Purple State of John

2009-06-18 14:23:51

THE PERFECT CHRISTIAN DAUGHTER MURDERS HER PERFECT CHRISTIAN FAMILY: A CASE STUDY IN THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Filed under: Erin Caffey, Faith, Jason Allen, Jesus Christ, Lindsay Cutshall, Reasons To Believe, purple state roadshow
Posted by: John

caffey

Why do I keep pointing out these religious horror stories? Is it my intention to rub dirt in the faces of believing Christians?

Or is this tendency merely the fruit of a long, deep and disturbing cruel streak? Do I, in fact, take some awful sustenance from the worst in people? Am I perhaps like one of those frequent fliers who breathes a deep sigh of relief when someone else’s plane goes down? Or, to be charitable towards myself, do I actually find that the most horrific tales of human behavior often contain the germ of our most plausible hopes for self-improvement and enlightenment?

I indulge myself in the last of these interpretations, but the truth is probably all of the above. Be that as it may, here’s a case study for you in the problem of evil. In March 2008, in the woods outside the small Texas town of Alba, Charles James Wilkinson, 19, and Charles Allen Waid, 18, murdered Penny and Terry Caffey and their two sons, 13-year-old Mathew and 8-year-old Tyler. Terry Caffey and his 16-year-old daughter Erin survived. First believed to be a survivor, home-schooled, churchgoing Erin later turned out to be the mastermind behind the triple homicide. She is now in prison.

Wilkinson told police that Erin became upset when her strict Christian parents forebade the two to see each other and demanded that he kill them. He tried to dissuade her, but she insisted. Til’ the murders, local people considered the family to be exemplary in the faith, and Erin to be a wonderfully upbeat and moral kid. Obviously, something went wrong.

As recounted in the June 2009 issue of Texas Monthly, it’s a powerful and upsetting story, and not just because the “perfect” Christian daughter murdered her “perfect” Christian family. Its power lies every bit as much in Terry Caffey’s efforts to forgive and understand in the name of his faith. The father of the murdered family has only one family member left: the murderer herself. It’s hard to imagine a more difficult moral, psychological and moral dilemma.

What makes the story a study in what theologians call evil is Erin’s sheer lack of motive. Her parents were not draconian initially. her boyfriend spent time in the home. No one has ever demonstrated that she was abused. Making matters worse is her refusal in face of overwhelming evidence to admit that she planned and pushed the killings from start to finish. Her killer instinct has an inscrutable and implacable quality; as depicted in the piece, she is almost cartoonishly awful. Phone records indicate that she called her boyfriend’s phone from within her parents’ house several times in the hour before the slaughter. Her boyfriend Wilkinson testified that she was urging him to hurrry up.

In light of such cold-bloodedness, it is hard to fathom that her father wants anything more to do with her, and yet he does. He appears to want to understand, even if he can no longer believe that she was the vicitm of her boyfriend’s bullying rage. In The Texas Monthly story, Terry Caffey’s reading of Job leads him to some sort of reconciliation.

To me, this is both comforting and terrifying, comforting because it suggests that some solace does exist in such situations, terrifying because the solace comes in the form of a god who toys with his creatures as if they were dolls to be burned or mutilated.

It’s easy to caricature home-schooling rural Christians like the Caffeys. People who withdraw for religious reasons from American society often come in for a lot of abuse as ignorant and scary rednecks. I don’t want to use these horrific murders to justify their beliefs in a sinful and fallen world or try to turn them into poster children for a kinder and friendlier fundamentalism, but the story serves to put a human face on a hidden world.

Bible-believing Christians, when faced with cold-blooded murder, face their own existential crisis. Did a good God require the murder of Terry Caffey’s family by his own daughter in order to carry out some larger scheme of cosmic restitution? If so, can that god really be called good in any meaningful way?

Caffey seems to think so. For those of us outside the faith, that’s the greater mystery. If it were even remotely clear that Caffey was right to be so forgiving, one hundred percent of the human population would be Christian. But his response raises as more questions than it answers.

That’s why the murders make a case study and not an argument. Look upon the facts and despair.

Comments (12)

12 Comments »

Forgiveness is powerful. It transforms nations (South Africa, Rwanda) and the human soul. Forgiveness is from God. Suppose for this conversation you do believe in God, wouldn’t you agree that He would have to be perfect? If He is perfect in every way, then He loves perfectly. To love is to give someone the free choice to love. God does not demand that we love Him….then we WOULD be “toys”…puppets. Because we are NOT His puppets, we live in a world where people choose to do terrible things to each other. Your question….how can God allow that and still be good? Since He does give us the choice, those choices have terrible consequences. Sad things happen everywhere….even in “Christian” homes. There is no such thing as a “perfect Christian”….no one is perfect….only God is perfect. more later.

