Does This Make Me a Bad Person?

Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, died suddenly this week. His death was conveniently located between being found guilty on all sorts of fraud charges regarding the demise of his company and his sentencing. He actually died at his vacation home in Colorado. His lawyer described it as though his poor old heart just gave out on him.

Lay had continually proclaimed his innonence but that proclamation was very weak set against a mountain of indisputable evidence that shows he lied and cheated for his own personal gain. Apparently the hundreds of millions weren't enough, he needed more. And he got more at the expense of his employees, many of whom lost all or part of their retirement savings when Enron floundered. When things started coming out that revealed there might be problems in an otherwise seemingly healthy company Lay stood before his stockholders and employees and assured them that everything was going to be okay, absolutely nothing was wrong. Many employees trusted him and stayed, to their own demise, based on what he had said.

So Lay dies without ever serving a day in prison for this ultimate action of greed and selfishness. He never had to pay for what he did on earth. In fact, because of the timing of his death, the jury verdict of guilty will be vacated by a judge and history will never even record that Lay was a felonious self-serving law breaker. Most frustrating of all is the fact that it feels like the people he hurt the most will never really get vindication. It's like he managed to escape paying the price for his crime. Adding insult to injury is the fact that this supposedly destitute man died while vacationing at his home away from home.

At times like this I want to shake my fist at God. Why couldn't you have left him here to rot in a jail cell for 30 years? Why couldn't you have allowed him some level of physical discomfort here on planet earth before being carted off to the sweet by and by? There are times when believing in the sovereignty of God gives me no great pleasure, rather it ticks me off to no end. This would be one of those times.