I'd like to thank the Academy...

I'm watching Dennis Rader (BTK) speaking at his sentencing hearing. I'm amazed at how he's going on and on. He spent time talking about each of his victims, and compared himself to each of them. Now he's listing everybody who's helped him since he's been incarcerated. He referred to his victims as "people I, um, encountered..." Encountered? Is that what you call it?

He even complained about minor details in the prosecution's PowerPoint presentation. Nice touch, Rader.

Oh, good grief, now he's reading John 8:12, and then said... "Now that I confessed, I expect to be healed and have light. I hope someday God would accept me."

Apologies to the victims' families... "there's no way I could ever repay for what I've done to them."

For heaven's sake, he went on forever. He did admit that he has had a need to be "noticed" in the media. No kidding.

Chilling. Truly chilling. While I heard sadness and saw tears, I never heard him say anything like "I'm a sick creep." He called himself a "criminal" and said that he "wore a black hat" when comparing himself to the "white hats," or law enforcement officers. Those seem just a wee bit sanitized, considering the appallingly violent and sick nature of what he did.

Makes me shudder to even think of it. How many other Dennis Raders are out there? Listening to him talk, I can see how he came off as a decent, churchgoing fellow. I know personally that there are some very ugly sides to people who seem affable on the surface, and honestly, it creeps me out to think of how similar those people are to Dennis Rader in their demeanor. I don't think they're serial killers, by any stretch, but I do think that there are people who possess a similar propensity, perhaps to a lesser degree. I wonder just what triggers these people to step over the line and do something really, really awful? I wonder if there's any way to know?

This plays right into something I've talked about before, and that's HONESTY. Every single one of us has a dark side (not to the degree of BTK), but what separates us from people like that is that we face up to it and expose it. Rader operated in complete secrecy... his inner darkness was concealed from everyone, and his sociopathic nature enabled him to keep it under wraps. What might've prevented him from continuing down the path that finally led him to murder the Oteros is confession and exposure. When we're all truly accountable to one another under God, this vile behavior can't continue to occur. And accountability necessitates transparency. Not transparency after-the-fact, like BTK... transparency from the outset.

If I had anything I could pray for my own church, it would be that people in it could be HONEST and OPEN with one another. I've seen what can happen in churches where people aren't, and it's so completely destructive.