Is Anyone Sad For Ariel Castro?

[Guest]

This article should, I hope, make us all think a bit about what it means to be saved by God's grace and where our lives might have gone without it. I don't condone the man's behavior at all - far from it - but the author makes a good point about the man's final destination without Christ.

 

Is Anyone Sad for Ariel Castro? by Jonathan Parnell | September 5, 2013

 

On August 1 Ariel Castro was sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years for kidnapping three girls he locked in his home for a decade, which included torture and rape, and the murder of an unborn child. Yesterday, a little over a month after this sentence, Castro was found dead in his jail cell. He had hanged himself.

 

And I wonder, is anyone sad for Ariel Castro?

 

Reports have already appeared on the “little sympathy” this suicide engenders from the public. Anderson Cooper, a paragon of political correctness, so casually referred to Castro as a “monster” last night on CNN. Not to mention, the timing of Castro’s death comes in the middle of other important things that occupy our attention, such as the American response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. We are haunted by the images of innocent civilians ravished by sarin gas and we mourn over this bloodshed tallying over 100,000 deaths in the past two years.

 

There is a lot to be sad about right now, but I wonder, is anyone sad for Ariel Castro?

 

Or the better question: should we be sad for Ariel Castro?

 

Is there any sense in which we should grieve the death of one so degenerate as to fuel horror in the lives of three girls for a whole decade — girls that he captured by luring them into his car when one was as young as 14-years-old? Should we be sad that the deeply developed depravity of this man’s life has now culminated in his suicidal death? That he has now, as far we can discern, walked into an eternal misery infinitely worse than the ten years of “hell” to which he subjected his victims?

 

Should we be sad?

Yes.

 

We should be sad because everything about Ariel Castro’s life is tragic. We should be sad because Ariel Castro was created an image-bearer of God who then spurned God and exchanged his immortal glory of light for the debauched darkness of being a self-willed despot.

 

We should be sad to see any human life end in such tragedy, and we should be humbled.

 

We should be humbled because we understand the truth of human sinfulness. We know what it means to be sinners. We know that, in a sense, there is an Ariel Castro inside all of us — that the same kind of sin that grew and grew and developed into such manifest depravity in his life has the same potential in our own, if not for the grace of God. Do you feel that?

 

Castro’s suicide calls our cards to the table on who we are. Do we stand at a distance — across the divide as beings fundamentally different than him — looking at this story and saying, “God, thank you that I am not a monster like this man”?

 

Or do we stop? Do we bow our heads in sincerest sobriety, and pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner — capable of crimes the same as this man if my sin went unchecked and unrestrained by your grace”?

 

Should we be sad for Ariel Castro?

 

Or the better question: What kind of person are you?

 

 

Source: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/is-anyone-sad-for-ariel-castro

[LadyKay]

We are all human beings. At some point in this man's life he choice to go down a path that he should not have gone down. While I have to say I am not crying over his death I am also not celebrating it. I believe that if Ariel Castro had repented of his sins and had accepted Christ into his heart; God would have forgiven him. As a Christian I do not think I can jump for joy at another person's death no matter what they have done. But for someone who has caused so much hurt to another, I can see how it is hard to not think to yourself  "good riddance, and my they burn in hell." But then I have to ask myself is such an attitude Christ like? So while I do not weep for him, it is sad that he choice to do what he did. And sad that evil has claimed another soul.

[Sevenseas]

I'm afraid I had a very Old Testament justice reaction on this one.  There are instances where God dealt with sin immediately in the NT...Ananias and his wife for one example...

 

How do we know Mr. Castro did not have multiple chances to change his ways during his lifetime and during his unspeakable incarceration of three innocent women?

 

I am not going to cry over him.  And I am not sorry I think this way.  

 

I believe God's justice is the only one I need to consider and I am inclined to think Mr Castro met the end that he lived and that God is far more righteous then we are.

 

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but how about Judas?  he killed himself too

 

Yes, I'm taking the hard line on this.  

