02/18/01
God's Surprise
Quick question: What do you have in common with Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh? Quick answer: At least 99.9 percent of
your genetic code.
Watch carefully now; this column is a two-fer, a blatant effort
to connect two recent stories in the news: McVeigh’s pending execution,
and science’s surprising discoveries about what we are made of.
McVeigh, of course, is the reviled madman who pulled a truck loaded
with explosives in front of the federal building in Oklahoma City
in 1995 and detonated a bomb that killed 168 innocent men, women
and children.
He has been found guilty of the crime and condemned to death.
He wants a public execution.
Even ardent anti-death penalty activists are likely to keep a
low profile about opposing McVeigh’s death. His crime was one
of the most hateful acts of terrorism on American soil. It threw
a nation into an anguished frenzy and shattered the lives of hundreds
of families.
Despite McVeigh’s insistence on execution—publicly, on TV—it would
be wrong. True, it would make many people in this nation happy,
but that’s not good enough. Better punishment would be to keep
McVeigh alive for the rest of his natural life—no parole, no comforts—just
confinement.
There is, after all, a difference between revenge and punishment.
That’s what is behind the Catholic Church’s growing understanding
that execution does not reflect the sense that God calls us to
honor all life, and oppose the taking of that life, whether in
abortion or lethal injection.
It may be abhorrent to you that McVeigh shares 99.9 percent of
the genes that make you who you are. We are all of us connected.
Scientists mapping the human genome had some unexpected findings.
They had anticipated that because of the complexity of humankind
they would find 100,000-plus genes. They found, instead, only
about 30,000 – marginally more than lower forms of life. One scientist
quipped that the difference between a worm and an Einstein is
a mere 5,000 genes. God, in other words, surprised us again. We
are more than the sum of our parts.
Trying to pull this together: Man is not the author of life. We
have not yet conquered it; indeed, we are farther from understanding
life than we thought we were a few short weeks ago. We have no
business killing what we don’t understand.
—Tom Sheridan,
Editor and General Manager
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