People You’ll See In Hell

A designer is doing a wordpress design for my website–countdown to something more streamlined and functional in about 15 days.


In the designer’s portfolio, its hard to miss the following site: People You’ll See in Hell. The site is a showcase of death row inmates sent to the after-life for the sort of heinous crimes that inspire the twenty-six versions of Law and Order or the eighteen cities of CSI.


I know there’s a certain audience out there who browses People You’ll See In Hell with a big old “they got theirs” grin of agreement–one that might all too often come from the right wing religious set who’d like it if society were a bit heavier on old school justice from the sheriff’s gun.


There is part of me that clamors for justice right along with them. That doesn’t waste time looking for reasons to pity the killer. Especially when I imagine–for the half second I can stomach it–that its my own loved ones in their target. Lynch mobs anyone?


But there’s this inner part of me, this deeper down more intuitive part of me, that gets sort of Swine Fluish about the site too. Sure, it breaks me up that people get to a point where they’ve so completely lost their humanness, where they are so miserably detached from God’s intentions, that they’ll wage the kind of gross offenses you see all over this site. But I also feel pretty dark and queasy and sub-righteous if I, an unqualified judge and jury, start reveling in their execution.


Celebrating death just never strikes me as a good call. I want to lean a little more toward the side of resurrection. ;)


Don’t hear me wrong. I don’t take the horrors these people brought to this planet lightly. Nor do I remove their guilt from them. That’s not my place, not my thing, not within my capability. But I believe there is a being who does what I can’t and probably wouldn’t, in my own sometimes half-starved expressions of mercy, do.


I believe in a maker who gives them room–even when they’ve devolved into such a poor excuse for what he meant humans to be–to put their tragically misguided souls before him. I’m not saying I think he’ll shake their prison bars open and release them into society, but I am saying if they seek him, he’ll bring something right to their insides that is beyond my ability to fathom.


As I browse People You’ll See in Hell, I am even tempted to channel my inner Sunday School teacher superiority and write the web admin, suggesting they might more accurately name the domain People You May Be Surprised To See In Heaven.


But I don’t. Because I know. I know its sickening for some of us to even think about…that God would choose to commune with people who wreak such hurt on our families.


But then I think, isn’t it powerful to struggle and grasp at that notion: that if God is big enough to offer our most chilling killers the second chance to be whole humans (Paul anyone?) that there’s a second chance for all of us, big enough to handle our deepest darkest secrets?

Today, two guys I consider comrades in the faith, put up People of the Second Chance. These happen to be the same two guys who got pummeled by the blogosphere last week for using Asian themes in their book, which offended some readers of Asian descent. But they did what not many in our culture do and they stretched for a higher bar than maybe was even required: they pulled the book, apologized to those offended and listened to their accusers. This not only inspires my own singular attempt at lame poetry, but it puts them in an ironically perfect position to champion a project called People of the Second Chance, don’t you think?


Please. Check out their evolving project.  Follow their story. It will be worth hearing.