The other night I watched a show called Dateline with “never seen before” footage of an interview between Jeffrey Dahmer and the reporter Stone Philips. For those of you too young to remember, Jeffrey Dahmer gained notoriety in the early 1990’s for being a particularly gruesome and repulsive homosexual serial killer. So, yes, curiosity got the better of me – I watched it. Although I admit, I couldn’t sit through the whole thing.

Stone Philips asked the obvious questions probing Dahmer’s father and mother as to why Jeffrey committed these horrific acts. He asked if there were any signs, indications, events in Jeffrey’s life that would give us a clue as to how this monster was created. Was Jeffrey molested as a child? Did the screaming in the doomed marriage cause this behavior? The parents came up empty. They didn’t see any signs; they didn’t know of any catastrophic events. Jeffrey wasn’t abnormal or deviant by anything they saw. And if they had seen something, they would have hoped they would have reacted appropriately.

Then Stone asked Jeffrey the same question. Why? What caused you to do these things? Candidly, Jeffrey simply answers that he was Godless.

Shocking isn’t it? Jeffrey explains that up until he was caught and put into prison he had been told that he was primordial ooze, a product of evolution. After being convicted, his father sent him some information explaining that God created the world and the people in it. At some point, Jeffrey realized that he had to answer to a higher being. He logically understood that primordial ooze doesn’t have to answer to anyone or anything; a created human being MUST answer to his Creator.

Good for Dahmer. Kudos for seeing the most basic answer to societies woes that are most “brilliant” scientists and educators refuse to see. Whether he really believed his words or not, he spoke truth.

Jeffrey’s father also added to the “God theory”. His father thought that if he had been more religious these things wouldn’t have happened. Notice he didn’t say: I wish we had him in sports. Or: If only I didn’t spank him. He put the blame right where it belonged: They were Godless.

If that were the end of the story, we could walk away with some important lessons. But, unfortunately, it’s not. You see, Stone Philips apparently didn’t believe Dahmer’s answer. He just couldn’t manage to take Dahmer’s answer at face value. Stone continued to probe into his parents, his classes, his life in general – ANYTHING but God – to explain why Dahmer did the heinous things he did.

But Dahmer stood his ground and said his parents were not to blame. His circumstances were not to blame. His father’s dreams and fantasies were not to blame. (Yes, they even tried that one.) He, Jeffrey Dahmer, took full responsibility for making the decision to mutilate his fellow man. And one day he will answer for his crimes to the One that created him and whose expectations for his life he cruelly violated.

So the real moral of this story is:

Citizen beware. The media actively and purposefully nurtures irresponsibility and the blame game very quietly and insidiously. They can’t even stomach the thought of an evil man like Dahmer taking responsibility for himself and admitting his responsibility to his maker.

You see, if people started taking responsibility for themselves they might start getting a little heady and think they can eventually take responsibility for their families, their businesses, their communities and ultimately . . . their own government.

Heaven help us all from the Godless Dahmer’s and the clueless reporters of the world.

[Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death while in prison on November 28, 1994. I humbly hope his new found conversion was sincere.]