Читать книгу Chronicle of a Silence Endured - Guido da Verona - Страница 4

But Jesus said to him “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

-Luke 22:48 NIV

“I just can’t believe with the religious foundation that you were raised with that you are living your life this way!”

As the blood slowly crawled up to our hero’s head, he turned his gaze towards her and gently answered,

“It’s true, isn’t it. I am living in conflict and God cannot be happy about that.”

“No He can’t,” she continued, “and you must remember that we were all put on earth for a purpose, each of us, all of us have a reason why we are here and marriage is the major building block for God’s blessings.” She was tense in her tone, working herself up. Her blood too, it seems, was moving within her small frame the same way it was for our hero.

He replied, “Oh, I understand perfectly what you are saying to me. And you’re right. I see it the same way you do.”

She shook her head in stern agreement, conviction.

Then, after a long pause he said, “But tell me, what you do about your feet being cut off as a child?”

In a jerk reflex, her eyes darted back at him and her mouth fell open. No response, just shock….the unmistakable trace of embarrassment clinging to her countenance.

Our hero started feverishly,

“What do you do when your hands and feet have been cut off at the age of 8, taken from you? Do you have any idea how hard assimilation is for me? You see, Andrea, we all can’t walk the same way you do anymore than we can’t all hold on to the things that we love most the same way you do. It’s easy for people who have not gone through this to point the finger and say we are simply defiant, rebellious or that we should get over it. Did you know that research has shown that the brain functions of post-trauma survivors are different than those without? The trauma-exposed brain simply cannot choose and self-regulate with the same ease and accuracy as one that has not been, or at least not to the same degree. Those of us who have to endure the rest of our lives with the weight of this cross…with what feet do we walk towards our dreams in this world? With what hands do we hold on to those people and things we love most, including your God Himself? The best we can do is work towards forgiveness, and still the world, not knowing any better, expects us to just get over this like it’s nothing, when in fact it’s everything. And so we mask our suffering and incompetence with the hopes that everything will work itself out, that our weaknesses, our amputated souls won’t fail us or scare off the people in our lives. And that’s a hell of a lot to deal with. Living like this consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Moving moment to moment of a life lived with this is exhausting, especially when you didn’t do a damn thing to deserve it. That’s the real killer, knowing you didn’t do a damn thing. The devil himself did it, but it is you who carries the guilt. My question has always been, does God make exceptions for people like us?”

Our hero had lost track of himself, speaking about this to his older cousin’s wife, while doing his best to maintain an even tone - and all with a significant degree of futility. He noted her small frame now recoiled, shrank from the inside; her shoulders also sank beneath her moist skin, her gaze was pulled slowly down to the ground, and then it slept temporarily at the far right corner of the room. She smiled back to herself, her eyes squinting. She shifted on her seat in discomfort and let out a tiny, involuntary gasp of laughter. “Oh yeah, that.” She thought to herself.

“Look, I’m sorry, I…” Her voice grew grim.

“Don’t apologize,” our hero interrupted respectfully, stroking her back gently, smiling over to her. Her thin, silk blouse was blotted dark with her sweat, forcing our hero to remove his hand quickly. “Do you know what you have given me? You are the onliest family I’ve got left. Outside of you guys I have nothing, so if we are going to fight let’s fight, but there are no walk-outs allowed, no rejections allowed. Fighting or not fighting we are going to have to deal with each other. Besides, I read recently that even hopeless cases can be saved through the right relationship, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do for the first time in 35 years.”

Hopeless case. Hope.

The distance between those two.

Our hero’s eyes searched the open space of his mind in order to give his thoughts some room, then his eyes accidentally met with Joshua’s, his older cousin, and he could see they had filled with tears. Joshua had been quietly listening the whole time. He’d heard the whole thing in spite of the music and laughter and playing and noise going on all around. Not an appropriate topic to discuss at his youngest son’s 10^th birthday party.

Yet, it was Joshua who had weeks prior had told our hero in a private moment, “I understand that there are three altars in life: The altar of the church, where we celebrate mass as a community. The altar of the family table in the home, where we give thanks for the family and the fruit of our labor, and the altar of the marital bed, where love between a man and a woman is made holy in private by Almighty God.”

The bed…where love is made holy.

It was the winter of 1972….

No, wait.

