Forgiveness, Grace and Justice

Today I received the following from a good friend. He sent it to me in the hopes I would comment on it on my blog. I wrote him back and offered to do him one better by posting his original piece as guest posting, with his permission of course. The following is the piece Doug wrote about the mess concerning Governor Spitzer:

Over the past couple weeks we have been inundated with the scandalous reports about the Governor of NY and the prostitution ring he was using. His resignation was demanded and received by the press and people. Talk Shows made jokes and vilified him for his actions and the news has vaulted the young lady who provided the service to fame and fortune. Gossip and enchantment with the story have fueled the fires of this story. It is water-cooler culture at its best. The story even comes up in church as a topic of how this man is getting his just deserts for sinning. This mans weakness has ruined his life, hurt those around him, damaged relationships forever. Everyone says that he is getting what he deserves. This man rose to fame and power as a prosecutor meting out justice to others. Now in their eyes the chickens have come home to roost. Justice is being served. In churches we hear ministers talking about the sinful actions and how we pay the price for sin. An example of what happens when we sin. However; I want to weep for this man, his family, those who have been hurt and the thought that he may not be able to pull out of this destruction he has brought on to himself and his family. I look at him and say if I were him what would I do, how would I want to be treated? What would I do if one of my sins were on all the talk shows and in the news? What would I do if I hurt my wife and child by my actions?
This is something that you say which means something bad that has happened to someone else could have happened to you. Over the past few weeks we have been hearing about Gov Spitzer and how he lost all this money, you can't help thinking;
But for the Grace of God, There Go I.
In the mid 1500’s John Bradford was imprisoned in the Tower of London and while watching prisoners being taken out to be executed he made the utterance “There, But For the Grace of God, Go I”
I have noticed as I have gotten older and hopefully a little wiser that these things affect me differently than they used to. I guess it is because I have spiritually grown and I have been hurt in the past. I also have learned my limitations and believe that how I treat others will weigh against my heart when I meet judgment; but that is another sermon. However, what the Lord taught me there was to see people like he sees us all: guilty but beloved.

I once heard a story of a man who gave another man a ride on a rainy day. The driver’s daughter was with him and when he gave this man a ride she knew that this man had stolen from her Father’s store a few times, and she asked him why he would help a man like that. Her father replied, “Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t always give us what we deserve?”

The bible says in Hebrews 9:22 that God demands justice; his forgiveness requires the shedding of blood- and in Romans 3 he says that his demand for justice was satisfied by Christ’s death. Why did Christ die for us? Because he loves us and wanted to have mercy on us. Romans 9:16 says that our salvation does not depend on our effort or our desire, but on his mercy.

When you get what you deserve, that’s justice. When you don’t get what you deserve, it’s mercy. And when you get what you don’t deserve, that’s grace.

The Bible says in Romans 5 that even though we were sinners, Christ died for us. His demand for justice was balanced by his love and mercy for us, and our deserved punishment was made unnecessary by his grace.

The Bible says in Isaiah 30 that the Lord “rises to show us compassion,” and “longs to be gracious to us.” Think about the Governor for a moment, he has gotten what he deserves (probably more because of his prominence) but who is showing him mercy? We as Christians need to show this to the world. We need to pray for him and his family so that they may make it through this. Because of our actions he may also find grace through Christ. If we don’t do this he will look at our Christianity as everything else. He will get what he doesn’t deserve because he can be saved, because we as Christians were a good example of grace given to him.

In your life, never forget what has been done for you. Whatever it is that someone is doing to you that makes you want to demand justice, pause for a moment to reflect on the mercy and grace you’ve received and “long to be gracious” to that person.

And take a second to say “But for the Grace of God, There Go I”
It is a beautiful thing to have received the grace of our Lord’s salvation. And it is beautiful to him when we extend it to others. God gave it to you and me even though we didn’t deserve it. Who are we to withhold mercy and grace from another person?
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My own response to this situation seems to be a little harder to come by. I do not condone the governor’s actions that led up to this incident. I believe what he is experiencing now is justice, plain and simple. I believe it has long been a national disgrace that we prosecute prostitutes like crazy but johns hardly at all.

