Didn’t pull any punches today, folks. When the Nazis come after you it is time to shoot straight in return. Took on some nasty players today, but had to provide background information on, for example, the origination of the Mishnah, Gemara, and Talmud, etc. Hopefully useful to everyone, and a warning for those trying to “sneak in” to the church with their hatred.
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Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. Today in our Bible reading, we read Jeremiah 23–25 together. It included a beautiful new-covenant text that one listener wants you to explain more. The listener is Matthew. He wrote, “Pastor John, hello to you. I find myself often in debates with friends and family over Calvinism and Arminianism. They’re all Arminian. I try to represent the other side with clarity and charity.
“One of the arguments that I come back to repeatedly is about free will and what I see in Jeremiah 24:7: ‘I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.’ What I see in this text is that, of course, we all have free will, the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire. So, what we need are new desires that want the right things. God must act to give us new desires or we are hopeless. This is sovereign grace in the miracle of regeneration. How much of your discussions over free will centers on this fact, that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart, a new will?”
First, let me commend Matthew for defining what he means by free will. That’s really unusual. I appreciate it very much, because in most discussions people use the phrase as though it were clear, when in fact most people have very different views of what free will means. He has defined it, so I can answer his question with more precision.
Defining ‘Free Will’
He says that free will is “the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire.” That’s a pretty shrewd and careful definition. Freedom of the will, he says, is the freedom “to do and believe what we most desire.” And I think that if we are going to affirm the existence of free will among fallen people like us, that’s the definition we need to use, because it answers the question of how people can be free whom the Bible says are dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:5), slaves of sin (Romans 6:20), under the dominion of sin (Romans 3:9), blind to spiritual reality (2 Corinthians 4:4), hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18), and unable to submit to God (Romans 8:7).
“God knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible.”
So, given Matthew’s definition of freedom, such dead, enslaved, dominated, blind, hard, impotent people have freedom of the will, because it means that they are free to do and believe what they most desire — namely, sin. That’s what they’re free to do. And I would agree that if we’re going to maintain that the will is free, that is the definition we should use. So, to speak of free will then is to speak of a will that is free to do and believe what it most desires — but is not free to desire God above all else.
What Arminians Want
What I have found, therefore, is that most people who reject Calvinistic or Reformed understandings of human depravity and sovereign grace — which is required to bring a dead, hard, blind person to saving faith — is that this definition of free will is not acceptable to them. It’s not acceptable because it still leaves a person unable to provide the decisive thing that leads to conversion — namely, the strongest desire to trust Christ. It leaves a person in the bondage of their strongest desires, which are against God.
Saying that a person is free to do what he most desires, but he’s not free to create desires for God, does not give the Arminian what he wants. And what’s that? A fair definition of what the Arminian requires is free will defined as the power of decisive self-determination. In other words, what the Arminian requires is that, at the precise point of conversion, where saving faith comes into being, it is man and not God that at that point provides the decisive and effective influence. That’s what the Arminian must have to make his views work. Whatever influences God may give prior to that point — call them “prevenient grace,” which is what the Arminian wants to call all the illuminating, freeing grace of God — the Arminian insists that the final, decisive creation of the strongest effective desire for Christ must be self-determined, human-determined, not God-determined.
So, Matthew asks me, “How much of your discussions over free will centers on the fact that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart and a new will?” My answer now is that I don’t usually start with Matthew’s definition of free will. It may be helpful in some discussions to define free will that way, but I find that it is most illuminating, most convicting, most clarifying to start with the definition of free will that Arminians really do need in order for their views to make sense — namely, the definition that free will is the power of decisive self-determination (or I sometimes use the phrase “ultimate self-determination”). With this definition, then, it appears that Arminians believe in such free will and Calvinists do not believe in such free will. I certainly do not believe there is such a thing as human free will defined as decisive self-determination.
Bound to Sovereign Grace
At this point in my conversations, what proves to be most clarifying is two things.
