"How can God forgive that?"

      Tonight, I heard an interesting thing. Max Lucado, the well known devotional author and pastor, upon hearing of the prison conversion to Christ of Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer and cannibal, described it as one of the most difficult things he has wrestled with, and asked, "How can God forgive someone like him?" This is a question which often comes up, either as a hypothetical or as a real world difficulty of faith in the case of Dahmer. The actions of some are so heinous, so harmful, so vile, so evil that the question is raised about the reasonable limits of God's forgiveness. "God couldn't forgive that, could He?" or also as Max Lucado asked, "How could God possibly forgive that?"
      Imagine for a moment that you have a child who has a psychiatric disorder which makes them hurt themselves and others, sometimes badly. R.A.D. can be one such disorder. There have been documented severe cases where small children have not only attacked their parents and caregivers, but also seriously injured or killed themselves. Psychological disturbance can take many forms, and there are many disorders which can influence a child to have extremely harmful behaviors. That child spends the next twenty or more years so messed up that he or she leaves a trail of injured, hurt, and scared people behind them. And all you want is for that child to come to their senses and be rid of that disorder. All you want is to be able to love them and have that love returned. All you want is for them to be happy, successful, and at peace with themselves and everyone else.
      And then, one day, they change completely. They are no longer the same person at all, but are loving, affectionate, at peace and are able to participate in life like a normal person.
      How would you respond? Would you hold every evil thing they did against them? Or would you rejoice that this miracle had occurred and let go of who they had been and what they had done before?
This is God when someone comes to their senses and turns around from what they were doing, no matter what came before. His focus is entirely on recovering those lost to our common human malfunction, regardless of how that malfunction presents in any one human being. No one presentation of that malfunction, whether it be greed, murder, theft, lying, or just wanting what someone else has is worse than another because they all stem from the same disorder. When your kid starts acting like a normal kid instead of the devil incarnate, you start jumping for joy and hugging them relentlessly. The point isn't how bad the psychiatric illness got, or what kind of damage was done. The point is that it's no longer in control of your kid.
      We project our desire for retribution onto God, and because we want the person who hurt us or others to themselves be hurt at least as bad as the person whom they hurt, we assume God must want that too. But God's justice is about restoration and healing, not punishment and destruction. When an "evil" man turns away from his evil and does what is right, God says flat out in Scripture that the former evil will no longer be remembered. And the same is true of a "good" man who turns away from his good and does what is harmful or wrong. The good will no longer be remembered. Why? Because either one has become a different person altogether, and you don't punish or reward someone for something a different person has done, and we are each one of us different persons from one decision to the next.
      I don't know if Dahmer's conversion was sincere. I really don't. I do know that if he really had turned around and come to his senses, then God would have been rejoicing with tears, not debating about what to do with him.