Why did they do it?

Popular Culture Through a Biblical Lens ^ | February 27, 2012 | Ellen Makkai

[ellenbrewster]

Leave it to our current crop of mental health professionals not to understand self-sacrifice.

The Denver Post recently recalled two separate murderous incidents where two women, Jaquie Creazzo and Jeannie VanVelkinburgh, unsuccessfully tried to intervene and prevent the unrelated murders of strangers. Both women were left paralyzed during their noble attempts.

“Why did they do it?” is the question being pondered by experts, according to Leaf Van Boven, associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado. Obviously the concept of altruism is lost on many intellectuals.

“They may have an acute emotionally intense feeling of right and wrong. It’s not entirely clear,” says Van Boven. He makes it sound as if the two heroines suffered from some pitiful psychological disorder.

It’s little wonder that the present-day intellegencia is stumped. Unlike bygone days when the study of Biblical principals was de rigueur, the near-expulsion of the Scriptures from academia and the public square has left us with nary a thought except “looking out for number one” and “Me first.”

Do you suppose Creazzo and VanVelkinburgh were Bible readers? If not, perhaps they heard the accounts of heroic soldiers throwing themselves on hand grenades to save others.

As the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking approaches, I wonder if these two splendid ladies knew the true selflessness displayed during that tragedy. Unlike James Cameron’s film, which was visually stunning but historically inaccurate, passengers and crew gave their lives to secure the rescue of 710, regardless of those survivors’ social rank.

Intense efforts were made to bring third-class passengers up on deck and to safety. Multimillionaires Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor continuously helped women and children onto the lifeboats while refusing to take their own assumed seats. The men died with 1,514 others.

Per chance, were Creazzo and VanVelkinburgh influenced by Biblical themes once prevalent in literature? In “A Tale of Two Cities” Charles Dickens’ unconventional hero is the alcoholic Sidney Carton who, in his one sober moment, goes altruistically to the guillotine in place of another, saying. “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done…”

In the last 60 years, the concept of self-sacrifice has been muted in our egocentric culture. Yet, in the face of severe violence, our women of note silenced the instinct of self-preservation.

I applaud Professor Van Boven’s first analysis. “It may be that these individuals experience an overwhelming sense of empathy and moral calling that compels them to act.”

What Van Boven calls empthy and moral calling, an old preacher friend would call “divinely imparted prompting” in the hearts of Jaquie Creazzo and Jeanie VanVelkenburgh.

Bible Byte: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

(Former syndicated columnist Ellen Makkai invites you to join her in cyberspace at www.ellenmakkai.com)

[ConorMacNessa]

Back in the Dark Ages, i.e. before 1964, there was a legal maxim that explains their behaviour perfectly:

Necessity calls forth a rescue.

That's all gone now.



Nos genuflectitur ad non princeps sed Princeps Pacem!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[AndyTheBear]

“They may have an acute emotionally intense feeling of right and wrong. It’s not entirely clear,” says Van Boven.

Thorough going naturalists must abandon both the idea of people really making choices, and the idea that some choices really can be good or evil...which creates for them no end of apparent anomalies in human behavior.