First is the abundance of biblical texts that describe the bondage of the will and the necessity of sovereign grace to bring a person out of spiritual deadness into life and faith. For example, in Ephesians 2:5–6, Paul does not say that when we were spiritually dead God gave us a kind of halfway regeneration where we now, in that new halfway state of life, provide ourselves the decisive, self-determining act of faith — the act of producing the strongest desire for Jesus that pushes us over the line to believe. What Paul says is that while we were dead, God not only made us alive but also raised us up with Christ and seated “us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In other words, God’s action is decisive — all the way from death through spiritual resurrection to our firm, saved position in the presence of God in Christ. There are many texts that teach the same thing concerning sovereign grace. That’s the first thing.
“Without God’s sovereign grace, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.”
The other thing that I find clarifying and helpful in conversations with folks is to point out that free will, understood as the power of ultimate or decisive self-determination, is not taught anywhere in the Bible. Not a single verse, not a single text teaches that there is such a thing as the power of ultimate human self-determination. So, where does that idea come from that we must have ultimate self-determination? It comes from a philosophical presupposition that people bring to the Bible. The philosophical presupposition is that if we don’t have ultimate self-determination, we cannot be held accountable for our own beliefs and actions before God. Well, the Bible simply does not affirm that presupposition.
The Bible teaches that God has ways we do not understand and that he knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible, truly accountable — and he, at the same time, is truly sovereign. And oh, we should be thankful for this sovereign grace, because without it, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.
So, if you find yourself — and I’m speaking to those of you who are listening right now — if you find yourself unable to love God, unable to trust Christ, don’t despair. Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Resolve to seek him, come to him. Look to his suffering for the worst of sinners, and ask God for the grace to see and savor Christ.
Fairview Christian Fellowship Church is in one of the hardest-hit areas of Highlands County, North Carolina. With no electricity and spotty cellular reception, Pastor Trevor Allen had no way of letting people know whether there would be a worship service on September 29, but 18 people showed up anyway. They sang and prayed together, celebrated the Lord’s Supper, and listened to a sermon from Matthew 14. Many church members remain trapped by downed trees and washed out roads, and Fairview Christian Fellowship is getting food and water to them.
Covenant Presbyterian Church, Hendersonville, North Carolina
Steve Mirich is a pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina. His home basement took on four feet of flood water mixed with heating fuel from a punctured heating fuel tank. They have pumped out the contaminated water, but the home is uninhabitable because of the fumes. They are waiting to learn if the house will be salvageable. In the meantime, the Mirich children are staying with friends while Steve and his wife stay in a shed on their property.
Covenant did not sustain damage, and volunteers from the church made contact with everyone in the church to make sure they were accounted for and safe. The church body met Wednesday night to pray, cook and eat all the food from the church’s freezer, collect supplies, and discuss how the congregation can meet needs in the community.
“Now we are beginning to look outside the church and make sure everyone is OK,” Mirich said.
He said that even in the devastation, there have been glimpses of community. He and his neighbors have gathered together every evening at the home of a neighbor with a generator to cook their meals together. He asked that the PCA would pray that Covenant would be a light to the community.
“Praise God for our safety and ask God to help us be a light in those good works he has prepared for us to do,” he said. “God is good, even in the devastation, God is good.”
First Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia
Georgia Power described Hurricane Helene as “the most destructive hurricane in the company’s history.” Augusta, Georgia experienced widespread damage. Mike Hearon, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, shared that approximately 100 families from their church have significant property damage to their home, and about 25 families in the church suffered the loss of their homes from the storm. The church has provided space for MNA to use as a staging area for their relief efforts in the region.
Other PCA churches have also reached out to help First Pres. Volunteers from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Athens brought a truckload of supplies, including power equipment for cleanup. Perimeter Church reached out and offered to arrange temporary housing for members who need shelter.
Hazelwood Presbyterian Church, Waynesville, North Carolina
Hazelwood Presbyterian Church in Waynesville, North Carolina sustained some damage, including flooded basements, mud strewn across the parking lot, and some blocked walkways.
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Why do I ask God to save my son? Am I praying that the Lord would draw him to himself so I can be comforted? Surely, that comfort is just a side effect—joyful though it would be. Or do I plead with God so my son can be comforted? Certainly, that would be a blessing. But is that all there is to it—my son’s happiness? Or do I pray for his salvation so God’s name would be glorified?
