Randal Rauser's Blog, page 66

A Quick Word of Thanks

A few weeks ago, I hosted a fundraiser on my website for the Anti-Malaria Foundation (AMF). All told, the US-based fundraiser raised $660 (US funds) while the Canadian-based fundraiser raised $1250 (Canadian funds). (Granted, I boosted the Canadian totals!)

All told, our giving resulted in the purchase of 799 mosquito nets which will prevent the suffering and death of many people. That’s amazing.

This Christmas, I’m grateful to all who gave to this worthy cause. Thank you!

I plan to have another fundraiser for the AMF next November. So please keep that in mind for your year-end giving. And next year, I really want to turn it into a friendly competition between Christians and other religious folk and atheists and other skeptical folk. That should be fun.

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Five reasons that Christians unnecessarily experience a crisis of faith

Every day, some Christian somewhere is in the depths of a crisis of faith created by a weight of doctrine that they are not obliged to bear. In this article, I will briefly summarize some of the main culprits.

1. Young Earth Creationism and a worldwide flood

When I was in high school, I lent my copy of It’s a Young World After All to my science teacher. I insisted that gopher wood had been found embedded in a glacier on Mount Ararat (and that the outline of a ship had been spotted by satellite!). We just needed more time for the science to be confirmed. (For more on that sad chapter in my life, read my book.)

If Adam wasn’t historical then why think Jesus is? A classic example of the slippery slope fallacy, but once many people buy the dubious assumptions they keep on sliding into atheism.

2. Literal-historical readings of biblical genocides

Many Christians cope by ignoring texts like Deuteronomy 20, Joshua 6, and 1 Samuel 15. Or they focus on a spiritual lesson: e.g. We must trust the Lord and give everything to him in our lives. Or they attempt to defend the genocide: that entire society — from elderly to infants — were so wicked that they needed to be eradicated in a mass slaughter!

Needless to say, once one takes the bull by the horns with the third option, the cognitive dissonance begins to build for many. But no Christian should be told that their orthodoxy is contingent upon a literal-historical reading of the genocides in the Old Testament. Christianity does not require the sacrifice of conscience, as Martin Luther rightly recognized. And the rock of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus, not historical genocides.

3. What about those who have never heard?

You must believe in Jesus in order to be saved. As for all the peoples who lived around the world for millennia without ever hearing a shred about Christianity, they’re lost. That’s why evangelism is so important: Romans 10:9 and 13. And if Jews died rejecting Christianity in Auschwitz, well, maybe they accepted the Gospel with their dying breath. But otherwise…

In fact, Christians have always had a diversity of views on these complex questions. It’s a travesty that anyone should lose their faith over a narrow and half-baked soteriology predicated on propositional profession in this life.

4. Penal Substitution

Can the guilt of one person be transferred to another? Did God’s wrath need to be placated with a sacrifice? Was our guilt transferred to Jesus so that he could be sacrificed to satisfy the wrath of the Father? This picture, deeply influential in Protestantism, certainly runs afoul of some deeply-seated assumptions about the nature of guilt and punishment. What is more, it seems to appeal to some deeply problematic assumptions about the divine being that frame God as akin to the wrathful volcano deity who needs a virgin sacrifice or he’ll smite the Pacific village below with molten lava.

At least, that’s the way some people see it. The good news about the good news is that there are many other interpretive frameworks for the reconciling work of the cross than this one.

5. Eternal Conscious Torment

Why would God resurrect people only to subject them to an eternity of torture in body and mind? What actions could warrant a punishment so extreme? In a society that is increasingly gravitating toward non-punitive and retributive models of jurisprudence, this venerable doctrine appears year by year more out of step, retrograde, medieval.

So it is worth keeping in mind that back to the early centuries of the church, many Christians have endorsed other doctrines of posthumous punishment, including models that are restorative rather than punitive. Suffice it to say, nobody should be kept out of Christianity because they cannot reconcile their faith with a punishment of infinite duration and unimaginable intensity.

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Jeff Wanted to Please God: The suspect salvation of the Milwaukee Cannibal

This is part two of my series on psychopaths and Christianity. For the first article on Ted Bundy, click here.

Evangelical Christians love their trophy conversions, dramatic stories of notorious sinners that find their way to the foot of the cross. For example, forty years ago I was fascinated by Run Baby Run, the story of the conversion of notorious New York gang leader Nicky Cruz. Trophy conversions were important for illustrating the transformative power of the Gospel: they could buoy Christian faith and serve as sales pitches in evangelism as well. And there was likely no conversion more dramatic than that of the notorious Milwaukee Cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Like Ted Bundy, Dahmer killed many people and was also a necrophile who committed unspeakable acts with the corpses. But unlike Bundy, Dahmer also cannibalized the corpses, a grisly practice that earned him the ignominious moniker by which he is known. If there was anybody you would have thought least likely to become a Jesus follower, surely it would have been Jeffrey Dahmer.

Baptizing Dahmer

While in prison for his horrific crimes, Dahmer’s initial request for baptism was sent to Wisconsin Pastor Roy Ratcliff. (Dahmer was later beaten to death by a fellow inmate on November 28, 1994) Ratcliff initially was informed simply that an inmate was seeking baptism. It was only later that he was shocked to discover the individual in question was the notorious Milwaukee Cannibal. After baptizing Dahmer, Ratcliff agreed to meet with him weekly in order to disciple him in his new faith.

Ratcliff recounts the unique experience in his article “Saving Jeffrey Dahmer.” As he observes, the first thing he had to deal with was the skepticism of others. Ratcliff reflects, “This question bothers me. Why question the sincerity of another person’s faith?” To be sure, Ratcliff acknowledged that a Christian who failed to show fruit might raise questions. But, he laments, people didn’t ask whether Dahmer was producing fruit in his Christian walk. They weren’t interested in evidence of a changed heart. They simply focused on his admittedly egregious sins: “The people asking me [about Dahmer] didn’t know about his post-baptismal life. They were basing their question on what he did before he was baptized, not after. That bothers me.” As Ratcliff suggests, the incredulity seemed to suggest a two-tiered approach to sin, as if there were the middling sins of humanity generally and then the really awful sins of the psychopath. But we are all sinful before God and we’re all deserving of death.

