I was listening to my favorite Metallica album last week. The band's second effort, the one with Dave Mustaine from Megadeth sitting in on and co-writing a couple tracks. An album that just might be one of rock's purest examinations of death.

There's death by one's own hand, by the hand of another, by the hand of government and by the hand of God. Biblical tales and secular myths. The idea that death is, itself, perhaps the ultimate expression of life.

I killed a man last week.

Now that my teenage years are more than a decade behind me, it's a lot easier to see the appeal of this sort of music to young people. People who see issues only in black and white, see all actions as grave and irreparable. Once you start down a road, you cannot go back. Back in the 8th grade I saw a BASIC program a friend of mine had written. It was so far above my head that I decided then and there that I wouldn't be a computer programmer. I was already too far behind, you see. Years later, when I realized how wrong I'd been, I still couldn't change that path. To do so would be to go against my convictions.

Back in the mid 80s I gravitated to hard rock, heavy metal, whatever you want to call it. Songs of war, swords and sorcery and absolute ideals. Die with your boots on. In goes the knife, out comes a life, consider that bastard dead. Who made you God to say, "I'll take your life from you."? The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. with their sixguns at their sides. The ideals conflicted all to hell. That wasn't a problem. As long as the motives were "pure," they fit the mode. The same thing can be heard in the rap/metal circle today, from Dr. Dre to Limp Bizkit to Rage Against the Machine. It's a similar philosophy, just aimed at a multi-ethnic audience.

You killed a man last week.

This idea that all actions are either good or bad got some of us into trouble. Suicide, for example. Once you become convinced that suicide is the right way to go, no evidence to the contrary enters into the equation. All anti-suicide thoughts become "bad" and "impure." People always say you've gotta be committed to kill yourself. Well, duh.

But even less extreme actions are still seen in the same light. There was a teacher at my high school that I didn't like. She wasn't even my teacher, but she did some mean things to friends of mine. I knew her outside of school and didn't like her there, either. So one Sunday evening while skipping church youth group, a friend and I shoe-polished her classroom window with obscenities. It was the only possible response to her actions, you see. To do less would be to equivocate. Live and let live is not a credo most teenagers accept or even understand.

We all killed Gary Graham last week.

But I grew out of that. I learned that there are very few absolutes, and that I have to take responsibility for my actions. If I do something, it's not because it is a "good" or "bad" action but because I decided to do it. The morality of the action does not impact on my responsibility. "Good" actions can hurt people. "Bad" actions can help people. Right and wrong can exist on the same side of the sword.

Not only that, but we can't always immediately judge if our decisions and actions were "good" and "right" and "proper." Sometimes it takes years to figure this stuff out. A lifetime even. And the most important thing to remember is that good people make mistakes. They think they're doing the right thing, they think they see what they see, and the wrong man dies anyway.

It happens every day.

Every single day.

Jon Worley has never thought much of the death penalty. He's also in favor of cable TV and weight rooms in prisons. In fact, he wouldn't be opposed to pate and caviar Sundays at Leavenworth.