As a teenager, our son “came out” as a “homosexual agnostic” on Facebook. Prior to this, there had been months of rumblings and arguments in our home about what Scripture actually teaches about homosexuality, but on that day, reading his statement in black and white, it felt like a blow to my chest. Weak-kneed, I sat down abruptly.
No! No! No! This can’t be happening! Can it? Our son?
I could vividly picture his 7-year-old self—his big brown eyes turned up to me, while his upper lip did that pointy thing it did when he was trying to articulate something important to him. “Mommy, I want to be a missionary pilot when I grow up. I can help bring Bibles and food to places trains can’t go.” I had drawn him close in a hug then, my heart brimming with joy. And pride.
What went wrong? Was it my pride in his precocious achievements? Was my homeschooling the problem? Was I too strict?
Our son’s coming out had only been the beginning of a slippery slope: he soon became a self-proclaimed “bisexual atheist,” then progressed to a “gender-fluid atheist,” all the while blaming us for brainwashing him as a kid and “force-feeding him a Book that called him an abomination.”
Now our son is an adult, and his Facebook intro reads—in part—“Queer. Non-binary.”
Daily, grief gnaws at my soul. Sometimes it threatens to become all-consuming and I’m tempted to let the darkness engulf me. But God, through a recent sermon, graciously brought to mind these precious words: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4).
Mourning
The pain I feel over the spiritual loss of my son is real. It feels like a death that keeps on dying, and the grief comes in waves. How do I mourn well? In the context of this passage in Matthew, it’s not just those who mourn but also the poor in spirit (v. 3) and the meek (v. 5) who are called blessed.
So I’m to recognize my spiritual poverty and with a humble heart bring my grief to the Lord. I recognize I wasn’t a perfect mother—far from it. Many a time I disciplined in anger, got puffed up with pride (even though I knew that I owed every aspect of my life to God’s grace), or thought I was in control and acted that way. I’m not saying my sin caused my son’s sin. But my sin is as real as his. So I mourn it and ask my gracious Father to forgive me. Lord, have mercy! I need you.
When I look at the wretchedness that’s in my sinful flesh with mournful repentance, I’m able to look at the sin in my son’s life and mourn it for what it is—
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Nehemiah adopts the posture of one who can make no demands, who will assert no rights. He casts himself upon the good pleasure of the God of heaven. He prays as a leader on behalf of a sinful people, among whom he counts himself. He does not cover up the sin that should disqualify him from seeking God but instead confesses it and runs to God who has extended the scepter of mercy, access, and promise.
O You who hear prayer, to You all flesh will come. (Psalm 65:2, NKJV)
How do you typically begin your prayers? Do you refer to God in the same way each time, perhaps “Father” or “Holy Lord” or “Almighty God”? In the model prayer Jesus taught us, He has us enter the presence of God by addressing Him as “our Father in heaven” and “Father” is a favorite appellation for Him, as can be seen in His high priestly prayer of John 17.
When Nehemiah heard the hard news of the state of his countrymen and of Jerusalem, he was moved to tears and moved to cry out to the “God of heaven,” the living and true God who ruled on high over all things. Now, as he turns to prayer, how does he begin?
He begins with a double name, invoking the generic name for God (Elohim) and the name of covenant bond (Yahweh). He is the God who has entered into personal relationship with a particular people. In using those names it is tantamount to invoking God’s invitation to access, “I am God, your God, and you are My people,” much like we would use the name “Father” to testify to our personal adoptive relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
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The burdens and suffering of Southern Appalachians are real and heavy, but they are not too heavy for Jesus. His wounds and scars say otherwise, as does the resounding hope of the empty tomb. Times of crisis also prompt questions such as, “What can we do?” or “How can I help?” Scripture teaches us that “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor. 12:26). Despite geographical distance, the church shares a unity with its hurting brothers and sisters as one body, and we are called to serve and love our neighbors as ourselves.
This past year, my family relocated from the mountains of North Carolina to the coast. Yet a piece of my heart will always be in the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina. Reading reports of the lives lost and seeing photos of the physical devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has made my heart ache for the place I once called home. My family lived in Boone, North Carolina, for almost eight years, and some of our most cherished memories were made there. Southern Appalachia is a special place with wonderful people, churches, and institutions. Appalachians are resilient people who need prayer and support during this difficult time.