 

Yes, God offers forgiveness if we accept Christ, but if we study the OT, we see the other side of what happens to those who refuse God and continue in sin.

 

God is just....perhaps Mr Castro met his just end

[Fez]

I am just sad. Sad over the whole situation. 

 

Am I specifically sad for him? not really.

 

It's sort of closure for his victims, no?

[Guest man]

Getting saved isn't a long drawn out process. No one knows what Castro was feeling in the hours or even minutes before his death. Jonathan Parnell is working on the assumption that suicide victims are condemned to an eternity reserved for the lost. I don't make that assumption. No one knows with any certainty what happens to the soul of an individual that chooses to end their life. I would like to think I know, but I really don't.

 

Am I sad that he's dead? 

 

No.

[nebula]

"The Lord does not delight in the death of the wicked."

 

That's one thing I always remind myself in times like this. Who knows what happened to him (abuse? abandonment?) that provoked him to turn to such evil to feed the void in his life?

 

"There but for the grace of God go I."

[Guest AFlameOfFire]

I heard the guy was at church on Sundays and torturing these poor girls. But look at Judas, who made a pretense, and was numbered among them, who Jesus called a devil and who betrayed innocent blood by simply handing Jesus over to them. And Judas hadn't even done to Jesus for many long years what this man has done to children all the while making an attendance in the household of God.

 

He hung himself as did Judas.

 

Whats also interesting in this (if you note in Psalm 109:7a) where it is speaking of Judas there it says let there be NONE to extend mercy to him. That saying come through the Holy Ghost.

 

For example, if we just look at this in Psalms 109:8 speaking of Judas it says

 

Psalm 109:8a Let his days be few...

 

And so it was...

 

Mat 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

 

Whereas it also says,

 

Psalm 109:8b and let another take his office.

 

Where we also see...

 

Acts 1:26 And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

 

Then back up to this part

 

Mat 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple

 

And in the same psalm it says

 

Psalm 109:11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;

 

Because Jesus said of them

 

Mat 23:25 .. within they are full of extortion and excess.

 

Then again of Judas...

 

Psalm 109:7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

 

Mat 27:3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,

 

So let his prayer become sin and...

 

Psalm 109:12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him

 

Mat 27:4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.

 

And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

 

Mat 27:5 And so we see he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

 

So here, when it says,

 

Psalm 109:11a  Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;

 

Mat 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple

 

Mat 27:7 And they (who from within) are full of extortion in Mat 23:25  took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.

 

Just as it says,

 

Psalm 109:11b and let the strangers spoil his labour.

 

Whereas the apostles point out the same

 

Acts 1:17a Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.

 

Whereas as he clothed himself this way (as shown in the Psalms)

 

Psalm 109:18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

 

The apostles likewise express of Judas

 

Acts 1:18b and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

 

I feel sorry for his victims, and he showed no mercy to them, and judgment without mercy is also shown to those who have shown no mercy at all. So my sympathies are with the children (who were this mans victims) all the while making a show in the household of God and doing this evil in secret which he had done for all those years,

 

 

 

[nikki1]

I was sad when I first heard about his suicide and the first thing I thought of was I wondered if he asked God for forgiveness for his crimes.  I guess we will never know.

[Guest]

"The Lord does not delight in the death of the wicked."

 

That's one thing I always remind myself in times like this. Who knows what happened to him (abuse? abandonment?) that provoked him to turn to such evil to feed the void in his life?

 

"There but for the grace of God go I."

 

That bolded sentence is the part that I believe is the main message of the article. Except for the grace of God that could have been me that walked down that terrible path that was the man's life. Do I rejoice that the man is dead? No. I will admit however that I did have some OT thoughts when the news of what he did first broke, and I won't deny it. Still as you pointed out: the Lord does not delight in the death of the wicked, so neither will I, tempting though it might be.

[The_Patriot21]

Im sad they let the other 2 go.