FEATURED JOBS
In our rapidly shrinking world, from our narrow prism of life on which we are raised and weaned, we always believe that there are answers to all things in life. Being satisfied with a mystery just being a mystery—inexplicable, unsolvable, unmovable – tends to be a foreign concept to Americans, especially in an age in which virtually any answer is right at our fingertips, instantaneously.
But the cold truth is, sometimes there is no answer.
Or if there is one, only God knows it.
The impossible-to-fathom murder of Leiby Kletzky, an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who was strangled and dismembered earlier this week, allegedly by a fellow Orthodox Jew named Levi Aron, 35, is a prime example.
Aron reportedly says he did it because he feared getting in trouble with the law after fliers were posted all around Brooklyn about Leiby in the wake of his disappearance. But the truth is we’ll never really know why someone would commit such a gruesome, heinous, unspeakable, despicable act. Of course, it makes no sense.
Even Aron probably doesn’t know why he did it.
The case reminded me of when I used to go to the Supermax prison facility on a fairly regular basis to visit my former high school and college classmate, Steven Oken, who in 1987 went on a drug-induced spree and murdered three women. I once asked Steven, who was executed by the state by lethal injection in 2004, what made him do it.
He didn’t answer right away, then simply swallowed, stared right through me, and as if he were really talking to himself, said in a slow, whispery voice, “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know.”
That’s a bitter pill to swallow – the unknowing of it all. It’s discomforting, slippery, vexing. Because it means that residing within all of us is not necessarily the capacity to kill like that but the wherewithal to harness a seemingly limitless reserve of anger and hatred. We don’t want to recognize that quality or element in us – after all, we’re civilized, rational people—so we chalk it all up simply to some people being born evil, sick and depraved.
That’s just too easy.
Years ago, I had an interview with a Catholic priest in East Baltimore. Looking to make a little small talk before the interview, I held up a daily newspaper I was carrying, which had headlines screaming about five Amish children who were inexplicably killed in their schoolhouse by a crazed assailant.
“Doesn’t make any sense, does it, Father?” I said. He looked back at me with woeful, perplexed, almost scornful eyes.
“It’s not about making sense,” he said. “Alan, this is how the world works. Always has and always will. The world is full of tragedies, horrors and sadness. Killing is, unfortunately, a part of human nature and existence. It’s up to us to accept that, but also to make the world in God’s image to the best of our abilities. That’s all—and nothing more.”
Perhaps he’s right. Still, it’s hard not to wonder what makes people do the things they do.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect to find an answer. At least not in this lifetime.
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