Tragic situations often prompt big questions such as, “Why would God allow this?” or “Where is God?” These questions wrestle with God’s sovereignty and the nature of suffering, death, and pain in this life. Speaking on suffering, Dr. R.C. Sproul comments, “The apostle said he was ‘hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed.’ He made no attempt to mask his pain in a fraudulent piety. The Christian is not a Stoic. Neither does he flee into a fantasy world that denies the reality of suffering. Paul freely admitted the pressure he experienced.” The people of Southern Appalachia are being hard pressed on every side. The pain of this world is staring them right in the face. There’s no time for “fraudulent piety” or “denying the reality” of pain and suffering. Many are without power and clean water and are cut off from the rest of the world due to collapsed roads.
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The Bible commands us to love Christians, our church members, our families, and our nations in specific ways. But it doesn’t command us to prefer people with our skin colour over others. Black people are not my people, and white people are not your people either. Unlike our ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, our skin colours do not shape our core identities.
On my layover in Amsterdam between my flight from Ghana to Canada, a black man stood beside me at the airport’s arcade. I asked him a question, but he looked bewildered. I repeated the question several times until he finally said, “I do not speak your language.”
I was speaking in Fante, but he replied in English. I was 10 years old, and it was my first time outside of Ghana. He was the first black person I met who wasn’t Ghanaian. We had the same skin colour, but we had different languages, nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities.
He wasn’t one of my people.
White supremacists, woke people, and some versions of Christian nationalists, however, say otherwise. They maintain that black people are my people.
Earlier this week Stephen Wolfe, the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, said:
“Christianity—as the true religion affirming what is true, good and beautiful— commands you to love all but to prefer your people over other peoples.”
In reply, I said:
“If he means Christianity commands me to prefer Christians over other people, he’s right. If he means Christianity commands me to prefer people with my skin colour over other people, he’s shamefully wrong.”
His preceding and subsequent social media posts suggest he was referring to people who share our skin colours, not people who share our faith. This, of course, isn’t the first time Stephen Wolfe and his group of so-called Christian nationalists have made concerning comments about “race.” Some of these Christian nationalists have embraced a soft version of kinism that is akin to Big Eva’s soft version of critical race theory.
Earlier this month, one of their own produced a “White Boy Summer” video that positively featured Nazi Germany propaganda and white nationalists. One of the people featured in the video is a former pastor who said:
“Why do they keep insisting that belief in racial superiority and inferiority means we’ve denied salvation to inferior races? 19th-c. Southern Christians believed in white superiority, and were more zealous and successful in evangelizing blacks than any “anti-racist” today…In charity we ought to expect this: Christians who humbly recognize their own superiority thereby recognize their special duty to seek the good of their inferiors. This is basic obedience to the fifth commandment.”
Many Christian nationalists celebrated the video. However, this is because some of them were just undiscerning about its racist agenda. However, when Doug Wilson shared his critique of the video, Stephen Wolfe replied:
“A better tactic would be friendliness to these young rightwing guys.”
He’s forgotten that friendship with the world is enmity with God. (James 4:4)
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If for most ancient idolaters it was the human form with its physical qualities that represented their highest conception of themselves, for us as moderns it is the human mind, a calculating rationality or unconstrained will, disembodied and stripped of embodied particularity. Pursuing this ideal, we constructed computers in this image—an image of ourselves as we hoped to be. Whereas ancient idols had mouths but did not speak, Siri speaks but with no mouth, and listens without ears. Having made such images and given ourselves over to them, we have increasingly become like them.
Have you ever stopped, in the middle of checking your notifications for the umpteenth time after some post you thought particularly witty or important, to reflect on how pathetic you must look: measuring your social significance by means of a number next to a heart icon? “137 likes…ooh…138—I’m really somethin’ today.”
Human beings crave social affirmation. There’s nothing wrong with that, on one level; that’s how God made us: “It is not good for man to be alone.” Like all natural desires, it was transformed into an unquenchable thirst by the disordering effects of the Fall, so that we engage in pathological attention-seeking behaviors, from the 3-year-old’s tantrum to the teenage boy’s death-defying-dare to the conquering general’s blood-soaked quest for glory. But buried beneath the often foolish and overwrought expressions of this desires lies a wholesome and very human urge to know oneself as one is known, to be seen and recognized and loved by one’s fellow man—and hopefully to see and recognize and love in return.