To be sure, Ratcliff had his own questions, too. But it was one particular exchange that persuaded Ratcliff of Dahmer’s sincerity, one exchange that pointed unequivocally toward the fruit of a changed heart. Dahmer stated that he believed he should have been executed for his crimes. Ratcliff agreed and admonished Dahmer to read Romans 13. On their next meeting Ratcliff notes that while the state has the right to use the sword, they opted not to use it in Dahmer’s case. And the best he could do in return would be to aim to be the best prisoner he could be in godly submission to the state’s authority. Dahmer agreed heartily, stating firmly that he now wanted to do the right thing. That stated resolve was enough for Ratcliff who concluded: “After that, how could I question Jeff’s sincerity? Jeff wanted to please God. He knew he had done terrible things, and he needed me to tell him that his life mattered regardless. I could relate to how he felt. I understood his heart.”

Dahmer as Witness to Grace

Other Christian writers have spoken in favorable terms of Dahmer’s conversion as well, invoking it as a sign of grace while never raising the possibility that it might be anything less than genuine. In his book, An Anchor for the Soul, Ray Pritchard makes the point in a provocative section titled “Jeffrey Dahmer and Mother Teresa.” As you can guess, Pritchard concludes that whether we are Mother Teresa or Jeffrey Dahmer or anybody else, we are all infinitely far from God’s perfection. Pritchard then recounts an occasion where he pointed out to his congregation that there are no righteous people. A week later a congregant, concern etched on his face, asked Pritchard where a righteous person could be found. Pritchard replied:

“Pointing to the cross on the wall behind the pulpit, I declared that Jesus is the only righteous man who ever lived.

“And compared to him, I am Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Max Lucado also refers to Dahmer’s conversion as a powerful illustration in his popular book In the Grip of Grace. Lucado begins by articulating the depth of Dahmer’s depravity and his own profound revulsion to it: “The Milwaukee Monster dangled from the lowest rung of human conduct and then dropped.” But as repugnant as Lucado finds Dahmer’s sins, he then admits that one thing troubles him even more than the sins themselves, and that is Dahmer’s ability to seek, and receive, forgiveness for them: “Sins washed. Soul cleansed. Past forgiven.” Lucado then uses this revulsion as a basis to illumine that troubling two-tiered approach to human depravity:

 “Ever wrestled with the deathbed conversion of a rapist or the eleventh hour conversion of a child molester? We’ve sentenced them, maybe not in court, but in our hearts. We put them behind bars and locked the door. They are forever imprisoned in our disgust. And then, the impossible happens. They repent.

“Our response? (Dare we say it?) We cross our arms and furrow our brows, ‘God won’t let you off that easy. Not after what you did. God is kind but he’s no wimp. Grace is for average sinners like me, not deviants like you.”

For Lucado, that’s where the problems start, in our self-satisfied refusal to extend to Dahmer the same grace God extended to us. Thus, he admonishes us,

“It’s one thing to have an opinion. It’s quite another to pass a verdict. It’s one thing to have a conviction; it’s another to convict the person. It’s one thing to be repulsed by the acts of a Jeffrey Dahmer (and I am). It’s another entirely to claim that I am superior (I’m not) or that he is beyond the grace of God (no one is).”

Of course, Lucado is right that nobody is beyond God’s grace. And Pritchard is correct that there is only one truly righteous person. And Ratcliff is spot on to recognize that we can’t be absolutely sure about any person’s heart. But each of these legitimate points is only part of the truth. And having only part of the truth can be dangerous … especially when you’re dealing with a psychopath.

Dahmer the Lost Soul

In my opinion, the most troubling discussion of Dahmer’s conversion comes in Kathleen Norris’ book Amazing Grace: A vocabulary of faith. In the book, Norris reflects how she was intrigued by Jeffrey Dahmer’s story when she first encountered it in the media, though she wasn’t sure why she was drawn to Dahmer. She reflects, “It may have been because a policeman said that Dahmer seemed so enormously relieved to have been caught. The photographs in the news did not depict someone who was belligerent, or boastful, as serial murderers often are. He seemed bewildered, exhausted, a lost soul.”

Note that Norris assumes that the psychopath or serial killer will tend to present himself as belligerent or boastful. But this is an erroneous assumption, for as Martha Stout noted, the most common and powerful modus operandi for the psychopath is pity. (See my article on Ted Bundy.) When Dahmer presented himself as a “bewildered, exhausted, a lost soul” he was engaging in the very same predatory pity play that he had regularly used to isolate and exploit victims. Far from being exceptional, the self-presentation as a “lost soul” was part of his modus operandi.

Norris then goes on to provide a sympathetic reflection on the genesis of Dahmer’s crimes. Her reflection is certainly well-intentioned, but it is also dangerously misguided and serves as a disturbing example of how quickly good Christian intentions can go awry:

 “I believe Jeffrey Dahmer shows us what the fear of abandonment can do to the human spirit. To judge by one survivor’s account, a man who had met Dahmer in a bar and had gone to his apartment, it was when he decided to leave after only one drink that Dahmer seemed to panic. This man got out; others were not so fortunate. Apparently it was the thought of being alone again, of having the person leave his life, that prompted Dahmer to go over the edge and begin drugging the drinks so that these men would stay forever. What seems saddest to me about the loss of human lives is that it might have been prevented. Dahmer had known for some time that something was wrong and he had sought help. Several times he had turned to a church and that seemed to allay the madness for a time. But it did not hold.”

Having begun with the assumption that Dahmer is simply a “lost soul,” Norris proceeds to interpret his professed repentance, conversion and subsequent behavior in this light. Suddenly the amoral psychopathic predator that drugged, raped, killed, dismembered and cannibalized more than a dozen men is merely a lonely soul crying out for companionship. Incredibly, Norris recasts Dahmer’s failure to successfully restrain, kill, and eat one of his victims as a tragic failure to connect with another human being. This is a reinterpretation of Dahmer’s life so radically disconnected from reality that it is hard to believe we are talking about the same man.