To tell this right we need to go back further. So let’s make it 1964, the year our hero was born.

Mom and dad had just left Colombia for the US in search of a better life, and readily through intense work established their first home in the Bronx, New York. They had 2 daughters, Virginia, the oldest, and Rosalinda. Dad wanted a son to carry on his name, but months and months of attempts towards pregnancy had yielded no fruit. And then, right at the point where the couple had collectively given up, mom became pregnant with our hero.

The night he was born, dad was working late at the factory and mom had no way of reaching him. She called her friend, a priest by the name of Father Francis, to meet her at the hospital. She had been made unconscious during the c-section, and the child had to be placed in the rigid, box-like enclosure of an incubator for 3 days, due to his low birth weight and unstable heart. It was the end of the third day before he was finally placed in his mother’s arms for the first time.

Right after the birth it was tough to distinguish what it was for mom. Perhaps she felt robbed of her baby’s first cry. She herself had cried and cried for months now, finding it difficult to be gentle with herself. Did she know then that she should be grateful and happy for her child, but still was riddled with sadness and guilt about losing that life-changing experience of birth? That mysterious pressure, that critical hormonal bonding that takes place between mother and child during and immediately following the hellish experience of labor- had it been surrendered to fear disguised in the form of unconsciousness? What had mom grown so scared of that she had refused the obstetrician's advice for a natural birth?

As with most things in this realm of existence, the passing of time led mom to eventually push herself past the sense of shame, to finally accept what happened, and to be appreciative of the good that came out of it. What else could she do? Still however, there were times she wondered if perhaps her son responded better to his father than to her. There seemed to be this uncomfortable, invisible distance between her and her son right from the very start of his fragile life, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, which only exacerbated things in her creeping attitude of ambivalence towards her marriage. The violent shivers of her body and the mental confusion endured when waking up from the birth procedure still haunted her.

Dad on the other hand was a simple man in every way. He was uneducated, unskilled, and equally hard-working. He was unmistakably proud to have his long-anticipated son. Our hero does not remember much about his dad even today. Only that he gave him his first taste of beer when he was seven, and spanking him for letting the soap dry on the car in the sun when he was helping to wash it, but on the same day let him drive it on the highway while sitting on his lap.

But that’s already getting ahead of things.

The first time mom and dad lost our hero he was 2 years old. Mom suddenly turned to dad in the New York shopping center and wondered out loud, “Where’s my son?!” After a brief and frantic search, a store clerk found him in the toy section, sitting on the floor with soiled diapers, ripping boxes open and blissfully playing with the toys.

The second time our hero became lost he was six years old. The family had gone to Bogota on vacation to spend time with the rest of the family. They were all staying in mom’s sister’s house, which was seated across the street from a train track, and led almost directly to the town’s grammar school and main food mart about 2 miles away. The house maid was ordered to make a dinner run for that evening’s supper, and our hero had begged her to let him join. She reluctantly agreed, and then purposefully left him behind on the tracks on the walk back. When the phone rang back at the house it was the police department claiming they had a boy fitting the description mom had given them.

He kept crying, “My mother doesn’t love me, my mother doesn’t love me.”

“Hush child! What are you saying? Pay no mind now, mom’s here and all’s fine.”

1972:

The Year of the Fox

(The Third Time Our Hero Gets Lost)

“Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.”

-Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea

“I was wondering….” asked Fox, after a long silence that seemed to add more darkness to the already existing blackness of the room. He and our hero both laid there wrapped tightly in their individual blankets, next to each other, facing the cracked ceiling as the snow storm gathered strength outside. It was a thick, blanketing snow that obscured the town in a welcome reversal of feathery, glimmering white.

“Wondering what?”

“Well, it’s kinda embarrassing. But you know I don’t consider you just my little cousin. I mean, you mean more than that to me.” Fox's voice was now turning into a cautious and suspect whisper.

“I don’t understand.”

“Well I know you must have your heart broken over the fact that your dad has decided to return to Colombia to be with that other woman, while you are all alone here in New York with your mom, and sisters and your aunts, uncles and cousins you have never known. You’re the man of the house now. You must feel so alone, so scared. Aren’t you?”

“Umm…yes, I suppose…”

“You know you sound almost embarrassed to say that, and I understand. I would be just as scared. That’s why I want to be more than just your cousin. I want to be your brother. Do you think you could let me be your brother?”