But in the digital age, something strange has happened to this fundamental human urge: it has become dehumanized. For human beings, the various means by which we give and receive social affirmation are manifold; indeed, no two are quite alike. I feel a warm glow when I receive tokens of my wife’s love, my children’s affection, my parents’ esteem, my coworkers’ respect, my customers’ satisfaction, etc. But these experiences are not quite reducible to one another, and indeed, we recognize it as a pathology in ourselves when, starved of recognition in one sphere of relationships, we try, leech-like, to suck such recognition out of another relationship—such as when a man thwarted in his workplace demands that his wife make up the difference. But digital technology encourages us—nay, positively programs us—to reduce each of these experiences into one quantifiable interchangeable measure of admiration: a number (or to be precise, two numbers: likes/reactions and reposts/shares). We have traded the infinite shades of qualitative difference between a child’s hug and a colleague’s pat on the back for a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, yes or no, one or zero. We have, in short, computerized ourselves.
As I’ve been reading and reflecting on digital technology over the past few months, a consistent theme has been the ways in which the digital is digitizing us—that is, how our technologies are changing our sense of what it means to be human and remaking us in their image. In debates over artificial intelligence, the question everyone wants an answer to is, “So can we actually create an artificial intelligence that matches human intelligence?” Well, no, we can’t, because human intelligence is always embodied (not to mention ensouled), and thus qualitatively different. There are always two ways of meeting a benchmark, though: you can raise your performance till you clear the benchmark, or you can lower the bar. If we can’t make computers human, we can at least make humans computer-like.
This is a constant theme of Anton Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making: even as we make virtual reality ever more realistic, the virtual does not lose its distinction from the real: we know that “Facebook friends” is not the same as “IRL [in real life] friends,” that cybersex isn’t real sex.
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All ecosystems are in need of renewal and revival. Christian ecosystems especially. And I believe a marker of both renewal and revival is a brave commitment to flush out the toxins within a system whatever the personal cost to you, or the relational ties to others. We need to heed the words of 1Peter 5.
Arcissist NOT Narcissist
I received a lot of feedback concerning my recent post on the difference between what I now term”‘arcissists” and “narcissists”.
There were a few minor quibbles over why we have such a therapeutic culture, and a concern that the term “narcissist” is overused (hint: it is!). But the term “arcissist? Well it seems to fit the presenting issues I am talking about.
Okay, so the bloke (and it’s usually a bloke) might not be full blown narcissist, but he’s got a nasty habit of shredding and bullying anyone in his orbit who dares to challenge him. Or even if they don’t dare to challenge him.
The “arcissist” has a keen radar on everyone else’s issues, and very little on their own. They will pick and pick at your supposed sinfulness, but their rampant bad behaviour? They are – as I have heard it said – just being a little bit grumpy.
And there is a reason for that. In fact there are a number of reasons. The first reason of course is the lack of emotional intelligence in the arcissist themselves. Or perhaps – in theological terms – the presence of ongoing sin that hardens them and deceives them as to their true behaviour.
Arcissistic Ecosystems
But the arcissist is not the primary problem. “What?” I hear you say!, “How can that be?” Simply this: Bullying leaders would not be able to do what they do unless they are at the centre of an ecosystem that at the very least permits their behaviour by turning a blind eye, or encourages it by being the gatekeeper against all criticism.
In other words the arcissist needs an ecosystem in order to first survive and then to thrive. The behaviour and the overlooking of it by others, is reinforcing.
In all ecosystems there are macro and micro participants that keep the system going. So naturally this is also the case in the arcissistic ecosystem. Let’s unpack the macro participants today and see what the wider issues are, and we will look at the micro participants in the next post.
Macro: The Culture “Out There”
Throughout history the primary problem in churches has been the infestation of “out there” values “in here”. In other words the conformity to the world that infects the church. And it’s true of the arcissistic ecosystem as well.
When it comes to church ecosystems the wider culture has too often been allowed to set the tone. Now in a sense this has always been an issue for the church, and it presents in different ways at different times in history.
