea that they are, or easily will be, forgiven. Still, as a Christian, one must accept the conundrum that Jeffrey Dahmer might be in Heaven but Buddha -- or Plato -- might not be.

The insidious flipside of easy grace -- which comes, a good Christian would point out, after the uneasy process of acknowledging one's sins and asking forgiveness, which most people, Christian or not, don't seem very good at -- must be acknowledged. But let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. At the very least, Jeffrey Dahmer -- and others like him -- represents a conundrum for such inquiry. It is a conundrum not unlike that of Hamlet, had he seized the opportunity to kill the king in confession, letting his soul go up to Heaven, forgiven.

There's something beautiful and admirable about someone putting their beliefs into practice, and following them to their logical conclusions -- whatever those beliefs and no matter how opposed to one's own.

And, as my mother is want to say, her religion calls us to face challenges. A creed is not necessarily comfortable. In fact, the more it is, the less its apparent worth. Though I am not formally a Christian any more than I'm a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, or atheist, I find her example on this matter positively inspiring.

Now, if only we could get our so-called Christian "leaders" to agree ... .

YOUR ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK

A word of warning: this column is on hiatus until the beginning of August, when it will return in force with a number of columns to make up for my leave of absence.

May 2002 statistics have been added to the usage page. In May 2002, persiancaesar.com received 226,672 hits. In the past two months, the number of visitors to persiancaesar.com has more than tripled and the number of unique visitors (not counting repeats) has more than doubled. Since October 2001 (i.e. in the last seven months), the number of visitors to persiancaesar.com is over 10 times greater and the number of unique visitors (not counting repeats) is over 5 times greater. Thanks sincerely for helping to make persiancaesar.com a success. I'll do my best to do right by you in return.

There's been lots going on here at persiancaesar. ElimiDATE, a previous Apollonian Bacchanalia column, has received some revision. A continuity page for Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite writers, has been added. The Continuity Pages for Daredevil and The Sandman have received an additional page each, with updates to boot, and the page for The Authority has also received particularly noteworthy changes. As always, many small updates have occurred within The Continuity Pages in general.

The last column was quite early. This column is right on time.

Your assignment for this week is to do one kind thing, no matter how small, for a stranger. You don't have to feel that you're a great person for doing so; you can even recognize that you are perhaps wasting your time. But you have to do it for no other reason than to help that person. Try it, as an experiment, if only to see what happens.