I think it is a difficult business reconciling just punishment with forgiveness and grace. I do not think public officials should be allowed to act however they wish to act and remain in office. If a person cannot stand up to a commitment that lasts a lifetime, he or she should not be trusted to remain true to a commitment that lasts only a few years.

When a public official does something like this and people start talking about justice, punishment, forgiveness and grace, things can start getting mighty complicated. Justice would be to fire the person and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. Then people start talking about forgiveness. If we forgive, shouldn’t the person stay in office? If there is a call for ouster, can it be said that we have truly forgiven?

I believe that we are directed to forgiveness in a personal sense. If someone wrongs us, we are directed to forgiveness in several passages of the bible. In Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Jean Valjean escaped from a workhouse and in the process stole a silver candlestick from a local priest. Police Inspector Javert caught Jean and returned him to the workhouse and brought him before the priest. Javert watches carefully as Jean brings the candlestick from his pack. Javert is fairly salivating at the thought of being able to send Jean back to the prison galleys. The priest says that Jean is welcome to the candlestick and then gives him its mate. The refusal to prosecute was forgiveness and the candlesticks were grace.

The problem comes when you try to apply this type of thinking to someone in a position of public respect and trust. If you leave the person in office, it’s forgiveness but it also starts a slippery slope that will end with every office held by the biggest scoundrels in the community. If you remove the person from office you’re making sense but you’re far less forgiving. This is especially true for a career politician in these days. The political career of such a person would be over for good.

I believe that the answer lies in the position. Mr. Spitzer violated not only the law of the land and the law of God but also the public trust. Public officials must be held to a higher standard. Anything less just won’t do. I’m not saying that this man should be pilloried or run out of town on a rail. That is the part where our public forgiveness should show forth. “There, but for the grace of God, go I!” should be the watchword on personal forgiveness, but the public official who breaks the law must be removed from office, period. For any further forgiveness or grace, such a person must turn to God. That brings me to the remedy

Unless what, you say. It seems to me that there are several examples of repentance by public officials in the Bible. David danced before the Lord all the way from the gates of the city to his palace as a public sign of repentance. Jehosaphat, Job and several others rent their garments and put on sackcloth and ashes. Betrayal of the public trust has only one suitable form of repentance in Biblical terms. It must be total, abject, very public and must go far beyond standing up to a microphone and saying “I’m sorry.” Do I mean that I want to see Mr. Spitzer publicly humiliated? No. I just think that the Bible sets the precedent clearly that a violation of the public trust must be recompensed by public penance.

Homeschooling: Whose children are they anyway?

I just saw a minor skirmish of opinions in the Dayton Daily News (Dayton,OH) concerning a ruling by an activist judge in California. Judge H. William Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals has ruled that parents do not have a Constitutional right to teach their children if they are not certified to teach. There are several points that need to be considered about this ruling and its implications.

Judge Croskey is a federal judge. This ruling was passed down in the Second District Court Of Appeals, which is in the federal court system. Further, this ruling speaks to the Constitutional right of parents to decide about the education of their children. Because of these two points alone, this ruling is monumentally dangerous. This sets a precedent that can be used all across our nation to eradicate the rights of Christian homeschoolers. If the parents must be certified to teach, can licensing be far behind, and then approval of curricula? So much for separation of church and state! The Godless humanists of the public schools will soon be mandating that homosexuality is natural, that there is no God and that we all descended from slime.

I know this ruling was a question of California law. However, we must remember that it was handed down in a federal court and it was a question of constitutional rights. Since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, (1803) it has been an established fact that federal law holds ascendancy over state law. This means that a federal precedent has now been established. If any other state departments of education care to challenge the constitutionality of a parent's right to homeschool their children, the way has now been cleared. A federal judge has decided it is not a Constitutionally-protected right.

The next thing we need to look at is the certification process. Of course, the certifications must come from the states. This means the state will mandate what knowledge and what types of information parents must learn in order to become able to teach their own children. This, in several areas, violates the Establishment Clause. It is no secret and, considering the sorry moral compass of our current school systems, no surprise that many of the parents who choose to homeschool their children do so for religious reasons.