But in our current time, with its celebrity focus, and its oft-uncritical default commitment to impressiveness over integrity, and its desire to “get stuff done”, this problem has ramped up. All sorts of arcisissts are not only excused, but feted by church ecosystems. And it is having consequences.
When we see the secular world give oxygen to self-purposing, self-focussed and selfish behaviours, then it stands to reason that the water from that ecosystem will leak into the church pond. Especially without good Biblical critique.
We have seen this in the recent past with examples such as Mark Driscoll’s increasing volatility and platform rants. His church put up with it because it aped the wider culture’s commitment to the apex leader who “gets things done”. He also held all of the cultural, if not formal, power within the ecosystem, making it almost impossible, or at least very costly, to bring about change.
That we keep coming around to this arcissistic issue tells us that, unlike 3 John, in which the apostle calls out the toxic leadership of “Diotrophes, who likes to be first”, indicates we have not figured out how to solve it.
With failing attendances, weak leaders, and unclear direction, the modern day Diotrophes is, by contrast, seen as a strong decisive leader (and certainly thinks of himself as one, and is adulated as such by his followers).
But the fruit is so often bitter. The result is so often that other people are hurt and damaged in the process. The ends do not justify the means. It’s hard to see how we get to such leadership from following Christ. But hey, here we are!
Macro: The Culture “In Here”
Of course, just as Jerusalem at its worst back in the days of its idolatrous kings was not such much destroyed from without, as much as hollowed out from within, so too the church ecosystem. Arcissism, where it exists in wider church structures such as denominations, is too often tolerated – and often rewarded – by a system whose aim is to ensure its own survival first and foremost.
Church denominations have to examine themselves, and realise that their own structures may not only be implicitly encouraging such types of leaders, but that they may then be going out of their way to protect such leaders when they behave poorly (again).
There’s a myth that the likes of Driscoll got away with it – and continues to do so – because there are insufficient structures and leadership dynamics to stop him. He’s the biggest player in the house, the house that he himself built.
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Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Thursday, October 10, 2024
I spent the first nine years of my career investigating crimes as a committed atheist. Even then, I would have approved the notion that witnesses who fail to agree on every detail, raise as many questions as they seem to answer and are inaccurate in some detail of the event, could still be trusted as reliable eyewitnesses. Even my old atheist criteria for eyewitnesses would have been sufficient to make the case for gospel reliability. I now know that the gospels actually exceed what I would require to consider them reliable.
I’ve worked more cases involving witnesses than I care to count. A career in law enforcement will put you in direct contact with eyewitnesses on a daily basis, starting with your very first night on the job. After interviewing literally thousands of witnesses over the course of twenty five years, I think I’ve learned something about reliable eyewitness testimony. I want to share three simple characteristics of reliable eyewitness testimony and relate these three characteristics to the Gospels:
Reliable Eyewitnesses Never Agree
In all the cases I’ve ever worked, from simple theft and assault cases, to robberies and homicides, I’ve yet to have a case where the witnesses of the event agreed on every single detail. It’s never happened. I’ve learned that perspective is important, and it’s not just one’s physical perspective that determines what a witness did or didn’t see. When you’re staring down the barrel of a robber’s pistol, you have a tendency to miss certain details that are picked up by the witness who is watching from across the isle of the liquor store. There are many factors that contribute to one’s perception of an event. Physical location, past experience, familiarity with a feature of the crime scene; a witness’ physical, emotional and psychological distinctives play a role in what they see and how they communicate this testimony after the fact. No two people are alike, so no two people experience an event in precisely the same way. If you’ve got three witnesses in a murder case, expect three slightly different versions of the event. Don’t panic, that’s normal. In fact, when three different witnesses tell me the exact same thing, I start to get suspicious.
Reliable Eyewitnesses Raise Questions
As a young, inexperienced investigator, I used to think that an eyewitness would answer all my questions about an event. I wish this were true, but the reality is that for every question an eyewitness answers about what occurred at a crime scene, a new question is often raised. There are times when eyewitnesses even raise more questions than they have answered. I’ve worked a number of cold-case homicides in which an eyewitness account was captured decades ago, at the time of the original investigation. After reading the testimony, I was left with a few troubling questions. How could the crime have occurred like the witness described it? How could the suspect have done what the witness said? There are times when an eyewitness just doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.
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