“Was Sodom ever so dark as this?”

Surely when The Best of Mere Comments is published, the threads started by S.M. Hutchens’ posts will occupy a large part of that volume. And surely this quote will be there: “I weary of those who seem to declare themselves better than God, whose patience with evil (in the name of redemptive presence) seems limitless while poor God’s is not, perhaps because he has failed to understand that infinite love requires infinite forbearance.”

Dr. Hutchens’ post explores more than the nominal topic of films and proceeds into the area of the Christian’s encounter with evil in the course of daily living. It is a topic I ponder frequently, especially in my own profession as a lawyer. Today, for example, I agonize over how judges and fellow lawyers can be so morally blind in the Terry Schiavo case. Well, actually I know how they become so blind: my colleagues worship (there is no other word) “the law,” by which they mean a manner of reasoning inculcated into them in law school. Largely divorced from classical moral reasoning, such “law” produces a result in the Schiavo case that most Christians would judge as utterly evil.

To what depths have we sunk when we deny parents the right to care for their incapacitated child—indeed, when we mandate that it is better that society allow a husband to murder his wife than that we should permit the wife’s parents to suffer for the sake of their child? Was Sodom ever so dark as this?

—Bill Reichert