Ready to Snap in Selmer

It is March 22, 2006 in sleepy Selmer, Tennessee. As he lies in bed, an unassuming pastor’s wife takes 12-gauge shotgun and strikes him with a single blast. She apologizes even as he is dying. The next day, she is arrested 340 miles away in a hotel room with her three young daughters. She does not resist arrest and immediately confesses to the crime.

More than a year later, jury selection has begun. The media has given much attention to this story as always happens when preachers and crime are connected. Neither defense or prosecution has given much information. The full understanding of the events of that day await the trial testimony for revelation.

In the meantime, speculation has been rich and juicy. The victim has been accused of being alternately a wife beater or a pedophile, while no one knows quite what to make of Mrs. Winkler, who has yet to offer a motive. Her only criticism of her husband has been that he criticized her too much. But there has to be some seamy underside of abuse and adultery , right?

The trial itself may provide all the prurient details for which the press usually seeks, but what we know to be truth at the moment would not make a good movie of the week.

Both Matthew Winkler and his wife Mary attended Freed-Hardeman University, a Church of Christ affiliated college in Henderson, Tennessee. They were married in 1996. Everyone in the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer was happy with the pastor and thought their marriage was perfect. Was this marriage and its tragic ending just another example of Christian hypocrisy gone bad? What if it is scarier than that?

While I do not know this couple personally, I know the culture of which they were a part. I was raised Church of Christ and I too attended Freed-Hardeman University. I know all the good things and the bad things about the world in which they lived. I do not know all the secrets of their personal lives, and I await the trial revelations like anyone else, but my heart is heavy.

I do not know the mental state of Mary Winkler when she killed her husband. I do know you do not have to be a hypocrite to collapse under pressure. I think modern life is harder than it used to be. I know that Mary Winkler had fallen prey to an internet scam that has befallen thousands, but there are pressures to be perfect on a preacher’s wife that most of us can never imagine.

I do not know the facts, so I cannot know what justice is and I do not envy the jury. I know there are no winners. Two families have lost a child forever. Three children have lost both their parents forever. No one won here but the devil. Whatever we might discover about Matthew Winkler (and I suspect he was just an ordinary man with ordinary faults), he will not have the chance to repent.

I suspect this is not a story about monsters, but ordinary, sincere Christians who could not meet the challenges of the world in which they lived. That is really a scary story.