Comment by Nora — June 18, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
Hmmm. Slam dunk apologetics. I don’t know, Nora.

It seems to me that this story is a sort of Venus Fly Trap for Christians who would try the quick and easy answer to tremendous human suffering. It’s as if you went to Walmart and bought a fairly inexpensive, standardized part to fix a house burned down by fire. I can imagine Terry Caffey making a similar argument before his family was murdered by his daughter. I can’t even remotely imagine him answering in this way after that. I would bet he has few words to describe where he finds himself, and his silence would speak more eloquently to me than these assurances of yours that only God is perfect, frankly.

I want to suggest that attempts to persuade or convince using arguments that may be self-evident to you but tend to ne opaque to outsiders don’t contribute to a better or deeper understanding of such horror. Instead, they highlight the heart of the problem in the Problem of Evil. There is a Problem for the very reason that such events, when they occur, are quite resistant to the sort of quick fix you’re implying. Non-believers will flee at the first hint of such glib statements (”Forgiveness is from God”), finding them disrespectful to the dead and trivializing of the living.

Thanks for posting.

Comment by John — June 19, 2009 @ 9:05 am
I did not mean to be disrespectful in any way to the suffering of anyone. If I was, I am truly sorry. I knew I was in “over my head” with you. My first response for you was 25 pages….so far. I think I will finish that and we can start over from there. My apologies again if I came across as heartless. I do have a tender heart for the hurting and suffering. I did not mean my words as you interpreted them.
so much for blogging

Comment by Nora — June 19, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
No, Nora. I should apologize. You were perfectly within your rights to speak your mind, and I shouldn’t have responded with such overwhelming negativity to your heartfelt belief. I hope it won’t scare you off from future posts, though it may be too nuch to ask at this point.

I tend to get argumentative on this subject, as you can see. It’s in the book and in the movie, and now it’s here. I will work harder to be more diplomatic in my approach.

Comment by John — June 19, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
Thank you. You are right. I was not careful with my choice of words. I need to take more time and think through how it sounds to someone who does not have the same beliefs as I do. When I said forgiveness comes from God…..according to his testimony, he is relying on God to give him the capacity to forgive. So, I was writing about the incredible healing and hope that forgiveness brings to any terrible situation.
Thank you for giving me another chance.

Comment by Nora — June 19, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
John–I started writing in response to this and it began to look like “War and Peace.” So I have responded to you at my blog.

I certainly have no right to expect you to respond there, but I hope you will. Most of my readers are progressive Episcopalians and Catholics (with a few agnostics/atheists who just enjoy our weird little company thrown in for good measure), and I think they would very much enjoy a discussion on this topic.

Pax,
Doxy

Comment by Doxy — June 21, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
[...] few days ago, I posted a comment on the problem of evil, technically known as theodicy, in light of a murder case in east Texas. You can read all about the [...]

Pingback by Purple State of Mind — June 21, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
John, I came here after reading Doxy’s response to your post. I’ll repeat part of the comment I left at her site:

Obviously, the “perfect Christian daughter” was not that at all. I couldn’t read the whole story at the Texas Monthly, because I am not a subscriber, but I’m wondering how you made the leap to that description of Erin. Perhaps, the answer lies in the TM story.

Forgiveness is a whole other matter. To take up the discussion of forgiveness would take many words, but I must say that I believe that Terry Caffey takes the right path in his efforts to forgive Erin. May God bless him in his struggle

Comment by GrandmÃ¨re Mimi — June 21, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
[...] few days ago, I posted a comment on the Caffey murder case in East Texas, a homicide detailed in the June issue of Texas Monthly. I used the case to write [...]

