Mercy Even For Monsters

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes:

YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar
faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims
he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows,
hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at
Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid
a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George
Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had
died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul
of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his
agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the
sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline
terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who
inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich?
Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil — as indeed
Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize — but
God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity [SOURCE].

Mr. Jacoby’s depth of feeling here is obvious, and there may be merit to much of what he says, but I must take issue with him with regard to two points.

First, President Bush was giving voice to an authentic Christian sentiment that is required by the gospel. "God bless his soul" is the attitude that Christians are required to take regarding all individuals, no matter how evil. We may not always say it, but we are obliged to will the good of others no matter what their past may be.

This does not mean that we must not hold individuals accountable for their actions. The Catechism of the Catholic Church acknowledges that the state has the right to use the death penalty and that there are circumstances in which its use is warranted. Perhaps Yasser Arafat should have swung for his crimes. That’s at least an arguable position. But no matter what his crimes may have been, we must always hope for repentance.

Perhaps Mr. Jacoby misunderstood what the President said. Perhaps he thought that he was somehow expressing approval regarding Arafat’s soul–i.e., declaring it to be a good one by invoking God’s blessing upon it. But I doubt this. Mr. Jacoby probably understood that the President was not certifying the blessedness of Arafat’s soul but praying for it, as required by the Christian duty of praying even for one’s enemies (and certainly President Bush has not regarded Arafat as a friend and ally in the past).

Perhaps Mr. Jacoby might say "Fine. Perhaps President Bush has a Christian duty to wish the salvation of monsters like Arafat, but I’m not a Christian. I’m Jewish, and my people have suffered mightily at the hands of this particular monster."

I don’t think that this would be a successful way to deflect the issue, for the attitude of mercy even for one’s enemies is rooted in the Jewish Scriptures as well as in the Christian. Read the book of Jonah. That’s the whole point of the book. In the book the prophet Jonah is sent to the city of Nineveh, Mesopotamia (which now goes by the name of Mosul, Iraq). At the time, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, which was a persecutor of Israel. Jonah preaches judgment against Nineveh at God’s command, but he is disappointed when the city repents and God spares it.

In fact, Jonah is so angry with God that he prays to die:

"Now, O LORD , take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"

Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made
himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen
to the city. Then the LORD God provided a vine and made
it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his
discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun
blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and
said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"

"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
    
But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you
did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died
overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and
twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their
left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that
great city?" [Jonah 4:3-11].

Today we may not realize the political overtones to this passage because we don’t know enough about the history of the period, but the passage is extremely pointed. You see, the Assyrians weren’t regarded by the Israelites as being as bad as the PLO is regarded by Israelis. They were regarded far, far worse. The PLO has made life for Israelis hard, but it hasn’t been able to accomplish the goal of conquering and subjugating Israel or deporting its population out of the nation. The Assyrians did. They did all those things, and Nineveh was their capital.

So Jonah was more motivated than Jacoby to want to see God’s wrath fall upon the enemies encountered in his day. But God showed the prophet that he was wrong, that he had no right to be angry about the salvation of his enemies, and that God looks upon even the enemies of his chosen people and wills their repentance and salvation.

Neither (and this is the second point I want to take issue with) can Mr. Jacoby be confident of Arafat’s damnation. No matter what Arafat’s outward actions may have been, and no matter how late in life he persisted in them, repentance can take place in the heart even in the last moment of life. We can’t know whether that happened, but God does. As the Jewish Scriptures also say:

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart [1 Sam. 16:7].

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin