Something Tragic

(The following news piece is not for the faint of heart)

An Ohio mother has been found guilty of killing her 1 month old daughter, MSNBC reports. This is a horrific case, one that took two trials to return a guilty verdict. Apparently there was an argument between 28 year old China Arnold and her boyfriend over just who the biological father was, and in a rage Miss Arnold put one month old Paris into her microwave oven and cooked the little girl to death. One month. I am days (perhaps hours) away from the birth of our third child and first daughter, and such news leaves me stunned, horrified, outraged, and truly at a loss.

The report reads,

When the verdict was read Friday, Arnold showed no reaction and then lowered her head, looking down at the defense table. Relatives in the courtroom cried and covered their faces with their hands.

It adds,

She was found guilty of aggravated murder and faces the death penalty when sentenced.

This is, in my view, why the death penalty exists. This kind of case, in which an infant child is effectivley tortured by being roasted to death, is the strongest of arguments for exacting the ultimate penalty. All around, this is a tragedy.

The Loss of the Tragic

When we no longer see life and humanity as a precious thing, then we will fail ever to see the loss of it as a horrific and tragic thing.

Is there such a thing as a tragic even any more? What constitutes something “tragic”? Do we use such a term merely as rhetoric, or do we as a society still have the capacity to feel something to be truly tragic? In a recent blog, John Piper cites from Soren Kierkegaard, who said, “When the age loses the tragic, it gains despair.” Piper noted that this sounds profoundly right.

He added,

For tragedy to be real there has to be something hugely precious, and there has to be the capacity to feel a great emotion. When these are both present, tragedy can happen. Despair is the horrible blankness that settles over us when nothing is seen as precious anymore and there is no capacity to feel it anyway.

When we no longer see life and humanity as a precious thing, then we will fail ever to see the loss of it as a horrific and tragic thing. Despair’s hollow depth is the result of the vanquished capacity to value something as precious, such as the life of the unborn.

Such is noteworthy at all times, but especially in an election year. 

Obama and The Support of Infanticide

Given that the 2008 election will more than likely produce a president who nominates multiple Supreme Court justices, it is essential that as many people as possible know about Obama’s record. Here is a first-hand telling of what his radical view of abortion promotes. If such an issue is “above his pay grade” (as he has recently stated), then he is not fit to be president. (His skirting the question that Rick Warren ought not get him off the hook one whit.)

I pray that for the sake of the millions of babies that Obama’s judicial nominees will have a bloody hand in killing, for their sake, I pray that Obama is defeated in November.