"There's A Monster Under My Bed... Jerry Sandusky"

As a father, I go to great lengths to dispel the fear of monsters from the mind of my five year old daughter Madilyn.  Of our four children, she, being the youngest, is the last in need of her daddy to defeat the monsters that lurk in the shadows of her bedroom.

It's a great trophy of victory that I have won to have convinced my other three children that monsters don't exist, and it's all because their daddy, who can not be defeated -- after all I am stronger than all other daddies -- has single-handily chased them forever away from our abode. The older three go to sleep soundly each night knowing that monsters don't play Chutes and Ladders in their room once their eyelids have closed tightly.  My job as a father... complete (well, nearly).

Sadly, we've recently learned, again and again albeit, that monsters do exist.  And after having convinced my children that monsters don't exist, I'll have to teach them again how to protect themselves from these supposedly non-existent entities that, actually, in fact do exist.

Jerry Sandusky, former assistant coach for Penn St, proved this recently to us.  He reassured us again that monsters exist.

Many young, innocent boys learned this tragic tale first hand at Jerry Sandusky's home and on the campus of Penn State.  They, however, had no one present to protect them and ward off their monster.  Their monster took the most tragic form: caregiver and father figure.  This disguise dehumanized these children to the point that their ability to ever live sane, normal lives has been greatly diminished.  How will they ever fully trust again?

I'm sure they will question their self worth until the day they die, if not for the restoring help of our Loving Father -- to which the title itself will be the greatest of hurdles.  Their only knowledge of a "loving father" proved to be a grotesque, manipulating monster hiding in the most twisted, unassuming disguise... a father figure.

Society though did, exactly what I've done throughout this blog.  I labeled Jerry Sandusky.  We needed too.  If he's a monster, atypical of humanity, then we can rest assured knowing that what Jerry Sandusky has done is the exception to our race and not the norm.  We need him to carry a label other than human so that we can sleep soundly at night and ward off fictitious monsters that pose no real threat.  We don't, however, want to deal with the monster that is ourselves:

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9

 The acts he committed are so heinous, and 99.9% of the people reading this article have never ever considered doing something so heinous, at least I hope this to be true.  What he did repulses us. But naturally speaking this is humanity's true nature peeking its monstrous head up through the thin crust of supposed civility brandishing our truest hues of gray scaled colors.  Sandusky won't be cured by 500 years in prison.  The punishment here, in my opinion, doesn't fit the crime because of the devastation to these, now, young men can never be calculated.  It just proves to show us that humanity is desperately wicked.  It further proves that mankind needs saving.  Humanity needs resurrection from the sin and death we bath in daily.  We're entirely saturated in it.  Even the best among us has a human heart, and that if its inner most secrets were known publicly we'd be very embarrassed by its contents.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away."  Isaiah 64:6

Let us learn from this despite having too many teachers already, that the only hope for humanity DOES NOT exist within us.  Our only hope of salvation comes from above.  The only hope we have from our desperately wicked ways is the fact that there's a Loving Father who knows no sin, and doesn't have a human heart.  He desperately wants to save us from the monsters lurking in the shadows of our own rooms... that is, our hearts.  In Christ is true salvation, perfect love where we need not be afraid any longer of who we are and the vast potential for wicked that lies silent at times but explodes to the surface in lucid moments of exposure.  When the pleasantries have all been exhausted and the thin veil of niceness has been worn thin, humanity shows itself truly and no amount of self help or self actualization can ever save us.  Our salvation is not further conformation to this world, but true and ultimate transformation where we become new creatures -- something that didn't exist before -- in Christ (I Corinthians 5:17).

God help humanity.  Help us because we're broken...

To understand our sinfulness is to see our need for salvation.  Jesus sees it.  He did something about it.  He didn't just label us "monsters" then went on His divinely merry way.  No.  He redeemed us from the curse of sin and death by becoming just like us... human.  Yet He conquered the monster of sin, because He knew we could not.

This is what we need to learn from this tragic scandal... that we are in need of saving.  We ignore this too often.  And no matter how many times humanity rears its ugly head, we keep ignoring it.  We dissolve the problem down and isolate the problem to the label "criminally insane" and ignore the reality that evil does in fact exist and it is immediate in our common humanity.  This is the great deception, that evil doesn't exist and is only an ideology of the theologically minded.  This attitude continues in the statement, "Who can believe those religious, Jesus believing nut jobs anyway?"  The world can agree with it or not, but we nut jobs corner the market on understanding evil.  In order for us to come into the hallowed ranks of "nut-job-ed-ness", we have to first admit our wickedness.  Christ promises us that if we confess our transgressions -- which is church speak for admit we are evil -- that He'll just as quickly as we can ask forgive us and place His own heart within us.

Before you quickly dismiss the Jerry Sandusky scandal as just another sick-o exposed and behind bars, let the reality sink in a bit that we share his human DNA.  We may not share his same evil proclivity, and would never even think to, but we share the same evil that keeps us separated from our Loving Father.  So, tonight, as we tuck ourselves into bed, and we turn out the lights to go to sleep, let us go to bed knowing that we have a perfect, loving, heavenly Father who courageously wants to ward off and rid our hearts from the monster that lurks within our own humanity.  He has chased them all from under our beds and we can rest soundly in Him, if we will believe.