Fox spoke ever-softly, making sure to not be heard by our hero’s mother and sisters who were attempting sleep in the next room less than 25 feet away. Having the door closed helped Fox keep the conversation clandestine, and he relished it. How he thanked his God for the fortune!

Fox persisted, “I’m older than you, so I could be your big brother, your protector.”

It had only been 4 months since our hero’s dad had walked out on his family, and all our hero could think about since the nightmare started was reuniting with his dad back in Colombia. He was young indeed, and the first 8 years of his life had been filled with magnificent stories about Colombia that his father had shared with him. Through his father's tales and the gift of his own, magnificent imagination our hero lived perpetually the country’s majestic, emerald mountains, wild, sprawling shorelines, and white, tickling sun. And in just the same breath, gone forever were dad’s thick, hairy, tanned forearms, his grandma’s farm and picadillo, the birthdays celebrated with flying kites, aunts, uncles and older cousins with their funny arguments, then big fights, and then red, cheeky smiles of reconciliation. Good-byes went to enormous turtles laying eggs on the sand at 4 in the morning, and having to wait two interminable hours after breakfast before being allowed to rush the green, salty ocean, kicking sand that sparkled in the sun like stars in the night beneath small, bare, running feet. No more maroon sunsets that stained our hero’s skin red, and huge orange fires with guitars by the glowing ocean and its countless little sharp dancing knives created by the light of the moon.

Left behind.

This wonderful and brittle intangibility all now turned into bone-numbing, below-freezing temperatures, wet snow, dirty sneakers hanging from wires over the streets, vomit and garbage and spilled frozen soup on the asphalt, rats screaming in the kitchen at night, being slapped by girls during recess for not knowing how to speak English, getting spat upon the face from a lineup of boys, and kicked down by other classmates while others looked on and cheered for more. It had all now transformed into tears sinking into the deepest parts of a pillow during the darkest hours of the sub-zero nights, absorbing a pain for a lost father that could not be contained any more than could be found inside such a tiny, anemic, and powder-white body. It had all now dissolved into a stomach-pinching, near-empty refrigerator, mom crying loud and alone behind the doors of the bathroom at 10 o’clock on a bright Saturday morning, and bags of canned food and half-broken toys left at the door by an anonymous member or members of the Church. Our hero, now standing in front of the class to do a math problem, was laughed at for the way he had written the number ‘7’ on the blackboard, and yelled at by the art teacher for drawing a church on construction paper when the project was to draw ‘buildings’. See her tear it to pieces before his eyes.

Our hero learned to see the world through the blur of the thick eyeglasses that is brought on by constant, crying eyes, while laying false claim to having severe allergies, just to keep from being mocked and beat and ridiculed and spat upon any further. It was all more than he could take.

“Me and my family would do better with me dead!”

“So?” Fox asked enthusiastically.

“Really? You mean that? I would love for you to be my big brother!”

“Oh that makes me sooo happy. Ok, but it’s time for bed now so can I ask for one last favor from you?”

“Sure, what?”

“Would you mind giving me a kiss good n....?”

“...No! I am not going to kiss you.”

“Hey! Lower your voice. What are you talking about? Brothers kiss each other good night all the time and you need to start getting used to that if we are going to be brothers. I will never embarrass you by asking that you do it in front of your mom or sisters. It will stay just between us. It will be our first secret as brothers.”

Our hero thought in stillness, silent. His body stiffened. Fox lied next to him obediently, patiently waiting for his deliverance. Then, going against his premature sense of judgment and his under-developed instincts of self-defense, our hero leaned over Fox…and, as quickly as he could, gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Born into Trauma

The trauma of abandonment, combined with emotional, physical and sexual abuse starting from preadolescence will tend to carry negative momentum into the future of any child’s life. This transcends gender, socioeconomic status, education, environment, you name it. Childhood victims of abuse live in a forced code of silence with the world, and it is in this state of conscious repression where the seed of their personal spiritual war is planted. The war is waged against oneself first because the crime was committed against oneself.

