Lenten Reflection 2/26

There's an article in the top news section of the NY Times this morning about a woman who discovered that her husband, a NYC police officer, had been visiting many fetish websites and was involved in online chats in which he and others fantasized repeatedly about brutally torturing and killing women.  In their conversations they would fantasize about real women they actually knew, including the wife.  The wife obviously felt threatened by these chats and reported her husband to the authorities, and now the officer is on trial for plotting to kill a number of women.  There is no evidence that any of the women that this man was accused of plotting to kill were actually kidnapped or harmed.  So at his trial the question being explored is, "When does a fantasized crime become an actual crime?"

One outside expert was quoted as saying that this case "highlights the fact that there are 'dark corners' of the Internet 'where a whole range of illegal and immoral conduct takes place, and the general public has only a vague and fleeting knowledge that these places exist.'  He noted that the Internet, as a medium of expression and communication, also makes it possible for people with interests as benign as stamp collecting or as grisly as cannibalism to find and validate one another in community forums."

In his letter to the Romans this morning, Paul says people often "trade the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand."  The image of worshiping a carved idol, a man-made statue of a personal God instead of bowing down to the one beyond-all-time-and-space-and-knowledge God is a familiar Old Testament image.  Paul reframes it a bit by calling this choice "trading the true God for a fake God," and "worshiping the God you make yourself instead of the God who made you."  Paul says that when you go rogue like that, it is not long before you'll find yourself living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out.

I can't wrap my mind around whether that officer's real conversations with other real men about hurting real women they knew are a real crime or not.  But I think I can quite confidently say that he had certainly gone off to 'worship' a God he'd created himself, rather than honoring the one, unifying God that created and loves us all. 

Today's readings:  Jer. 2:1-13; Rom. 1:16-25; John 4:43-54
Elsa is reading The Message translation this year.