Unwanted Thoughts: A Response to the Lindsay Clancy Case

C.S. Lewis in the preface to The Screwtape Letters, his fictitious correspondence between a senior devil and his protégé regarding the best ways to lead humans into sin and away from heaven, described the book thusly: “Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment… Though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done.”

Chilling Case

I know what Lewis means. In researching this article, I’ve logged way too many hours watching the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. More time than necessary, and certainly more than is good for my well-being. Since mental health is the crux of this case, keeping mine intact is paramount.

But, like gapers who find it impossible to turn away from a gruesome accident scene, I’ve found myself sucked into a vortex of both horror and fascination while viewing the footage. My mind alternates between sympathy for a suffering mother and dismay at the outpouring of support for a confessed killer. Clancy allies frequently argue that two things can be true at the same time, suggesting it’s possible to be both victim and victimizer. Ultimately, though, responsibility must be assessed and accountability determined.

Bottom line: three preschoolers kids were killed. By their mother. In their own home.

There must be a reckoning for this evil act.

Tragically, we’ve seen other cases like this, the most recent one just last month. Moms who, for whatever reason, crack under pressure and do the unthinkable. My purpose is not to pass judgment on these women, their families, or the societal system(s) that may have failed them. Truth be told, I’m not entirely clear what my purpose is, as it’s been evolving ever since I first felt led to write about this.

Glorifying Death

I initially intended to discuss how maternal murders highlight the inherent evil that is abortion, and why Clancy supporters are adding fuel to a fire that can’t afford to be stoked.

It’s unnatural for mothers to kill their children. That said, our society has gone beyond normalizing feticide and into the realm of celebrating it, up to and including the point of birth (ten states and the District of Columbia now allow unrestricted access to abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy).

The related phenomenon of physician assisted suicide, currently legal in 13 states and Washington, D.C., demonstrates the progression of this fatal mindset. There’s something really wrong with incentivizing doctors to kill patients, whether pre-born or born. It flies in the face of the Hippocratic Oath and the reasons people go into medicine in the first place. Everyone acknowledges the barbarity of Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted “experiments” and even murdered people in the name of Nazi ideology; yet, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, physicians legally snuff out lives with the abandon of kids swapping baseball cards.

And why not? Once life becomes a commodity to be created in a lab, passed around from womb to womb, and measured in dollars and cents, its wonder becomes obscured by its price tag.

As dollar signs mount up, they cheapen the very thing they’re selling.

In such a climate, is it any wonder that post-birth killing would become justifiable in the eyes of many?

While studying the Clancy case, I realized others were already making many of these connections.

Monstrous Depression

Not one to revisit well-trodden ground, I shifted gears and decided to relate my struggles with the pregnancy/postpartum spectrum. Before my first child was born, I experienced a miscarriage which left me devastated. I needed surgery to empty my womb. I lost a good amount of blood. My soul felt shredded.

After becoming a mom, I experienced postpartum and situational depression – uncontrollable sadness and downward spiraling which my kids and I survived by God’s grace via family, friends and therapists. Proper medication – an issue being hotly debated in Clancy’s trial – played a huge role in my recovery.

The procreation continuum is complex. Conception has its own timetable and very often frustrates or surprises prospective parents. Loss of a longed-for child is heart-wrenching. Birth of a longed-for child is wondrous, scary, delightful, daunting, confusing, challenging, sleepless, and stimulating. “Normal” needs to be redefined repeatedly during this ever-changing process.

In the vast majority of situations, people adapt and life stabilizes. Sadly, though, sometimes things go wrong, and what expectant parents hope for is shattered by emotions beyond the reach of intervention.

That’s my point.

Sometimes things go very wrong.

Altruistic Filicide

The more I read, though, the more I realized emotions surrounding pregnancy and birth are also well documented in connection with the Clancy case. 

I then stumbled onto “altruistic filicide” – the phenomenon of parents murdering their children out of a twisted love for them. Psychiatrists have offered this defense in Clancy’s case, since she claims a voice told her to kill the kids before killing herself so they wouldn’t have to live without her.

But it’s unnatural to murder one’s own children. Murder itself is unnatural. A quick internet search yields words like “unjustifiable” and “unlawful” to describe murder. We’re talking about something outside the scope of rational behavior.

If we can agree on that point, it’s obvious why the altruism claim is so disturbing.

Others may advance this argument, but that’s all I have to say about it in Clancy’s case or any other.

Which still leaves me with, why do I feel compelled to weigh in on this heinous crime?

Morbid Curiosity

I realized my purpose one night when an unhealthy preoccupation with the Clancy murders usurped my sleep and peace of mind. Hour after hour I scrolled through testimony, transfixed by Lindsay’s progression from depression into psychosis and ultimately homicide.

Anytime we plumb the depths of evil, we won’t escape unscathed. Nietzsche understood this when he wrote “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Corrie ten Boom, a concentration camp survivor, learned this when she witnessed the whipping of a fellow prisoner during morning roll call, the worst time of day. A warbling skylark suddenly “[soared] over the crematorium” while the merciless beating occurred. That same skylark trilled joyful notes the same time each day for the next three weeks, a tangible reminder that beauty can coexist with wickedness.

Like Corrie, we must “turn [our] eyes away from the cruelty of men to the ocean of God’s love.” We cannot look full on into darkness any more than we can gaze directly into the sun. It’s too intense. Studies have shown that improper balance of light and darkness is detrimental to human functioning.

Nevertheless, brutality is compelling. That’s why distressing stories make headlines. Furthermore, avoiding atrocity won’t bring justice for the Clancy kids or any other victims. It won’t right wrongs and it won’t change cruelty.

But it may enable ordinary people to fight another day.

We’re limited in our ability to battle villainy. That’s because spiritual forces power wickedness, but humans are flesh and blood. God’s word gives us instructions about combating evil, and they don’t include ingesting a steady diet of the stuff. Ultimately, it’s up to God to defeat the powers of darkness; we are simply agents in an otherworldly campaign that’s bigger than we are.

Lightly Stepping

That’s why God tells us to walk in the light. This means prayer and Bible study, but it also includes simple changes.

I don’t let technology hold me hostage. I take charge of my devices, silencing my phone at bedtime.

I take time off. After one troubling internet session, I took my granddaughter swimming and hugged her close while bobbing.

I divert my mind from weighty subjects. Crosswords, comic strips – anything to shake the weight of the world off my shoulders.

And I live by Philippians 4:8.

Folks, this isn’t denial; we’re talking survival. Jesus said the poor will be with us always. Without taking too many liberties, I think it’s fair to say, so will depravity. There’s nothing unspiritual about letting light shine in the darkness.

It’s a God thing.