The most popular Netflix show right now in virtually every single country on Earth that has access to the popular streaming service is a series that tells the story of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
For the benefit of those who have not yet watched the Netflix series, Jeffrey Dahmer was an American pedophile and serial killer who murdered and dismembered seventeen young men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts.
Dahmer would lure his victims — almost all of whom were Hispanic or black and part of the LGBTQ community — back to his apartment by offering to pay them for nude photographs. Once inside, Dahmer would drug his victims by sneaking sedatives into their drinks.
You get the idea.
Dahmer was one messed up dude.
Dahmer was finally caught and arrested on July 22, 1991, after one of his victims managed to escape and lead police officers to his apartment.
Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was subsequently convicted of sixteen counts of murder and given a life sentence for each and every one.
That’s 941 years in prison.
But, as it turned out, Dahmer would only serve a little over three years before he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate on November 28, 1994.
Saving a Serial Killer
For all the horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes, the part of his story which I found most troubling, as I watched it on Netflix, did not involve murder, sexual abuse, or cannibalism.
It involved forgiveness.
In the final episode of the series, when Dahmer is incarcerated, he repents, accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and is baptized. As he emerges from the waters, the prison minister slaps him gleefully on the back and says, “Welcome to the family of God!”
Just like that.
I thought to myself, “Surely this part of the story is an embellishment added by Netflix to stoke the fires of outrage.”
But, no. It turns out that Jeffrey Dahmer did, in fact, make some kind of faith commitment to Christ while in prison.
The preacher-turned-prison-minister who baptized Jeffrey Dahmer — a man named Roy Ratcliff — is convinced that his conversion to Christianity was genuine. In fact, he wrote a book about it called: “Dark Journey, Deep Grace: Jeffrey Dahmer’s Story of Faith.”
In it, Ratcliff says he became convinced of Dahmer’s sincerity during seven months of prison visitations. Ratcliff would sit with Dahmer and have weekly Bible lessons, eventually being baptized on May 10, 1994. Afterward, Dahmer even began to distribute Biblical materials to other inmates. Dahmer went so far as to question whether he was sinning against God by continuing to live. “I feel very, very bad about the crimes I’ve committed,” Dahmer told Ratcliff. “In fact, I think I should have been put to death by the state for what I did.”
Dahmer obviously liked, trusted, and respected Ratcliff and even sent him this Thanksgiving Card, which Ratcliff still has to this day:
An outrageous conversion?
Of course, not everyone was convinced that Dahmer’s new-found Christian faith was sincere. His so-called conversion even angered some people. One member of Ratcliffe’s congregation remarked, “If Jeffrey Dahmer is going to heaven, then I don’t want to be there.” Even those who believed that the worst sins could be atoned for by faith in Christ were reluctant to accept Dahmer’s profession of faith as genuine.
As for me, I can understand how someone could feel that way. After all, it seems so manifestly unfair that Dahmer would receive eternal life when he took the lives of seventeen others.
Could God really forgive someone like Jeffrey Dahmer?
The Christian must say, “Yes.”
There’s a whole body of Christian theology devoted to this subject — one that says that no matter how bad one’s life has been, God can and is willing to forgive all if one is genuinely penitent, even at the moment of death.
And that creates an ethical dilemma.
We like to believe that God will forgive us while simultaneously hoping that God won’t forgive another. In reality, most of us think to ourselves, “I hope that Dahmer wasn’t sincere when he accepted Christ,” grasping for a reason to reject Dahmer as a member of God’s family. We wish to judge his faith by his crimes, although he found his faith after his crimes.
There is no doubt that, in life, Dahmer was a monster.
But in death, is Dahmer the man hanging on the cross next to Jesus who, in a moment of clarity, sees his crimes for what they are, recognizes his helpless state, and turns to Jesus in desperation, only to find himself welcomed?
I suppose God only knows.
Is Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven?
I’m sure that even the very suggestion that such a man could find himself welcomed into the arms of God will anger some people.
I get it.
It would be easier to condemn the man.
“Most people wanted Jeffrey Dahmer to fry,” Episcopal theologian Kendall Harmon said after Dahmer was slain on November 28, 1994, in a Wisconsin prison. “Now that he’s dead, they’re celebrating, and they’re absolutely sure he will burn in hell because that’s what happens to people like him.”
But did Dahmer go to hell?
Or is there a chance that we’ll see Brother Dahmer in heaven?
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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