As I noted above, these kinds of analyses are that much more attractive because of the important kernel of theological truth that they contain. It is indeed the case that I am no more righteous on my own merits than Jeffrey Dahmer, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Whether it is Ted Bundy or Mother Teresa, Jeffrey Dahmer or Max Lucado, you or me, if any of us is to be saved it will be by God’s grace alone. In addition, I concur emphatically that an omnipotent God can save a psychopath. As God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27) I have no doubt that the same God who spoke the world into existence and sustains it every moment can save a psychopath if he so chooses.

But to stop there critically misrepresents some very important facts. Perhaps I can frame things with a story. Imagine that your sister Janet has suffered vicious beatings from her husband Al for several years. The pattern is a familiar one. Al beats Janet brutally, she walks out, he turns on the tears and pleads with her that he’ll be different, and she returns. And then the cycle repeats.

After this same cycle has repeated countless times Janet comes to your door late one night hysterical, with a cracked tooth, a broken nose, and a black eye. “That’s it!” you scream. “No more Janet. Leave this monster!” Janet agrees and resolves to break it off with Al once and for all. But then the next morning Al comes knocking on your door. “Janet,” he calls out, “Please forgive me! I accepted Jesus last night! I’ve changed!” Would you suggest that Janet open the door? Of course not!

Can you imagine anybody saying that by keeping the door closed you’re falling into a two-tiered view of human sin? Or that you’re questioning the omnipotent power of God to save whomever he chooses? Such statements would be positively absurd and even offensive. And yet this is the way many Christian authors treat the professed conversions of psychopaths. They embrace them as genuine without question, trumpet them as trophy conversions to a skeptical world, and cast a pall on anybody who would raise a cautionary flag. This is really irresponsible, for psychopaths are masters of the pity ploy and deception. As one psychopath mused, “I lie like I breathe, one as much as the other.” To conclude that Dahmer had a genuine conversion based on a testimony coupled with a contrite disposition which is no different from his behavior when he was on a predatorial killing spree is naïve and irresponsible in the extreme.

Dahmer the Predator

Dahmer’s Christian supporters would have done well to spend some time with the countless people that were tricked by this psychopath. In his article “Duped, Drugged, and Eaten: Working with the Jeffrey Dahmers of the World,” Len Sperry points out that Dahmer successfully evaded arrest for more than a decade due to his uncanny ability to manipulate everybody around him. And that includes police, parole officers, and even psychologists and psychiatrists, in other words, the very people who were supposed to be trained at identifying manipulators and liars.

Most shockingly, Dahmer succeeded in persuading several physicians and psychiatrists to prescribe to him the various medications that he employed in the drugging of his victims, despite the fact that his own history of alcoholism was a strong contraindication for the prescription of these medications. Sperry was himself a native of Milwaukee and knew several of the doctors who were duped by Dahmer. This led him to wonder, “How could these guys, most of whom held specialty boards in forensic psychiatry, have been so conned?” It’s a fair question. But the answer is really as straightforward as it is disturbing: like so many psychopaths, Dahmer was simply an outstanding con-artist.

If these hardened, trained professionals could be duped, one can only imagine how easy it would be to manipulate a well-meaning but naive pastor preaching a gospel of grace and forgiveness.

Debriefing Dahmer

Given that Dahmer is a psychopath, should Ratcliff have even agreed to baptize him? To be honest, I don’t have a clear answer to that question. Perhaps he could have done so, but given Dahmer’s clinical diagnosis I would suggest it wiser for Ratcliff to advise postponement of baptism at least for a period of time. However, the issue that most concerns me is Ratcliff’s decision to meet regularly with Dahmer. From the perspective of the forensic psychologist wise to the modus operandi of the psychopath, these are not innocent discipleship meetings. Rather, they are risk-laden interactions with a predator who is long accustomed to grooming victims for various forms of exploitation. In that sense, it is not unlike stepping into the circus ring with a wild lion. As Robert Hare puts it, “Psychopaths tend to see any social exchange as a ‘feeding’ opportunity, a contest, or a test of wills, in which there can be only one winner. Their motives are to manipulate and take, ruthlessly and without remorse.” If even trained mental health professionals and hardened police officers can be conned by psychopaths, how much more vulnerable to abuse is the trusting pastor or lay Christian giddy with the prospect of a dazzling trophy conversion?

Ratcliff and Lindy Adams, “Saving Jeffrey Dahmer.” Belief Net, (online) at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2006/11/Saving-Jeffrey-Dahmer.aspx

For further discussion see Roy Ratcliff and Lindy Adams, Dark Journey Deep Grace: Jeffrey Dahmer’s Story of Faith (NP: Leafwood, 2006).

Ratcliff and Lindy Adams, “Saving Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Pritchard, An Anchor for the Soul (Chicago: Moody, 2011), 61-63.

Pritchard, An Anchor for the Soul, 64.

Lucado, In the Grip of Grace (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 35.

Lucado, In the Grip of Grace, 36.

Lucado, In the Grip of Grace, 36.

Lucado, In the Grip of Grace, 38.

Norris, Amazing Grace: A vocabulary of faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 177.

Norris, Amazing Grace: A vocabulary of faith, 178.

Cited in Hare, Without Conscience, 40.

“Duped, Drugged, and Eaten: Working with the Jeffrey Dahmers of the World,” in Duped: Lies and Deception in Psychotherapy, ed. Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson (New York: Routledge, 2011), 47-55.

“Duped, Drugged, and Eaten: Working with the Jeffrey Dahmers of the World,” 50.

Hare, Without Conscience, 145.

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The Most Cold-Hearted Son of a Bitch You’ll Ever Meet

Manipulator Ted Bundy plays James Dobson.

The meeting unfolded in front of the camera one day in 1989. On one side of the table sat James Dobson, author of the bestselling book Dare to Discipline, founder of the ministry Focus on the Family, a symbol of family values: chubby, large glasses, wholesome.

On the other side sat a handsome and charismatic man in his mid-forties with chiseled, sharp features and a gentle and charming demeanor. His name was Ted Bundy.

Bundy had committed the most unspeakable, horrifying crimes. After he was arrested in 1978, he eventually confessed to thirty murders from Washington to Florida. Bundy was also a necrophile who would often hide the bodies of his victims so that he could return later to engage in sexual acts with the corpses. And he viciously mutilated the bodies in unspeakable ways. For example, he decapitated more than ten victims, keeping the heads in his house as a sort of unspeakably macabre trophy collection.

