Explain Your New Poem “Grace Forfeited”
00:00:00.000 | Today is May 17th, and over at worldmag.com, a new poem of yours was published, Pastor
00:00:10.280 | John.
00:00:11.280 | It's a serious poem titled "Grace Forfeited, Adam, Tamerlan, and the Lady."
00:00:16.160 | It's a poem about justice in regard to the school shooting in Newtown and the death of
00:00:20.320 | the first suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
00:00:23.400 | Explain the background of this poem for us and the biblical categories you explore in
00:00:27.080 | it.
00:00:28.080 | On the 6th of December, 14, Adam Lanza shot and killed 22 six-year-old, eight-year-old
00:00:36.320 | children.
00:00:38.200 | And then he shot himself.
00:00:39.920 | And that was that.
00:00:40.920 | And Tamerlan Chaniyev bombed the marathon with his brother.
00:00:46.460 | He killed three people, ripped the legs off a dozen others whose lives are forever changed,
00:00:52.720 | and then he was killed in a rain of bullets and some head trauma by the police.
00:00:57.640 | But that was that.
00:00:58.640 | I mean, there goes Tamerlan.
00:01:00.420 | And here's the question I've been asking.
00:01:03.480 | Has justice been done because they're dead?
00:01:07.900 | Can you hatefully, wantonly slaughter people created in the image of God and then get away
00:01:15.900 | with it through suicide?
00:01:18.560 | A millisecond, a millisecond of pain.
00:01:23.440 | Can you thumb your nose at the punishment of the state or at God and end it your own
00:01:31.080 | way?
00:01:32.080 | Can you rob—this is one of the characters in the poem—can you rob Lady Justice of
00:01:37.280 | her perfect rectitude in your case?
00:01:40.640 | And the poem answers, no, you cannot.
00:01:44.520 | This world is not one long injustice ending in nothingness.
00:01:51.680 | Lady Justice, you know, if you see the picture of her with her scales, she's always blindfolded,
00:01:57.680 | and that's to show impartiality.
00:02:00.040 | But one of the paradoxes in the poem is, though blindfolded, none of her people that she has
00:02:08.740 | assigned justice to ever escapes her final decrees.
00:02:15.100 | That last pop of the gun to your own head is heard on the other side of hope like a
00:02:24.160 | slamming door, and the guilty who have spurned the grace of God all their lives suddenly
00:02:31.300 | realize, "I am not dead."
00:02:36.180 | And there she stands with perfect recompense in her hand.
00:02:41.600 | And so that was my effort to try to capture and wrestle with whether suicide really can
00:02:51.000 | be viewed as a just end for a killer of 22 children.
00:02:57.960 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:02:59.560 | The text of the new poem, "Grace Forfeited, Adam, Tamerlane, and the Lady," was posted
00:03:04.220 | at DesiringGod.org today, along with the audio of Pastor John reading the poem recently in
00:03:08.600 | the DG Studio, and I'll add that reading to the end of this Ask Pastor John episode.
00:03:13.280 | Thanks for listening.
00:03:15.500 | Was Adam Lance's bullet to the head with all its millisecond length of dread and suffering
00:03:22.200 | a fitting recompense for 20 children dead?
00:03:27.200 | And the events of Boston's bloody marathon, is one hour's bullet riddle dying how it's
00:03:33.600 | done?
00:03:35.500 | Is that the penalty for killing three and ripping off our legs as if a knee could run?
00:03:43.560 | Can Tamerlane and Adam rob so easily the state of its last job of punishing these crimes?
00:03:52.560 | Perhaps.
00:03:54.940 | But not the Lady Justice.
00:03:57.560 | No.
00:03:59.360 | In truth, she got her verdict, firm.
00:04:04.340 | And she is not so blind that any criminal by her consigned to suffer suitably could
00:04:09.860 | ever slip away through merest mortal stings or skip her perfect rectitude through suicide.
00:04:18.220 | Nor is her ladyship so dignified among the cynical elite that she would bow to their
00:04:24.580 | philosophy and lose her right to judge, her sacred breath, by not at last existing after
00:04:32.300 | death.
00:04:34.720 | As if this bloody universe were one long empty triumph of injustice, done by no one, leaping
00:04:44.140 | into nothingness from dreams where there is nothing to transgress.
00:04:51.180 | No.
00:04:53.420 | Those last pistol pops in Sandy Hook and Watertown pursued and overtook their prey
00:05:02.140 | and echoed like a slamming door heard on the other side of time and tore away the fatal
00:05:09.280 | hope that they were dead.
00:05:12.880 | They were not dead.
00:05:15.540 | Nor she.
00:05:17.420 | And flaming dread.
00:05:19.820 | In her right hand the Lady held the chains and in her left the everlasting pains.
00:05:28.380 | you
00:05:30.440 | you
00:05:32.500 | you
00:05:34.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]