My dad and I were having one of our deep discussions (discussions that I’ve found to be of an enormous help in my life), when the subject of a man named Jeffrey Dahmer came up. I had never heard of the man before.
So Dad proceeds to tell the story of how Jeffrey Dahmer became one the most infamous criminals in American history. Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, Dahmer was one of the worst serial killers this country has ever seen. Over the time period of thirteen years, Dahmer murdered seventeen men and boys, usually picking them up at bars and offering them a drink at his apartment. From there he would drug them into submission, and begin what are some of the vilest acts a human can commit.
His murders and sex offenses were particularly egregious, involving rape, torture, dismemberment, and even cannibalism. When Dahmer was eventually arrested in 1991, the officers who arrested him found at least four severed heads, along with severed body parts and pictures of severed body parts in his apartment. Needless to say, Jeffrey Dahmer was very messed up.
But God works in ways that are nothing short of incredible and unlikely. While in prison in Wisconsin, a local Church of Christ preacher named Roy Ratliff came to minister to Dahmer. After studying and praying with Ratliff for many months, Dahmer made the decision to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and was baptized into Christ.
In 1994, Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison by a fellow inmate. His killer beat him severely with the handle of a broomstick, and Dahmer died of head trauma two days later. Most seemed pleased to hear about his death, despite his public acceptance of Jesus. But the question everyone wants to ask about Jeffrey Dahmer is, “Did he make it into Heaven?”
Ratliff provided insight into Dahmer’s thinking in the words he spoke at Dahmer’s funeral, saying, “Jeff confessed to me his great remorse for his crimes. He wished he could do something for the families of his victims to make it right, but there was nothing he could do. He turned to God because there was no one else to turn to, but he showed great courage in his daring to ask the question, ‘Is heaven for me too?’ I think many people are resentful of him for asking that question. But he dared to ask, and he dared to believe the answer.''
A lot of us of the Christian faith, me included, have and still do ask the question, “Is Heaven for me?” “Do I belong in Heaven?” The answer is very clear. John 14:6 says is the verse in which Jesus tells His disciples that He is the way, and the truth, and the life. NO ONE goes to see God except through Him. Simply believing that God is real isn’t enough; when you truly accept in your heart that Jesus is your savior, Jesus is all you need, He will know you. And when He knows you, you join Him in Heaven.
Everyone knows John 3:16, and knows that it says that God sent Jesus to die for our sins, and that whoever believes that He is our savior will live in Heaven eternally. But there’s more to it than that. There’s more to it because people will ask, as in Dahmer’s case, what happens if you don’t live a life in Christ? What if you commit horrible crimes against your fellow man? What if you can never prove that you’ve turned your life over to Christ?
I think the problem with the question people ask about Dahmer’s eternal faith is most people ask it as if they can see straight into his heart, when the fact is, they can’t. Only God can. We aren’t fit to judge the fate of others because we don’t know the whole story. In the eye of the world, Jeffrey Dahmer was nothing but a sick, cold-blooded serial killer and sex offender who had no purpose but to fill his sadistic cravings.
But to God, Jeffrey Dahmer is a man who spent almost all of his life feeling empty and filling those empty holes with all of the wrong things. To God, Jeffrey Dahmer is a man who realized just in time that what he had done was wrong and that God held him accountable for his actions. But there’s a catch.
Unlike us human beings, God does not measure sins to different degrees of severity. To us, lying to your teacher about why your homework isn’t done is far less serious than murdering your neighbor. To God, they are the same thing. Seventeen lies told equals seventeen murders on God’s scale (which more closely resembles a level playing field). Now I would be kidding myself if I said that makes perfect sense to me, because it doesn’t. But I’m not God. I’m just a person.
But there is hope, because in case you’ve forgotten…
We serve a forgiving God! Yes we have screw ups, yes our lives are riddled with sin, but in the end, if we ask God for forgiveness, He will give it to us. And not only does He forgive us, He forgets the sin. To God, Jeffrey Dahmer was a man who, when he had nowhere else to turn, turned to Him. When Jeffrey Dahmer had nothing else to lean on, when nothing left in this world could fill his emptiness; he leaned on God, and was satisfied.
Jeffrey Dahmer did horrible things in this world, and did them with the knowledge that they were atrocious acts against others and him. But in the end, he found God. He realized that his mistakes could be forgiven, as foreign as that idea might seem to some. All he had to do was accept Jesus into his heart.
Did Jeffrey Dahmer make it to Heaven? I think he did. I like to believe that he was completely genuine in his repentance and acceptance of Jesus into his heart. God looks at our hearts and forgives our sins when we come before Him and ask Him to, no matter how many there are and how horrid they are. He loves us, and wants us to join Him.
Why should Jeffrey Dahmer be any different?
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