Whenever I hear or read of a murder, I am puzzled over the way that blame is distributed between killer and victim — the greater share usually falling on the killer. Yet often the victim is as responsible as the murderer for the crime. Even worse, the victim may have actually incited the murder. Sadly this is often overlooked.
That means that we ourselves may be the direct cause of such events without ever feeling it. For example, a rich yet miserly father may drive his family to hate the very idea of his being alive, and they blame his continued existence for their deprivation; this is when plans for his death begin to formulate. If we were alert to the implications of our relationships with others we would be able to avoid some of the crimes that take place.
The news agencies recently reported a story they considered humorous: Police in the US arrested a woman for shooting her husband dead after a fight that broke out between them over who should feed the goat. The wife asked her husband to feed the goat; he refused and dared her to fire the gun at him. When he took a step toward her, she fired and killed him with a single shot.
This news report portrays the wife as murderer and her “poor” husband as merely the victim of her crime. But is that the truth of the matter?
Let us think more deeply into the event itself. A woman who kills her husband over a goat? At the very least she is a sensitive soul, so much so that she is prepared to sacrifice her husband’s life and her liberty for the sake of a domestic animal. Could such a tender woman kill a husband, with whom she has lived for many years, so easily? And over a goat?
I cannot imagine that any sane person would believe that a goat is more important to her than her husband. It is clear that the husband couldn’t have foreseen such an event. But perhaps if he had paid more attention to his wife and her feelings he would have realized the ramifications and dangers of his behavior toward her and avoided it.
The reality is that any violent act on the part of a woman toward her husband must be the outpouring of a huge build-up of resentment over his mistreatment of her.
It is a law of nature that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means we must not hurry to condemn this woman as a criminal; we should allow for the possibility that maybe this woman had been mistreated by her husband — that she was emotionally, verbally or physically abused, given endless orders, or suffered countless infidelities to the extent that she finally snapped when he refused to feed the goat.
In another scenario, the wife was busy that day with housework, or work outside the home, and asked her husband to feed the goat. But he refused to do so and instead ordered her to feed it. When she chose to defend her dignity and threatened him, she was met with scorn. He goaded her by saying she was too weak to do it. He even took a step toward her, although she was pointing the gun at him — a gun that perhaps he had given her in the first place.
The wife’s patience finally snapped. Pushed to the limit by a wave of resentment that had been building up for years, she was compelled to defend her pride and carried out her threat. Perhaps she did not intend to kill him so much as release all the pent-up pain inside her and teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. At long last she will make a stand. At long last, she will prove that she is not inferior.
But God willed it that this realization came too late.