Sexual abuse therefore has an embodiment of self-betrayal, of personal power that was willingly given away. And so the mere thought of speaking out about it brings more conflict over the pain, anxiety and fear of being rejected by the victim’s family, friends and/or society as a whole, than can be humanly measured, and oftentimes much less understood. Silence intuitively becomes the adopted way for the family to deal with all disagreements or problems that seem readily impossible to resolve. The after-effect, the residue is emotional distance, spiritual frigidity, obsessive ritualization, and toxic resentment, to name but a few.

And war like this cannot be calculated with projected monetary figures, because the prevailing silence keeps it going on forever….well, for as long as silence prevails. Our hero is learning not to express his needs and wants – his thoughts and feelings. What if he says the wrong thing? Silence has irrepressibly tempted and surrounded him in a clear, warm ocean of inner isolation. Silence has betrayed him. Will he able to evade the unstoppable waves of depression as he grows into an adult? The self-loathing brought on by the shame and guilt fills our little victim with inner conflict. Left untreated, anxiety and disorder are inevitable - a looming reality for both his present and future. In this inward turning, in this pathetic grief, our hero learns not to trust mom or absent dad - or anyone or anything else for that matter. The turning makes the entire world suspect, dangerous, and threatening. It shatters innocence into a billion pieces.

Like cosmic dust.

The turmoil and confusion felt is as real as that of someone just coming out of a terrible car accident – now lying in the hospital bed with all kinds of tubes and pumps going in and out of him - except that with childhood abuse that scenario is invisible to the human eye. There is no way to actually see the scars and wounds of sexual abuse. The victim often appears normal and grows up cognitively functional before the eyes of society but, as is nearly always the case, neither our hero’s mom nor the world make the effort to look past the superficial mask that hides the pain and suffering. And so it goes unchecked for such souls, they are left to their own devices, waging year after year of war against themselves, while simultaneously defending themselves from their own spiritual onslaught.

For our hero, speaking out means bringing more pain to the family, while remaining silent has a sort of reverse reward: it keeps family shame at bay. It keeps what little family peace there is intact. It does not disrupt the established surface order of things. Things are enough of a mess already as they are. Mom and the sisters are suffering enough.

Silence! Self-imposed silence! Silence in the room with Fox. Silence in the world without Fox. Silence everywhere. Silence at all times. To be molded by it. To be forced to be one with it. And this silence equals peace in our hero’s world, and with only invisible tears to show for it. The only expression of pain he allows himself, tears, always takes place where no one can see or hear; in the far-reaching and empty corners of the shiny hallways of his grammar school after asking for permission to go to the bathroom; his face pressed up against the cold grey crevice; his hands covering the sides of his little face, mouth whimpering, his chest beating, his lungs stretching, his knees buckling.

“No! If there is something to be said, be sure to say it where no one will hear!”

Nothing is more terrifying than a silent child. Nothing can make a louder sound in the world. Not the atom bomb. Not anything. Jesus Himself must cover His ears and eyes to it. He especially wishes it away.

Wikipedia: Fox:

“…an opportunistic predator…”

Let's talk about the predator for just a little bit now. Sexual offenders are motivated by their lust for power, making them foundationally overprotective. Their survival as predators depends upon it. Their main directive is to isolate their prey, and through the practice of secrecy and manipulation, make the victim understand that they too are responsible for maintaining the silence. So the venom’s voice is: “After all, it could not be taking place without your mutual consent. You are also letting this happen.” Predators are experts at turning the tables on their victims and making them believe that this too is their victims’ desire.

On a deeper scale still, there is great evil that is called upon for motivation to be a predator. Predators plan their plan well in advance and with great attention to detail. Before even a single finger is laid on the victim, they have a journey they must make in order to make peace with what they are about to do; they must first overcome the enormous ethical hurdles of having sex with a child.

Christopher Kearney explains,

First, the perpetrator must be motivated to abuse a child sexually…The person may deny negative consequences of the abuse, accept child pornography as a legitimate medium, attribute the behavior to poor self control…(he) must overcome external obstacles to the sexual behavior. Major obstacles include discovery and arrest…Finally, a perpetrator must overcome a child’s resistance to sexual contact.

Childhood sexual offenders are not just liars, they are also patient. For them, it is not so much about sex as it is about power and control. It is the single greatest crime and sin in the whole entire world, because it attacks the most precious thing in the whole entire world: the body, mind and soul of innocence itself.

