One thing I learned during my law enforcement career is that bad guys are liars and manipulators. They will say whatever they need to say and act however they need to act to put themselves in a position of advantage – a position from which they can escape, which was the most common course of action I encountered, or a position from which they can attack you if that’s their intent. They stall, they distract, they negotiate, and they wait, sometimes patiently, for an opportunity to exploit a vulnerability.
Over time, I learned to pay far less attention to what someone was saying and far more attention to what they were doing. For a human being, talk is cheap. Actions really do speak louder than words.
After a tragic event like the one in the video above, mainstream news outlets will often bring on a mental-health professional to discuss whether better treatment, closer monitoring, or earlier screening might have prevented the attack. Another dimension of reality that mainstream media rarely, if ever, discusses is spiritual reality. In a general sense, it shouldn’t surprise us that many contemporary psychological and psychiatric professionals do not give substantial weight to spiritual explanations. In my opinion, that can lead us to neglect the more important questions about the soul, morality, evil, and human nature.
But here is the practical point: if I’m visiting New York City and someone pulls a knife and begins attacking people, does it matter to me in that moment whether the person has a diagnosed mental illness, an undiagnosed mental illness, a substance-induced condition, some spiritual affliction, or no identifiable condition at all?
No, not when the question is whether I am facing an imminent deadly threat.
I cannot know what motivated the attack, or what is ultimately happening in that person’s heart. Those things are hidden from me. What I can observe is conduct.
What is the person doing? How close are they? What is their posture? Where are they moving? Are they advancing? Are they armed? Are they attacking someone? Have they demonstrated the ability and apparent intent to cause death or serious bodily harm? Is the threat imminent?
Those are the questions that matter when seconds count.
And there is an important distinction here. Recognizing that someone may have a mental illness does not make the person less dangerous. In my experience, it may make them more dangerous because that person may be far more experienced at doing the least expected things. Odd things. Awkward things that reset my OODA loop to observe and orient as I ask myself, what am I seeing here? When an individual is actually committing an imminent violent attack, the existence or absence of a psychiatric diagnosis does not erase the immediate danger created by his or her conduct.
The same is true of the spiritual questions.
What if someone has immersed himself in the occult? What if their problem is that of diabolic oppression, obsession, or possession? What if there is no mental illness whatsoever and the simplest explanation is that the person has chosen to do something wicked?
I cannot know the answer to those questions in the middle of a deadly-force encounter.
And that is precisely the point.
I don’t need to know everything or anything, for that matter, about a person’s heart before recognizing what his hands are doing.
I don’t need to understand every cause before responding to an imminent threat. We ought to be soft-hearted but not soft-headed. False compassion is a curse and pox upon the land in the same way that political correctness is a curse and a pox upon the land. If you haven’t ever seen Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s talk on false compassion, it is pure gold:
And I don’t need to determine whether someone has a mental illness, is spiritually afflicted, morally corrupt, or some combination of those things before recognizing an imminent deadly threat.
Those questions may matter enormously afterward, to investigators, physicians, courts, families, clergy, and ultimately to God. But they are not mine to answer in the fraction of a second in which someone is trying to kill me or someone I’m responsible for, like my wife and children.
Christianity teaches that God alone ultimately knows the heart. “…man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
That should produce humility, not passivity.
I can refuse to presume to know another person’s soul while still taking their actions seriously. I can have compassion for human brokenness without confusing compassion with surrendering an innocent person’s life to an unjust aggressor. I can pray for the person who is attacking and still recognize that the attack must be stopped.
Because when an unjust aggressor initiates an imminent deadly threat, my responsibility is not to diagnose the soul of the aggressor.
My responsibility is to protect innocent life.
God judges the heart.
I have to deal with the hands.