Mercy for Ashley Sheatz

What the Blow Up about Her Past Said about Our Hearts

Imagine a young woman caught up in “the college experience”. Her life consists of drinking, partying, all sorts of lewd behavior, the worst excesses of hook up culture. She’s the kind of woman you see stumbling up to a reporter on a beach during spring break offering slurred answers to his questions in a micro-bikini or less. Consider, too, her male counterpart. He’s slovenly, withdrawn, exudes a passivity tinged with anger. He consumes copious amounts of pornography, avoids conflict and work, lives for ease and lusts satisfied.

You might think you know everything there is to know about these people. Nevertheless, upon reflection, most of us realize we can never know the depths by looking at the surface, never know the heart by contemplating the skin. Despite all her surface-level enthusiasm, she may not be at peace inside. He may very well know, deep down, that his behavior is damaging himself and others.

You can’t assume that just because a person engages in a behavior that they like engaging in that behavior. We are the kind of beings capable of regretting our actions as we take them. When Walt Whitman said “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes!”, he wasn’t talking just about himself. He was talking about your cousin Lonnie. He was talking about the creepy, low-hygiene guy down the hall. He was talking about you.

The point is that people are complicated, and you can’t always easily surmise their motives from their behavior. You can’t assume they really even want to do what they do. You can’t assume they like it. Christians should be most cognizant of this reality given St. Paul’s description of his own inner life in Romans 7:15 :

”15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Unfortunately, many people, regardless of their religion, forget this principle. This tendency was on full display recently during the massive Ashley Sheatz dust-up. The “formerly promiscuous” wife and her husband drew a great deal of criticism, some of it much deserved.

Some of it was inexcusable. From the name calling to the threats, our collective lack of mercy was undeniable. Not that a lack of mercy is unusual for Internet mobs, but in this case, the mercilessness seemed to, in the words of Nigel Tufnel, “go to 11”.

At no point did the main thrust of the discourse consider her full story: the childhood sexual abuse, the lack of guidance, being forced to fend for herself as a girl in a predatory and hostile world. No, to most, she was not a complicated person with a story, but a sort of moral criminal trying to use Jesus to get out of taking accountability for her wrongdoing. She was cast in that role and there was no getting out.

It’s natural, I suppose. We have an inborn tendency to think in reductive ways about people we consider a threat, people who strike us as dirty, immoral, or otherwise unacceptable. Thinking about people in complex ways muddies the waters of our certainty, undermines the clean distinctions we make between them and ourselves, and thus subverts our pride, our sense of superiority. That’s why we avoid more subtle, comprehensive thinking by default.

The Internet intensifies our natural tendency to think this way. We don’t even have to deal with the person in front of us. We don’t have to share a community, friends or acquaintances. The fact that the Internet allows us to vent our hatred at others who live at great distances means not even a shared faith is an impediment to the most bitter venting of our outrage.

None of this should be a surprise. If remembering that others, even Ashley Sheatz, were complicated human beings existing in history and vulnerable to all its formative forces were easy, mercy wouldn’t be a virtue. Mercy sees the whole person. Mercy refuses to reduce or blind itself to the many ways we are, in fact, very similar to the objects of our scorn.

This requires practice. It’s precisely because Mercy is a virtue that we must cultivate it. We must override our natural impulse to strike the vulnerable, to seek revenge, to indulge in moral status games. This is where the real work is. This is the spot of real spiritual growth. And this is where we fail most often, hoping the more fervently we point to our caricature of another, the less the crowd will turn its vicious gaze toward us.