Our hero quickly leaned over Fox…and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

It was like this for the first few nights of Fox’s 2-week visit from Colombia. Good night meant a kiss. But soon thereafter that wasn’t enough for Fox. By the fourth night, our hero felt Fox’s hand gently slipping over in the near perfect blackness and silence of the room; the fingers snaking, then tugging down his little Star Wars pajama pants. It was all so 'confusing and scary' for our hero. Yet, on the opposite side of the same coin, the experience was enthralling, and even possessed an element of peace. It actually felt good to our hero to be worthy of someone’s undivided attention, to have a warm body leaning over his, pouring its attention and energy on him, comforting him, accepting him. For our hero, at least while it was all happening, the wings of the devil were soft, reassuring, and delivering…and how high indeed, how far away from hell they let him fly!

Does not a soul confronted with abandonment, rejection and abuse seek desperately the comfort of company? A beggar child does not have the luxury of choice, and Fox knew it and used it to his advantage to get our hero emotionally dependent. So, as the days passed, and as the end of the vacation drew closer, the more commonplace and intense the touching and kissing became. Our hero was so tired of feeling terrified and hopeless over the routine of his life before Fox arrived that he did not even want to think about Fox’s last day. All that mattered to him was the temporal simplicity of it all – the touch of the moment, the fleeting emotions being shared at that particular moment in time, the feelings of immediate happiness.

And in the end, how much does a child only 8 years of age know about right, wrong, or about how some parts of his body are not meant for sharing? In the end, does such a child ever truly grow up, unbound, free from childlike thinking, where all that happens around him happens because he made it happen? It is not difficult to conceive that with projections like these this poor child will grow up to be a child abuser himself.

And how could mom even suspect such a thing could be happening under her roof? How could this not be beyond her wildest imagination and her worst nightmare? Yet, it was happening all the same, and if one listened closely enough one could hear hell itself laughing. And hell may have been rejoicing in its triumph………

……..but a mother’s instinct can be more powerful still.

Mom started to notice our hero had not been making much eye contact with neither her nor his sisters for the past few days. He had become isolated from them, and was speaking only when spoken to. And when he did, it was with a very low tone and with a fixed glare towards the floor. He was not finishing his meals at the table, making up excuses that he was not hungry or did not like it, even when his favorite dinner, spaghetti with meatballs, was being served. He had stopped brushing his teeth or combing his hair. Our hero started to walk and talk with no apparent facial expression and Fox, who was only too quick to notice, made sure to address it with him each and every night. He reminded our hero of the trouble they would both get into if mom found out. Meals had to be finished as a matter of discipline, and he needed to look and act happy. Otherwise it was all going to end “very very badly.”

On this one particular Sunday night, the whole entire family had gathered in the living room to watch “The Sound of Music”. Suddenly, mom asked everyone to go to the other room so she could talk in private with her son. Fox made sure to give a final glare back to our hero as he exited.

“Son?”

“What?” Our little hero impatiently snapped.

“Can you tell me what you and Fox do in the room at night?”

“Nothing. Sleep.” Was the mechanical reply.

“Son, please look at me.”

But our hero could not. He just sat there, feeling “dirty” - his hands stretched over his lap, his legs laid out before him, a cold fever of adrenaline and cortisol quickly surging up his narrow body.

“Son………….is he……….touching y...?”

“....no we just play!” Our hero’s response was much too loud and immediate.

And so it was that first thing the following morning, nearly ten days into his stay, Fox was put on a plane back to Colombia. And that was the end of that. Mom made no further inquiry and no further discussions were had about it, ever.

Period.

Karen McClintock writes:

The shame-bound family has many ways to keep the feelings of unworthiness in place. It’s not that family members consciously want to feel ashamed, but the feelings of shame keep the secrets secret. The shame keeps one bound to the family out of loyalty, by not talking about what goes on or by playing a role like the joker or the fix-it person. In a family with many generations of unspoken incest, the shame factor keeps each generation tied to the system.

As for our little hero, the whole entire experience was like a flashbulb going off right in his face; it left him even blinder and more disoriented than ever. No psychotherapy, no social worker, no psychologist, no family member to confirm whether abuse had indeed taken place. No measures to diagnose anxiety or depression, or more importantly, sexual issues. Our little hero was suffering from bad dreams, feelings of vulnerability, helplessness and anger. He had socially withdrawn from everyone in his life, and who could blame him.