To put it simply, Bundy was the very epitome of the psychopath, as cold and vicious as they come.

Needless to say, the entire exchange between this family values guru and this cold-hearted monster was truly surreal. What was Dobson doing speaking with this monster?

Appeal to Pity

If we are going to understand the power of Ted Bundy in this interview, we should begin with the appeal to pity. Psychologist Martha Stout observes that while psychopaths often manipulate others through flattery or fear, the most common and powerful means of manipulation is through “the pity play.” As she explains, “The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.”

Aww, hello little kitty!

One illustration that comes to mind is Puss in Boots, the feline character in the Shrek films. Puss is a master swordsman, but right before he goes on the attack he always assumes the posture of a vulnerable little kitty with big, liquid eyes. At that moment those around him lower their defenses right before he goes on the attack.

This may be a trope from a humorous cartoon, but it tells us something revealing about human nature, namely how powerful the appeal to pity can be. Stout recounts her conversation with one psychopath who stated that the most valuable thing to him was to attain the pity of others: “What I like better than anything else is when people feel sorry for me.”

Stout goes on to explain why pity is such a powerful tool for the psychopath. Pity leaves an individual defenseless, uniquely susceptible to the wiles of the predator. Think, for example, of the doe-eyed oohs and ahhs from unsuspecting folks right before Puss in Boots draws his sword and demonstrates his feline ferocity. Or think of the man approaching children at a playground tearfully asking them if they’ll help him find his beloved lost puppy.

Or imagine Ted Bundy feigning an injury (one of his favorite strategies) and appealing to the goodwill of a passerby to help him right before he strikes. Stout makes the point by recalling the familiar story of the psychopathic husband who follows up the beating of his wife with repentant tears about what a horrible person he is.

It is incredible how brazen appeals to pity can be as when you have this abuser drawing in the sympathy of others just after he beat his wife. As Stout observes, “In long retrospect, sociopathic appeals for pity are preposterous and chilling.” So how much more preposterous it is to think that Ted Bundy would appeal to the pity of his audience in his final interview with Dobson? And yet, this is precisely what he does.

Bundy came into the interview knowing his prey very well. He is well apprised of Dobson’s views on the corrosive social impact of pornography (a view I certainly share). He then exploits Dobson’s views as a way to diminish his own culpability of his crimes, appealing to the pity of his audience, and even recasting himself as a moral crusader against pornography. When you think about it in those terms, Bundy’s rebranding efforts certainly do appear to be preposterous. And yet his winsome personality coupled with his newly found faith in Christ won over James Dobson and many other Christians as well.

Poor Ted, he must be lonely in prison.

Playing the Blame Game

The appeal to pity moves seamlessly into the refusal to take ownership of one’s own actions. This is what Bundy does with his comments about pornography. He claims that he grew up a perfectly normal young boy who was raised in a loving Christian home. It was only when he was first exposed to discarded pornographic magazines at the age of 12 or 13 that he began to fetishize violence against women. On Bundy’s retelling, it is the pornography which is the culprit behind his transformation:

“Those of us who have been so influenced by violence in the media, particularly pornographic violence, are not some kind of inherent monsters. We are your sons and husbands. We grew up in regular families. Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today.”

It is a striking image, this suggestion that Bundy was a perfectly normal little boy who was snatched out of the innocence of childhood by the personification of “pornography” as a malevolent predator who victimized him. This certainly is an extraordinary reversal when one realizes that on this telling it is pornography, rather than Bundy himself, who becomes the predator bearing ultimate responsibility for his litany of crimes.

At this point in the interview, Dobson asks Bundy whether he experiences any remorse for the unspeakable horror to which he subjected his victims. Bundy readily agrees that he is remorseful but he does not dwell on the horror he inflicted on his victims. Instead, he quickly shifts to reflecting on how the love of God helps him as he wrestles with the way he has been ostracized by the wider society and the fact that he must now face the death penalty for his crimes. Once again, Bundy brushes his victims out of the way and puts the spotlight right where he wants it: on him.

From there, Bundy quickly pivots to the threat that violence in the media poses to other young children who could be victimized the way he was. Bundy laments the fact that some other young boy could be drawn in by pornography the way he was while not realizing until it is too late that they too are “a Ted Bundy who has that vulnerability, that predisposition to be influenced by that kind of behavior, by that kind of movie, by that kind of violence.”

Apparently, Bundy is now committed to protecting the innocence of childhood. His reference to “vulnerability” is especially jarring as it is once again implied that far from being the culpable aggressor, he was the victim in his own story, a harmless child whose innocence was stolen by the predatory wiles of violent and pornographic media images

Dobson then takes the conversation in a new direction by asking Bundy about his recent professed conversion to Christianity:

“You have accepted the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and are a follower and believer in him. Do you draw strength from that as you approach these final hours?”

Needless to say, this is exactly the kind of question a psychopath like Bundy relishes, namely one that centers on him whilst providing an ideal ground to cultivate more pity from the audience. Bundy’s reply is simply extraordinary in its brazen audacity:

“I do. I can’t say that being in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is something that I’ve become all that accustomed to and that I, and that I’m strong and nothing’s bothering me. Listen, it’s no fun. It gets kind of lonely, and yet I have to remind myself that every one of us will go through this one day, in one way or another.”

At this moment we should pause to remind ourselves that this is a psychopathic serial killer and necrophile who raped, mutilated and killed dozens of women while keeping their body parts stacked up as trophies in his house. And yet he now appeals to the sympathy of the audience as he shares his own struggle with loneliness and his journey through the dark night of the soul. Unfortunately, a mere transcript coupled with commentary of the interview cannot communicate adequately Bundy’s exceedingly powerful use of body language, his coy glances upwards, his sad, puppy-dog eyes that project regret, vulnerability and warmth.

