I write this blog Thursday evening. By morning the police may or may not have caught the L.A. cop killer who has already taken three lives. With a hit list and a host of grievances, suspect Chris Dorner, a former cop himself, has threatened to kill until his demands are met, and the police department tells the truth about what he believes was a wrongful dismissal from the force. My focus is the rambling manifesto that Dorner sent to CNN. “This is my last resort,” he wrote. “The LAPD has suppressed the truth, and it has now led to deadly consequences.”
But that’s not all we learn from his defensive document. As a child his parents sent him to a private Christian school. But along the way, he turned bitter against Christianity. In his published rant he expresses anger about being called the”N” word on the playground and subsequently punching the offender. Dorner says this about the teacher who disciplined him: He, “stated as good Christians we are to turn the other cheek as Jesus did. Problem is, I’m not a f***ing Christian and that old book, made of fiction and limited non-fiction, called the Bible, never once stated Jesus was called a n****r.” He further defends his killing spree by saying, “I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North.”
There is much more to this story we’ll be learning, but a couple of things are clear. Dorner is obsessed with a narcissistic belief in his own rightness, no matter what anyone else thinks, and that gives him to right to kill. Such moral arrogance can only be described as Luciferian. While we certainly lament the racism he suffered, it’s clear that Dorner was not motivated by a Martin Luther King ethical view of life. It’s as if he’s been plotting revenge since childhood, waiting for a reason to strike back. His anger at God and the Bible is most troubling. Peel back everything and my hunch is that a generational curse of murder was activated on the playground that day. His contention that a “personal code of ethics” is enough to guide his life reminds us that internal moral codes aren’t sufficient to restrain evil behavior. Man needs a transcendent God who sets the rules governing human conduct, such as the Decalogue. And the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is one edict this L. A. cop killer should have heeded, from the very Bible he mocked.