He also did not understand that the abuse was not his fault, and that mom and dad were not completely innocent, but not completely to blame either, which in a way made them victims too. There was no treatment to hand down for improving discipline, or new skills to learn that could create some positive memories to help undo the negative ones. No father-figure to model, to shape himself after, even though mom many times had said to him, “I may be your mom, but I am also your dad now.”

But it is never the same, no matter how hard a mother tries. Despite any mother’s very best efforts and intentions, a father can never be replaced.

And critical, life-changing questions lingered: How to improve our hero’s self-esteem? How to increase his social activity? How to overcome trauma like this? Where is the safest environment for him? How do we make room for his emotional expression?

“Silence!”

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Galatians 6:7 NIV

The sweeping of something so terrible under the rug only creates a bigger problem in the long run. Invariably, the mound gets larger, and it starts to smell. Covering a crime of this nature is an act of cowardice, an act that can only be traced back to fear, and fear will always come back to make the crime of incest a stronger reality for all in the family to contend with. It is always only a matter of time.

Fear rips at truth’s larynx. It ties a rope around it, drags it to the basement, and nails it to the wall to keep it from being seen or heard by anyone. Everyone in the family may know that there is a monster of truth being kept in bondage inside of their home, but no one dares to speak about it. No one will muster the necessary courage to be the first to ask, “What’s that smell?” or “Did you hear that?”

It is much easier to live with the comfortable pretense of conscious ignorance.

Yet everyone in the family understands that there is nothing comforting about it. Fear and secrecy are some things that can not only smell, they can affect other senses too.

Have you ever been in the presence of someone who is uncomfortable with their self? They give off a strange, unnatural vibe; they seem ill at ease with themselves. They appear out of balance, stiff.

Have you ever come across someone like that? No matter what they do or how much you try to like them or ignore them, neither seems to work - there is just something about them that rubs you the wrong way? In much the same way, those who are sexual predators inside their families - their demons hang upside down in the distance that exists between them and their relatives. They are neither here nor there. They mask themselves as the emotionally closest to the victim. They wear disguises of trust-worthiness, and oftentimes their disguise allows them to pass themselves off as the most spiritual, well-to-do members of the clan.

Their all-consuming fear of the secret being exposed can keep both perpetrators and victim relatives from thinking about anything else. It brings paranoia and emotional shut-down, a sort of spiritual virus. Yet, by contrast, the mind and the heart, by their own nature, are always pulling life back to homeostasis, to balance, to spiritual openness and truth with all things. The conflict this produces in everyone’s souls keeps them all up at night, wreaking havoc on their relations with God, with family, and with themselves. Fear makes them all short-tempered…..and poisonous. It hits everyone.

Perpetrators, even as young as Fox, live in fearful isolation, ever-vigilant, always sleeping with one eye open, always guarding what they do and say, consciously and sometimes not so consciously projecting their insecurities unto others in order to take the attention away from themselves - lest their ‘little crime’ find an escape in a careless moment of lightheartedness and frivolity. But, make no mistake, they are fully aware of their crimes. Evil like this is always aware. Always. They know that power, control and secrecy are their main weapons. And, as always happens in evildoing, these weapons of theirs inevitably turn against them sooner or later. It’s all about cause and effect. These weapons of theirs are alive, and so their sense of power eats, it breathes, and ultimately disintegrates the structures of their inner and outer worlds; just like a fire that becomes too great to manage, and all that can be done is let it burn its way through the constructs of the house…until there is nothing left.

In the end, for the perpetrator, there is no integrity to be found, only holes and ashes.

What is Fox’s story?

How did he become this way?

The consequences of predatory crimes are not only dealt with in this life, by both the family secret-keepers and predators themselves, but the sinful and proud and evil character they take to the seat of judgment when they meet with God face to face is something that cannot ever be hidden. And not a single one of them escapes that seat. Not a single one of them. Their last saving grace lies in that the sooner they realize the extent of the damage they have caused, the sooner they can start to realize the severity of their mistakes and hopefully take right action and repent of their fine mess.

Otherwise, they remain in their arrested states while wholeheartedly convinced they are going to walk happily through the gates of heaven.

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

-John 8:32 NIV