This appeal to pity is nothing short of obscene. And yet it is the terrifying power of the psychopath that we can find ourselves drawn in just like James Dobson was. At times like this, we need to be reminded of the crimes of the person. In her biography of Bundy, Ann Rule observes that shortly after he was arrested, Detective Don Parchen implored Bundy to reveal the location of one of his victims. Bundy replied with a proud sneer: “I’m the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.” Rule observes, “If all the off-the-record and off-the-tape remarks made by Ted Bundy are to be given weight, there is, indeed, a side to the man never revealed to anyone but his alleged victims—and they cannot talk.” These victims provide silent testimony to Bundy’s true identity, and we overlook that testimony at our peril.

Stout is also correct that this kind of appeal to pity is chilling. Listening to Bundy and watching the way Dobson is drawn into his tale of woe you realize you are observing a master predator at work. As I watched the interview I thought of the angler fish that dangles a phosphorescent protuberance in the darkness of the ocean deep, as a means to draw in curious fish with its hypnotic dance … until the unsuspecting jaws appear out of the gloom to clamp down on the prey. It may sound dramatic, but that is a fitting description of the experience of listening to an interview with Ted Bundy. It is equal parts chilling and nauseating, as one contemplates the many victims that Bundy drew in with those same coy glances and shameless appeals to pity.

Grace and Trust: Why Christians are Soft Targets

Unfortunately, all of this was lost on James Dobson who left that interview persuaded that Bundy has a genuine change of heart and spent his final days as a reborn social crusader who has taken up the cause against pornography. Reflecting on the interview, Dobson later wrote that Bundy “argued passionately, there in the last hours of his life, for additional limits on the sale and distribution of obscene materials.”

Dobson is far from the only church leader who was persuaded by Bundy’s display of contrition. In his book Whatever Happened to Grace Tom Gulbronson observes, “Dr. Dobson interviewed Bundy in his jail cell prior to his death, and he confirmed that Bundy had received the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and was a follower and believer in our Lord.” Gulbronson then recounts how, when he shared with his church that Bundy was in heaven, one woman protested. Gulbronson then opines: “She just did not understand the magnanimous grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Regardless of what we have done, God’s grace extends mercy and forgiveness if we trust Him and place our faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross.”

Gulbronson’s response illustrates precisely why Christians are soft targets for psychopathic exploitation. They are often trusting and they are especially vulnerable to dramatic tales of grace and forgiveness. However, I shudder when the question of psychopathy is put in terms of the extent of grace, as it so often is. Once this is done, any skepticism about a predator’s conversion based on a long history of psychopathic manipulation can be dismissed as a cynical failure to grasp the power of grace.

Contrary to Gulbronson’s naive declarations, the real issue here is not that the congregant failed to understand grace but rather that Gulbronson (and Dobson) failed to understand the manipulative ways of the psychopath.

The Damage

Psychopaths produce damage wherever they go. And that includes the damage from Bundy’s final interview. Consider, for example, the impact that the interview had on young Jeremy White. When he was fifteen, White’s mother discovered that he had been viewing pornography. In reply, she set him down in his room and told him to listen to a cassette tape recording of Dobson’s interview with Bundy.

The young White sat in his room listening in shock as Bundy described how he had been a perfectly normal young man who had been transformed into a monster after being exposed to pornography. As one can imagine, the interview left White terrified that he too might become a psychopathic serial killer: “The moment I heard that testimony was the moment that shame went from merely pushing me around to sinking its teeth deep into my young soul.” Indeed, he was so traumatized by the thought of being transformed into someone like Bundy that he even contemplated suicide, persuaded for a time that he would be better off dead than to become a killer like Bundy.

No doubt Bundy would take great pleasure to hear that his appalling final interview, a masterclass act of shameless manipulation and lies, would still be victimizing people years after his ultimate demise. After all, the love of Jesus notwithstanding, he was indeed the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.

Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 107.

Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 107.

Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 109.

See “James Dobson Interview with Serial Killer Ted Bundy, (Full Interview)” at http://vimeo.com/49018764

Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me. Ted Bundy: The Classic Case of Serial Murder, 20th Anniversary Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 289.

James Dobson, Dr. Dobson’s Handbook of Family Advice (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1998), 236.

Whatever Happened to Grace? (Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, 2012), 83-4.

Whatever Happened to Grace? 84.

White, The Gospel (un)Cut: Learning to Rest in the Grace of God (Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, 2012), 131.

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Should Conservatives Protest LGBT Hallmark Movies?

The Hallmark Channel has a reputation for producing movies that social conservatives find wholesome. Not surprisingly, these movies get satirized by cynical Hollywood. Consider, for example, this 2017 satire courtesy of Saturday Night Live:

(Yes, it is true that SNL is in New York while the Hallmark Channel is actually headquartered in, ahem, Studio City, California. But just forget about that: “Hollywood” is less a place than it is a cultural whipping boy / bogeyman that can conveniently be invoked whenever social conservatives see something that they don’t like.)

But I digress. NBC News just posted an article titled ‘LGBT indoctrination agenda’? Petitions want to keep Hallmark ‘family-friendly‘ which describes two new petitions against Hallmark by Christian conservatives. Why?

“Two separate petitions are asking Hallmark to keep its content “family-friendly” by keeping the “promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism” out of its movies and advertisements.”

The article explains,

“Though Hallmark is rolling out 40 original holiday-themed movies this season, none of those movies include an LGBTQ main character — and One Million Moms and LifeSiteNews petitioners want to keep it this way.”

However, Hallmark is currently exploring future productions that include LGBT characters and themes. Hence, the protest: “One Million Moms” and “LifeSite News” want to keep the wholesomeness of the traditional Hallmark Christmas movie without having it sullied by non-heterosexuals.

But what is a “wholesome” Hallmark movie? Is it like The Christmas Card, for example? This popular Hallmark Christmas movie depicts a classic love triangle when a woman who is already committed to one man kisses another man and effectively develops an emotional affair with him. Notably, this behavior is rewarded as the two lovebirds end up together.

The basic storyline is repeated in another popular Hallmark offering: in A Christmas Detour a woman headed to meet her fiancee and his family is detoured on Christmas Eve to a small town where she shares a kiss with a bad-boy bartender. But she then decides that she needs to follow her heart and leave her committed fiancee for this bad new beau.