The teachings of abortion as birth control, homosexuality as normal, promiscuity as inevitable, and evolution as fact are only some of the ways our schools have become hostile to Christian students. It has already become an acknowledged problem in academic circles that it is nearly impossible to achieve a doctorate in the physical sciences if your thesis supports creation instead of evolution. If this isn't a violation of the separation of church and state, I don't know what a violation would look like. But then the courts have historically decided against the Christian viewpoint in establishment cases almost every time.

This whole thing has been coming at us for some time, and it's accelerating. First, there was the Scopes trial. Then Madeline Murray-O'Hare, got the Pledge of Allegiance banned from our schools. Other cases came and went for years. Then, in 1988, we voted into power an administration that was solidly bent on taking away the rights of all Christians in this country. It takes a village to raise a child, they told us. Parents and God just aren't enough it seems. We all need health care the government pays for and regulates, they said. We need to remove all references to God from our government buildings, money and documents.

This last bit was their most honest proposal. The liberal socialists want God removed not only from our government but also from our daily lives and our lexicon. They want government to be our god. They want us to turn to our government for everything. Why would they want that? Because they are the government! In short, they want to be our god.

So now we will be required to jump through their hoops to be allowed to teach our own children in our own homes. We will have to teach the Godless curricula they dictate. I really question the mentality behind the recent mania to wipe out homeschooling. Is this the same country where our classrooms are so overcrowded? Is this the same country where I see news story after news story about outstanding children who used the freedom of homeschooling to excel in math, science or the arts? Take a look at the educational background of almost all of the winners of the National Spelling Bee for the past ten years! They were taught at home. Have the liberals not been paying attention, or is it that they just don't care? I guess the process of becoming a god must not involve caring. I wouldn't know. I'm not interested in being God. I've read the book that contains the job description.

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Update:

Since I wrote the piece above I have found that this decision is going to be directly affecting my family very soon. You see, I am a military retiree and I must file for dependency status for any of my sons over the age of eighteen if they continue to go to school. I recently did so for our middle son, citing the fact that he was finishing up high school at home. I received a denial of my claim saying that our homeschool is not "accredited" and therefore we are not allowed to keep Sam as my dependent, which will leave him without health care. Fortunately, Sam has graduated from high school now and will be attending a local community college in September, but we will have to wait until we have a paid fee bill before I can re-submit the paperwork to claim him as a dependent. Your tax dollars at work! I wonder if we'll get a similar missive from the IRS when we try to claim our sons at tax time. Probably!

Second Update: Some people have been asking me for links about this problem. The best one I can think of is for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). They defend the Constitutional rights of parents to homeschool their children. They are affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice and they have a very informative website at: http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1 Check it out and join today!

Why patriotism is important

Recently, a friend sent me a link for a news story about a group of Viet Nam veterans and other patriots who go out of their way to be at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to welcome home members of our armed forces returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They do this because of the shameful reception the Viet Nam veterans were given when they returned. Many were spat upon, called baby killers and worse.

Watching the news story reminded me of a parade we were given in Tonopah, Nevada, after returning from DESERT STORM. The whole time it was happening, I was thinking about my brother and brother-in-law returning from Viet Nam and I was saying to myself, "Where were their parades?" Every time I think about how little I went through compared to what they experienced I just want to sit down and weep for this country.

I never heard incoming rounds whipping past my head, but they did. I never saw men from a sampan that my ship destroyed eaten by sharks, but they did. I never saw friends of mine injured or killed in the ports of Viet Nam or the Philippines. I was deployed once, for four months. My brother had two cruises of over 6 months each and 5 campaign stars. I don't know about my brother-in-law. He never talks about 'Nam. That's another difference.

I have no scars, physical or mental, from my wars. My brother still has nightmares and my brother-in-law never went back home after he and my sister married because it was too painful to see all the missing faces. I've kept thinking this whole time that those parades were so wrong. I'm no hero, but they are.

I am in no way saying that the experiences of all of our fighting men and women who have served in the Middle East were as easy as mine, far from it! