Cheering a Child Killer
On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy built a snowman and did art projects with her three young children. Her husband left the house to get takeout for the family’s dinner. When he returned, Lindsay was unconscious in the backyard after jumping out of a second-floor window. Five-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan were in the basement, unresponsive.
Their mother had tied elastic exercise bands around their necks and choked them to death.
This was only the beginning of the parade of evil that follows Lindsay Clancy.
She was charged with three counts of murder, three counts of strangulation and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Two weeks after looking her babies in the eyes and murdering them, Lindsay admitted to it, saying that she “heard a voice and had a moment of psychosis.” She described the voice as a man’s, telling her to kill the children and herself while she had a chance. Her lawyers argued that yes, she choked the life out of her own babies, but she was not criminally responsible.
Why? Because she had “mental illnesses.”
A murderer arguing that she should go free added another layer of evil to this story. But a still thicker, much broader layer was about to be added.
The news of the mother murderer spread across the nation and beyond, horrifying many—but causing a different reaction in many others.
Online and in person, hundreds or thousands of women have spoken out in emotional and vocal support—not for the memory of those children or for the now-divorced husband but for the murderer. #PeaceforLindsay. #Believe. #Sheneededhelp. #MetooLindsay. You wanted to choke your 5-year-old little girl to death, and your little 3-year-old boy, and your 8-month-old baby. #SameLindsay.
More than 200 women dressed in pink and held a “Stand in Peace for Lindsay” vigil outside the courthouse.
Now add another layer of evil: After seven days of deliberation, 11 of the 12 jurors wanted to find Lindsay Clancy not criminally responsible for murdering her children. One lone juror refused—unwilling to let a child killer go free—resulting in a mistrial.
What is wrong with us? Almost every discussion on the murders of the Clancy children almost immediately turns into a “mental health” discussion about the vagaries and notions of depressions and psychoses.
Are the behaviors real that psychiatrists try to define with syndromes, disorders and other mental health classifications? Yes. But does a mother strangle her own children because of “chemicals in the brain”? No! Psychiatrists and others who try to define, classify, treat and excuse destructive and even murderous actions don’t even know what the mind is. Many of them will admit they don’t understand even the physical activity of the brain, and many will deny that there is a nonphysical aspect, in addition to the brain, that constitutes the human mind.
Evil exists! And people who deny that it comes from the spiritual dimension of human life intentionally or inadvertently tolerate and proliferate that evil.
The instruction book for the human mind reveals exactly where “mental illness” comes from, with no vagaries, experimental treatments, baseless conjectures or other confusion. “Mental illness” is linked with spiritual illness.
One biblical example illustrates how people used to understand this fact of human existence. Matthew 17, Mark 9 and Luke 9 record a parent-child relationship involving a different but still heartbreaking circumstance. A boy was suffering seizures, foaming at the mouth, trying to drown himself, even throwing himself into fire. The anguished, desperate father brought the boy to Jesus and explained what was evident to all: His mind was afflicted by an unclean spirit, a demon.
The Bible reveals that evil exists, that it has a source, that this source is a real individual being who commands many lesser demons (like the one that afflicted this boy), and that even though the average person doesn’t act like this boy or like Lindsay Clancy, we are influenced by these evil beings.
Your Bible says Satan is real, that he is the “god of this world,” “deceives the whole world,” broadcasts his attitudes through “the power of the air,” and tempts and influences all of us to commit evil (2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9; Ephesians 2:2).
All these demons recorded in the Bible did not disappear. They remain here among human beings causing people to try to kill themselves, to strangle their own children, to support those who strangle their own children—and to follow Satan’s attitudes in far more subtle, pervasive ways.
The Bible shows that evil spirits can gain control over a person’s mind or body if the person willingly surrenders control. Taking recreational drugs or psychiatric medications is one way this can happen.
Surveys indicate that 72 percent of Gen Z Americans believe they have a mental illness, and 60 percent of them are taking mind-altering drugs as treatment. It’s not just Lindsay Clancy who has opened her mind up to evil influence.
Lindsay Clancy is responsible for what spiritual influences she let into her mind and should be convicted of the triple homicide she perpetrated. But the real issue behind her horrifying actions is not postpartum depression. It is our whole “mental illness” culture, where we treat inner voices as a psychiatric diagnosis, and crimes as symptoms.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,” God tells us in Ephesians 6:12, “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”