The Christmas Card and A Christmas Detour are but two examples of a storyline which is repeated ad nauseam in Hallmark movies (and in the wider culture), one in which the follow your heart theme is presented as trumping sober (and far less exciting) self-giving commitment. Unfortunately, this selfish and trite notion of love as infatuation is deeply subversive of mature, committed love as I explain in my 2011 book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think with respect to the popular film Titanic:

Despite the fact that Titanic packed cinemas with swooning teenage girls, the film had little if anything to do with true love. Just think about the premise: a centenarian is still fantasizing about the twenty-year-old man she had had a brief fling with eight decades before. What’s romantic about that? The fact is that Rose never really knew Jack. She certainly never saw him grow old and lose his hair in some places (while growing it in others). Nor did she ever see him get age spots and varicose veins, expand in the mid-section, become debilitated from arthritis, suffer from colorectal cancer, and finally succumb to dementia. All she has is a fantasy of a young man that has apparently served over the years as a convenient periodic respite from the sometimes unpleasant reality of her real husband and family. Far from being true love, this is an unhealthy, regressive infatuation. Exciting though the fantasy may be, real love is found not in a constructed image from long ago but rather in the commitment that sustains us through the trials of receding hairlines, overdrawn bank accounts, expanding waistlines, and devastating medical diagnoses. Perhaps Rose’s attraction to Jack could have developed into love, but, alas, we suspect that that sort of movie would not have sold nearly as many tickets. True love, it would seem, is just not that romantic.

The irony of all this is disturbing, if not particularly surprising: “One Million Moms” and “LifeSite News” protest the mere possibility that a Hallmark movie might include non-heteronormative characters. But they are silent about the fact that Hallmark movies regularly subvert Christian notions of self-giving love and sober marital commitment in favor of whimsical self-actualization by way of personal infatuation. In short, if you really want to protest Hallmark movies, you should probably start with the ones they’ve been making for years.

Or better yet, you could simply turn off the TV.

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How to Respond to Ken Ham in About a Minute

The post How to Respond to Ken Ham in About a Minute appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Christians and Skeptics Can Change the World Together! Won’t You Join Us?

On Giving Tuesday, I launched a fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF). Why the AMF? Because with their mosquito nets they are dollar-for-dollar one of the most effective NGOs in the world today at decreasing/preventing human suffering. And I thought that was a wonderful way for Christians and skeptics to join together in a mutual action of goodwill.

Four people donated to my U.S. fundraiser for a total of $400 (USD) in donations. An additional four people donated to my Canadian fundraiser for a total of $700 (CD).

When I launched the fundraiser, I had said that if I raise more than $1000 (combined) I would donate $500 to the Canadian site. Since I exceeded my goal, I made the donation with a joyful heart today.

While we together raised money for hundreds of nets to protect people against malaria-infected mosquitos, it is also true that only eight people have donated thus far to the fundraiser. If you have benefited from my work, I would be grateful if you would consider including the AMF and our little fundraiser in your end-of-the-year-giving. As I said on the AMF website, Thanks for giving. Christians and skeptics can change the world together!

Here, once again, are the links to the donation sites for the American and Canadian Fundraisers:

American Link:

https://www.AgainstMalaria.com/TentativeApologist

Canadian Link:

https://www.AgainstMalaria.com/TentativeApologist2

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Is Theistic Evolution a Contradiction in Terms? A response to J. Warner Wallace

J. Warner Wallace recently posted an article titled “Why I’m Not a Theistic Evolutionist.” He begins by assuming that Moses wrote Genesis. (I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised: Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is to biblical studies as young earth creationism is to biology.)

Right after that, Wallace really gets our attention by asserting that ” theistic evolution appears to be a contradiction in terms.” A “contradiction in terms”? That’s an extraordinarily strong claim. Do say more, Mr. Wallace.

Wallace’s Contradiction Claim

And he does. Mr. Wallace claims the problem is that the generative sources of biological novelty are all “unguided (or random)” processes, namely “mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.” He then explains the contradiction:

“The unguided nature of these mutations (and the environmental circumstances that come to bear on them) is foundational to the definition of evolution. This quality of randomness is incompatible with a theistic view of the universe. Theists believe an all-powerful Creator is engaged in the process that brought everything into existence. This creative Being actually creates stuff and the act of “creating” is not an unguided process.”

In other words, evolution says that the diversity of biological forms is due to random processes while theism claims that this diversity is due to non-random — specifically, designed — processes. Thus, theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms: i.e. an unguided guided process.

Levels of Explanation

This is not a good argument. Mr. Wallace appears to be unaware of the concept of levels of explanation. To illustrate, if you want to explain water boiling you can offer descriptions which are equally true but operative at distinct levels:

the physical level: the water is boiling because it has achieved the boiling point, i.e. the point at which the pressure of the liquid is equivalent to the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere;
the personal level: the water is boiling because I want to make tea.

Now imagine if somebody reasoned that since the physical level explanation references only natural laws and makes no reference to personal intention, that there can be no personal-level explanation of the water’s boiling. That would be an absurd supposition.

And yet, that is what we have here. The biologist offers an account of the genesis of biological novelty at the level of physical/biological explanation. And at that level of explanation, the operative causal explanations are non-directed contingency or randomness (i.e. mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift) interacting with necessity. But that does not exclude a personal (theological) level of explanation. In other words, just as the water boils because I’m making tea so creatures randomly evolve because God is generating biological novelty.

To put it another way, Wallace assumes that the biologist’s invocation of randomness is an absolute claim that cuts through all metaphysical/theological levels of explanation like the acid blood of Ripley’s aliens cuts through every deck of the Nostromo. It isn’t: it’s a physical, biological claim which is operative at that level of explanation.

A Look at Some Theologies

As I conclude, I’ll give a couple of quick examples of how one might flesh out a theological explanation. The first approach would be to invoke a double causal explanatory framework in which every event within creation has both a secondary causal framework of explanation (i.e. the physical or natural) as well as a primary causal framework (i.e. the theological or divine) and the relationship between the two is commonly called concurrence.

If that sounds a bit too hands-on for you (i.e. dancing close to the abyss of determinism) then consider a second account: God providentially establishes a random process to generate novel biological forms while foreknowing (due to omniscience) every meticulous detail that will be produced by that random process and thus initiating that random process to produce just those forms (down to every meticulous detail).

In other words, from the perspective of theology, one can appeal to a double causal framework or to a providential foreknowledge framework. In each case, there is full congruity between the theological level of explanation and the physical level of random biological generative processes.

Conclusion

Theistic evolution is not a contradiction in terms. But bad arguments like this one from J. Warner Wallace do an enormous disservice to the Christian church by perpetuating a false and harmful warfare model between Christianity and contemporary science.

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Rethinking Origins: The Evolution of a Young Earth Creationist

In this article, I share a dialogue with David MacMillan, a former young earth creationist who has since come to a very different opinion. MacMillan currently lives in Washington DC with his wife and their children, where he works as a paralegal while studying for his J.D. at Columbus School of Law. He is featured in the independent documentary We Believe In Dinosaurs and you can read more about his journey here. We Believe In Dinosaurs is an award-winning documentary that follows the creation of Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter from inception to completion, along with its impacts on those involved and the surrounding community. It has been screened in several film festivals since its premiere at the San Francisco Film Festival this April and has just been released on streaming platforms ahead of its broadcast on PBS Independent Lens next February.

Although the filmmakers accept mainstream science, young-earth creationism is portrayed primarily through the mouths of creationists themselves, making the film less a collection of scientific rebuttals and more a glimpse into the inner workings of this unique brand of “alternative” science.

MacMillan is joined in the film by Doug Henderson, the lead designer for the Ark Encounter and a committed young-earth creationist, and Dan Phelps, a geologist and longtime critic of Ken Ham’s organization and teachings.

Randal: David, thanks for the invitation to watch We Believe in Dinosaurs. For those who haven’t seen it, it is a fascinating documentary that chronicles the cultural impact of young earth creationism, and specifically Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis (AiG) and their Ark Encounter theme park. Wrapped up into the story are questionable relationships between religion and government, urban decay and the fleeting hope of economic renewal, and the cultural war between secularists and fundamentalist Christians.

In the midst of it all, we also meet you, a Christian who was once deeply committed to AiG: indeed, we learn in the film that you are a lifetime charter member of their Creation Museum.  But you’ve since had a change of heart: there’s a poignant moment where you locate your name on the museum’s wall for charter members and reflect that you are no longer that person.

I’d like to hear more about that story. To begin, could you share something about your background, specifically how you were first introduced to AiG and young earth creationism more generally?

David MacMillan

David: Like one of the other characters in the film says, I was more or less “always” a creationist. It was something I grew up with, something we all assumed to be true. My family home schooled, so all of my curriculum came from creationist groups like Answers In Genesis and Apologia. My dad, who holds an M.S. in chemistry, took me to creation science conferences whenever they were close enough to attend.

As I got older, however, the interest in creationism went from being part of my family’s identity to being my own identity. I was far more interested and far more plugged-in to the creation science movement than anyone else in my family or in my immediate peer group. I really liked being the “resident expert” on all things having to do with the age of the earth, evolution, and biblical authority.

Randal: I know that of which you speak. When I was in high school thirty years ago, I lent my high school science teacher my copy of the book It’s a Young World After All. Young earth creationism was very much a part of my Christianity growing up. Indeed, I was taught it was key to everything else: Genesis was the foundation on which the house of Christianity was built, and if you doubted the history of Genesis 1-3, well, that was a slippery slope to doubting everything else, the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the second coming, heaven and hell, everything.

David: Oh, absolutely. The argument is very powerful. Broadly speaking, the concern is that if you cannot take Genesis “at face value” then you will end up questioning, deconstructing, and ultimately discarding the rest of the Bible. There are also specific, prooftext arguments. If you accept millions of years and death before Adam, for example, then you lose the verse in Romans about death being the result of sin, and your whole soteriology goes to hell.

Part of this was an assumption that the Bible had a “simple” or “plain” or “historical-grammatical” interpretation that ought to be the default. I was never aware that a lot of the interpretations I took for granted were fairly recent in the history of Christianity. More than just that, however, there was a tremendous confidence and reassurance at having all the answers. My religious belief was founded on science and reason. It was all airtight; there was no need (and no room) for faith or even healthy tension. I always had an answer.

Randal: I’m glad that you mentioned the fact that many of these young earth creationist interpretations are of recent vintage. In my view, one of the biggest objections to young earth creationism came when I read historian Ronald Numbers’ book The Creationists. Numbers traces the rise of modern creationism to the fundamentalist debates of the 1920s and the flood geology of a Seventh Day Adventist named George McCready Price. Suffice it to say, young earth creationism was not the default reading of church tradition as I’d been told.

So how did you come to question young earth creationism?

David: It took four years of college and a lot of soul-searching before I even considered it as a possibility. I had been raised without any cognizance that there could be any other options for interpreting Genesis; to me, it seemed like my only choices were creationism and atheism. That false dichotomy is actually still something I struggle to overcome.

Creationism was the reason I decided to get a degree in physics in the first place. There were many questions I’d never been able to get good answers for, even when I spoke to the people at Answers In Genesis at length. On the surface, creationism has all the answers, but when pressed there is a retreat to “we need more research” or “there are lots of ideas but we aren’t really sure how that works.” Even though I knew the classic creationist answers to issues like radiometric dating, starlight and time, ice cores, and evolutionary phylogeny, I was also aware that the answers needed more work. I thought that if I got my degree in physics, I would be able to answer those questions for myself and add to the body of evidence for creationism.

What I found, once how I learned to conduct actual scientific research and review existing literature, was that none of the scientific claims I’d been raised with bore any resemblance to reality. I had hundreds of completely false beliefs about genetics, geology, and many other areas of science. By the time I was done undoing those falsehoods, my allegiance to creationism was much more tenuous. I still believed creationism for religious reasons, but I reached the point that I realized the mainstream consensus could be true.

Randal: Wow, so you came to believe that you had overwhelming scientific evidence against creationism but you still retained belief in it for religious reasons. That must have been a recipe for cognitive dissonance. Did you think God was testing your faith, or what?

David: It was a strange feeling. Keep in mind: I still thought creationism was scientifically viable. I hadn’t lost that. I just accepted that evolution and deep time could also be viable explanations. But that was enough to put me on the outside. No one on the side of real science was going to accept my contention that young-earth creationism could be reasonably accepted. Yet I wasn’t a “true” creationist either, because so much of creation science focuses on “debunking” evolution, and I had rejected the idea that evolution could be easily debunked. I remember writing to my teenage brother in law shortly after I got married and cautioning him after he posted an anti-evolution article. I said something like, “I totally believe in creation, but I think it’s inaccurate to act like evolutionary biology is totally absurd. For scientists who think the world seems very old, evolution is a very useful theory and there’s nothing about it that’s obviously wrong.” Everyone was really surprised when I said that.

Still, it made me doubt some of the things I’d always accepted without question. If evolution and deep time weren’t obviously false, like I’d always been taught, then could I really maintain my position that atheists were “without excuse”? One of my reasons for believing the Bible had always been this idea that creation science was impregnable, but if evolution was even potentially true, what reasons did I have left? That’s when I started examining the origins of young-earth creationism a little more closely.

Randal: The notion that the overwhelming Neo-Darwinian consensus across scientific disciplines — geology, paleontology, biology, genetics, etc. — is attributable to sin rather than evidence and thus that it can be debunked if we simply take the blinders off, that’s a powerful idea. Indeed, in many cases it looks like indoctrination.

So how did you finally cut the Gordian knot? And did your Christianity survive?

David: It didn’t take long for me to realize that my in-between state — affirming young-earth creationism while admitting that evolution sort of makes sense — was a very unstable equilibrium. Almost no one held the same view. Reading the handful of people who had similar stances, like Todd Wood and Kurt Wise, made me more confident that my skepticism of hard-line creationism was warranted. There just weren’t many creationists who were willing to say, “Sure, the evidence for evolution is pretty good, and a lot of our arguments are pretty bad, but here’s why science is still on our side.”

Part of young-earth indoctrination is a sort of “inoculation” against outside views. Just like I had been exposed to caricatures of evolutionary biology, mainstream geology, Big Bang cosmology, and the like, I had also been inoculated against old-earth interpretations of Genesis. I’d heard of the day-age theory, the framework hypothesis, accommodationism, and the like, but only from a fundamentalist perspective, where they were portrayed as antagonistic to the Bible and incompatible with the Gospel. I’d been conditioned to see them all as recent, aberrant “compromises” cast against the “obvious” young-earth interpretation.

However, once I allowed myself to admit that there was more than one possible interpretation of natural history, it made me question whether there could be more than one consistent interpretation of Genesis. Before, I’d never had any incentive to seriously consider any old-earth viewpoint. Once I started to look at the physical evidence honestly, it freed me to look at fundamentalism more honestly, which in turn fed back into deeper appreciation for the evidence. There was one critical moment when everything came crashing down…but I won’t give that part of the film away.

At that point, I really didn’t know what I believed. I had rejected the fundamentalist notion that every part of Christianity depended on creationism, but I didn’t know how to reconstruct faith without it. It was like learning to walk all over again. Still a challenge, to be honest, but I’m learning.

Randal: As we wind down our conversation, could you share a bit about where you are at now in your journey in the borderlands of theology and science? And also, how’d you get involved in We Believe in Dinosaurs?

David: When Bill Nye accepted Ken Ham’s challenge to a debate back in 2014, I wrote an open letter to Nye urging him to be prepared for everything Ham would throw his way. The filmmakers, who were just beginning to explore a documentary about science denial, contacted me and asked if I would be willing to talk. What started as a single interview morphed into more and more over the next few years.

As far as where I am now — it’s been very difficult. When you hear for most of your life that nothing in the Bible could possibly make sense without this specific view of Genesis, the natural inclination is to follow that to its logical end and throw the whole thing out.

It didn’t help that any time I struggled with faith or tried to get help, the default response from family and friends was to blame it all on the rejection of young-earth creationism. If I would just come back and believe the way they believed, they said, everything would be so much simpler. They had all the answers; I just needed to accept it again.

I don’t think God intended the Bible to act like some inexorable proof, filled with scientific truths only modern readers would be able to appreciate. The Creator I meet in the gospels doesn’t need “101 Evidences For God” or a new version of geology or whatever else I once tried to use as proof. If Christianity isn’t the default and unavoidable conclusion, proven beyond question, then faith becomes a choice. I think that’s probably a good thing.

I don’t have all the perfect answers like I once did, but at least I’m willing to reject wrong answers when I see them. It’s a lot harder this way, but that’s okay; I would rather try to have a very small amount of faith in God than have a truckload of faith in my intellectual acumen.

We Believe In Dinosaurs is available now for streaming on demand using Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, and other sources.

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Give a Little Bit: My Super-Duper Christian/Skeptic Anti-Malaria Fundraiser!

I’ve had the Supertramp song “Give a Little Bit” running through my head this morning, and for good reason. After all, it is Giving Tuesday.

So, here’s the pitch: if you have benefited from my blog, tweets, YouTube videos, and/or books, I am asking you to consider giving. But I’m not asking you to give money to me. While it is true that running this website costs me more than $1000 and hundreds of hours a year, I would rather you give your largesse to a more worthy cause. And I have a great one: malaria nets.

In the past, I have sponsored fundraisers for breast cancer research. But this time, I want to enact the principles of effective altruism which ask a very focused question: what is the most effective way, dollar-for-dollar, to reduce suffering and increase wellness? (To read more about effective altruism, read my review of Peter Singer’s book The Most Good You Can Do and my interview with Joshua Parikh.) The Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) may not have as flashy a website as some groups, but that’s because they plow all their donations into mosquito nets to stop the spread of malaria. But don’t take my word for it: consider Givewell’s commentation of the AMF.

I have set up fundraising pages for the Tentative Apologist to receive donations for American and Canadian readers (my apologies to anyone left out!). Here they are:

American Link:

https://www.AgainstMalaria.com/TentativeApologist

Canadian Link:

https://www.AgainstMalaria.com/TentativeApologist2

One more thing, and this is a big deal: if these two sites together manage to raise more than $1000 within one week of today (i.e. by December 10th), then I will donate $500 to the Canadian fundraising site. So not only am I not asking to you give me money: if you give, then I promise that I will too!

So come on folks, we may disagree about theology and metaphysics, but we can surely agree that fighting malaria is a cause that can bring us all together!

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