Pingback by Purple State of Mind — June 22, 2009 @ 10:01 am
John,
I can not even begin to know the depths of sorrow that this man must feel in this tragic situation….or the people who suffer in other parts of the world….such as the genocide that took place (and still does)….nor the painful hollow feeling you felt when you met that man who lost his sons (that you wrote about in your book and spoke of in the movie). I do not know why some people are faced with more pain than others. It seems to me that your underlying problem and contention with God is… you do not think God is fair because some people go through terrible tragic situations where others seem to live life untouched by that kind of pain. So just because you were born into a privileged family, country and time in history…..and someone on the other side of the world is not……that is the place that makes you stuck….unable to believe in Jesus as Savior? Is that a correct reading of your thoughts? In the movie and book, you said because that man you met who lost his sons was a Muslim and according to the Bible….will not go to heaven. (your words) How do you know he will not go to heaven? How do you know that….even if he never hears of Jesus….in this mans heart….according to the knowledge revealed to him….that is enough….since God is the only one who can see and understand the human heart. Maybe that man did not have a brilliant mind like you and in his simple mind….when he prays to God….he worships the Creator…..not creation…..and God sees and knows his heart and knows the limitations of information revealed to him. I know there is so much mystery about God that our minds can not comprehend….but there is enough revealed about Him through His creation that requires our respect for His awesome power. The fact that He is so powerful and so much more than I can comprehend…..and at the same time is still intimately involved in our lives is so amazing to me. In my life, I have not faced terrible tragic situations like the article you make reference to and I have not been in a war zone or been singled out and tortured. Most of my hard times in life have been the result of my stupid choices….the Bible calls it “sin”….going outside of the boundaries that God put in place for my protection and for my best interest. I trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior at an early age….I was raised in a Christian home….I have loving nurturing parents who gave me many opportunities. At age 17, I began to stray and make my own rules and live life however I felt like. I suffered the consequences of those decisions and at the age of 22 I was in a difficult situation that was a consequence of sin….and I was at a fork in the road. Was I going to keep making my own decisions…..or was I going to step out in faith and really trust God with my life? I knew God was trustworthy….I just did not know if I was ready to give up my agenda. I decided to trust Him fully with my life. I was a returning
“prodigal” ….and God did meet me with open arms. Even before that day….He was pursuing me with loving circumstances….too many to say it was coincidence! But that day I trusted Him fully, I was filled with an overwhelming peace that I had never experienced before. He helped me through that difficult situation and it has been a journey of faith ever since then. I still sin and will until I see Him face to face and join Him in the journey and adventures He has planned for me in eternity. When I read about people in the Bible or biographies who suffered and relied on the Lord, my faith is strengthened and I only hope that if/when my faith is tested to the degree of the tragedies I mentioned and you wrote about….that I would be able allow God to help me through it. I may never understand “why?” in this lifetime….but I will in eternity. I love the word picture of a tapestry…..we are underneath the tapestry and cannot see the whole beauty of the finished work….we see some beauty but we also see the knots and rough places. Maybe that is too simple a viewpoint for you….but it goes back to your original question. Why does God allow bad things to happen if He can intervene but chooses not to every time? How can He be good and allow all the terrible wars and crimes to happen? According to the Biblical worldview….we are given a choice….and we chose in the Garden to disobey and it set things in motion. But God knew we would disobey…so why did he make us? Because He planned all along to redeem us! In the garden of Eden, the man blamed the woman and the woman blamed satan….so if satan tempted us to disobey….why did God make angels when He knew a third of them would disobey and cause pain and trouble for people in the world? I have no idea?! Would we have sinned even if we had not been tempted by the devil? Probably! Going back to my original point that without a choice, love does not mean anything….we would be puppets if we could not choose to love. I know you think I am quoting from some apologetic textbook. I am not. I am trying to have an open conversation about it all. You can tell from my poor style of writing and vocabulary that I am not an expert in philosophy or religion….and I do not know all world history like I should. (I read as much as I have time to) I do believe the Bible is true and I am teaching my children that the Bible is God’s word. But just like I had to take that step of faith and continue that journey of faith, they will experience God in their own unique ways. God made us to enjoy relationships with each other and He made us to enjoy being in a relationship with Him. My daughter is a deep thinker and has expressed her doubts many times about God and the Bible. My advice to you is the same I have given her….ask God to reveal Himself to you. He will if you ask. Her faith has grown because she knows its okay to question God and she does. She journals her doubts and questions and I have seen her faith grow. Her faith is many times stronger than mine. Sorry for the “war and peace” answer….but I realized a short quick answer is never okay for the hard questions of life. I have a question for you. If you agree that a civilized society must have some order and laws….then what is wrong with God’s plan? (according to the Bible) How would you do it different? I am not trying to “slam dunk” or give you the “venus fly trap”….I care and I am curious to know your thoughts and response.
Respectfully your friend,
Nora

Comment by Nora — June 27, 2009 @ 1:32 am
[...] Here’s the original post that launched this conversation. [...]

Pingback by Purple State of Mind — June 27, 2009 @ 8:53 am
[...] semi-regularly on his faith-related posts. The following is my response to his post entitled The Perfect Christian Daughter Murders Her Perfect Christian Family: A Case Study In The Problem Of …. I got started writing, and couldn’t stop, so rather than clog up his comment box, I decided [...]

Pingback by The Purple Haze of Theodicy–A Response to John Marks | Human Trend — June 30, 2009 @ 3:00 am

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