Three children were strangled in their Massachusetts home. A young Ukrainian refugee was stabbed to death while riding a train home from work. The circumstances were different. The question they leave us with is the same: What does a society owe the innocent?

Cora Clancy was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. On January 24, 2023, their mother, Lindsay Clancy, killed all three. Her 2026 murder trial centered on whether severe mental illness left her criminally responsible. The defense argued postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors argued that her actions showed planning and awareness. After weeks of testimony, the jury could not reach a verdict, and a mistrial was declared on September 4, 2026.

Iryna Zarutska was 23. She had fled the war in Ukraine and built a life in Charlotte, North Carolina. On August 22, 2025, she boarded the city’s light rail after work. Police say Decarlos Brown Jr., a stranger sitting behind her, attacked her without provocation. He had a long criminal history and a documented history of serious mental-health problems. Months earlier, a court had ordered a mental-health evaluation that was never completed before the killing.

These cases should not be forced into the same mold. The danger to the Clancy children was not plainly recognized beforehand; Lindsay Clancy had sought psychiatric treatment, and clinicians did not simply send home someone they knew intended to kill her children. Zarutska’s death, by contrast, exposed more visible breakdowns in the criminal-justice and mental-health systems. But both cases force us to ask whether our concern for the person who poses a danger can become so immediate that the person who may bear the consequences disappears from view.

The person posing the danger is visible. We know his diagnosis, his history, his rights, his circumstances, the restrictions that might be placed on him, and the cost of those restrictions. The potential victim is different. She is hypothetical. She has no face. No family is yet standing before cameras asking why no one protected her.

Until she has a name.

Then she is Iryna. Or Cora. Or Dawson. Or Callan.

This does not mean society consciously values the rights of dangerous people more than innocent people. Usually it does not. But we can build systems in which the needs of the person before us are concrete while the lives of those who may encounter that person later remain theoretical. The result can look very much like a moral imbalance: compassion is individualized, while risk is socialized.

A righteous society must see both the person who needs mercy and the person who needs protection.

Jesus warned that one feature of the age preceding His return would be increasing lawlessness: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). We should be careful not to turn that verse into a prediction about a particular court, city, or criminal-justice policy. But the moral pattern is hard to ignore as we draw closer to the day of His return.

We normally imagine love growing cold as open hatred or cruelty. But indifference can wear a compassionate face. A culture can speak constantly about mercy and still become strangely unable to see the innocent person who will bear the cost of misplaced mercy.

Paul describes the last days as “terrible times” marked by people who are “without love,” “without self-control,” “brutal,” and “not lovers of the good” (2 Timothy 3:1–5). This is more than bad behavior. It is disordered moral judgment. What ought to be loved is no longer loved rightly. What ought to be restrained is excused. What ought to be protected is forgotten.

What if love growing cold does not always look like hatred? What if sometimes it looks like compassion that has forgotten the innocent?

The biblical answer is not cruelty. It is not indifference to mental illness. It is not vengeance. Scripture refuses the false choice between mercy and justice.

God revealed Himself as merciful and gracious, yet He also declared that He does not simply leave guilt unaddressed (Exodus 34:6–7). Micah tells us to do justice and love mercy (Micah 6:8). Proverbs condemns both acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent (Proverbs 17:15). Biblical mercy never requires us to pretend that evil is harmless.

A person can be deeply ill and still be dangerous. A person can deserve humane treatment and still need to be restrained. Genuine incapacity may rightly affect criminal culpability. None of those truths requires us to remove the potential victim from the equation.

Mercy toward the guilty cannot be purchased with the blood of the innocent.

Scripture gives civil government a responsibility that is easy to forget. Romans 13:1–4 describes governing authority as God’s servant “for your good” and as an institution charged with restraining wrongdoing. Psalm 82:3–4 commands the defense of the weak and the rescue of the needy. Proverbs 24:11 commands us not to stand by while innocent lives are in danger.

That gives society at least three obligations to the innocent: protection before violence, truth after violence, and justice when violence occurs.

Protection will never be perfect. Human beings cannot predict every crime, and government should not imprison people merely because someone fears what they might do. Due process matters. Evidence matters. Liberty matters. But so does prudence. When there is substantial evidence that someone presents a serious danger, protecting innocent people is not a betrayal of compassion. It is one of compassion’s duties.

And when protection fails, the obligation does not disappear. Society still owes the victim truth. The victim must not become a forgotten footnote in a story centered entirely on the offender. And society owes justice—not vengeance, but an honest judgment of guilt, responsibility, and the lawful consequences that follow.

Christians, especially, need to understand this distinction. Romans 12 tells believers not to take personal vengeance. Romans 13 immediately speaks of government’s authority to punish wrongdoing. Those are not contradictions. They are different responsibilities.

Patrick Clancy can forgive Lindsay. Christians can pray for offenders, visit prisoners, care for the mentally ill, and believe that no human being is beyond the reach of God’s grace. We can do all of that while still insisting that courts tell the truth, that dangerous people are restrained when the law permits, that vulnerable people are protected, and that those who commit crimes are held accountable according to their actual responsibility.

Justice without mercy can become cruelty. Mercy without justice leaves the innocent defenseless.

For intentional, culpable murder, Scripture’s standard is severe: the one who deliberately sheds innocent blood forfeits his own life (Genesis 9:6; Numbers 35:31). Romans 13:4 then describes civil authority as God’s servant, bearing the sword against wrongdoing. In biblical terms, that is not personal revenge. It is public justice carried out by lawful authority, reflecting the value God places on a life made in His image.

We should begin by recovering a complete definition of compassion. Christians should care about the mentally ill person in crisis and the stranger who may sit beside him on a train. We should care about a mother in psychiatric distress and the children sleeping under her roof. God sees all of them.

Then we should speak. Christians should support serious examination of laws and institutions governing repeat violent offenders, mental-health intervention, involuntary treatment when a person meets a lawful standard of dangerousness, public-transit safety, child protection, and accountability in the courts. The details require wisdom, evidence, and due process. But the principle is not negotiable: the potential victim belongs in the moral equation before becoming a victim.

We should also resist the temptation to make these tragedies into partisan props. A biblical standard should judge every party, every prosecutor, every judge, every mental-health system, and every policy. The question is not whether a policy sounds compassionate. The question is whether it is true, just, and protective of human life.

Christians should pray. But we should not only pray. We should demand justice without hatred and mercy without blindness. We should ask whether the laws and institutions around us protect the innocent as seriously as they protect the rights of those who may endanger them. Because we live in a nation where citizens have a voice in government, Christians should use that voice responsibly. We should advocate for laws and reforms that help government fulfill these biblical responsibilities: protecting the innocent, lawfully restraining those who pose a serious danger, and administering justice truthfully and impartially. And when we vote, we should look beyond party labels and personalities and choose leaders who understand that protecting life and restraining evil are among government’s most basic duties.

To us, the strangers who may bear tomorrow’s consequences do not yet have names.

But their names are known to God.