She Killed Him! That’s Wrong! (March 26, 2006)

Rebuke wickedness. Condemn evil. Hate sin.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why it has gotten so hard - so unaccountably, mysteriously hard - for Christians to take an unambiguous stand against evil. There is a weird laryngitis afflicting the church's moral voice today. It can't be long before the world becomes so puzzled by our moral reticence that it asks, "Just what is the matter with you people?"

Case in point: the murder last week of Matthew Winkler, pastor of a Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee. His wife Mary shot and killed him and then fled with her three suddenly fatherless daughters. Within a couple days she was found, arrested and charged with his murder.

And now you can't find a Christian associated with the case who can say that what she did was wrong.

At the church's worship service on Sunday, elder Robert Shackelford urged prayer for all involved, including the murderess. "Mary is a member of this church family," he said. "If we don't have forgiveness, then we don't have anything." He explained that forgiveness is a cornerstone of the faith.

Yes, but so is righteousness. So is "Thou shalt not kill." So is "If a man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed" (Genesis 9:6) So is "no murderer has eternal life" (1 John 3:15). So is "murderers...will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur" (Revelation 21:8). So is the commandment not even to eat with so-called Christians who commit sins far less serious than murder (1 Corinthians 5:11)!

But I have looked in vain for denunciations of her crime that the press would surely report if only somebody would say them. Instead I read, "Mary is a sweet child, and we just love her," (Janet Sparks, church member.) And, "'It hurts us very much, but we're going to stand behind her 100 percent. I just told a sheriff's deputy, anything she needs, we'll get for her.'" (Church member Anita Whirley.)

Oh good grief. Can't somebody muster a little righteous indignation? Can't somebody say, "I want that foul fiend of darkness to rot in hell!"? I'd even settle for the numbly bureaucratic, "We condemn this act of violence." But instead all we get is, "We love her, we forgive her, she is a sweet child, we'll get her anything she needs." Were it not for the secular justice system doing its job and putting her behind bars, I'm sure that the Christian love-fest showered on Mary Winkler would inspire a thousand wifely bullets to the heads of worthy husbands tomorrow.

Murder is wrong. So are lots of other things. Don't be afraid to say that. The martyrs of Revelation 6:10 rightly wanted God to avenge their deaths, and the blood of murder victim Abel cried out to the Lord for justice in Genesis 4:10. Maybe the exalted soul of Matthew Winkler looks down with puzzlement on his quick-to-forgive former congregants and says, "Umm. Wait a minute. I kinda got shot, you know."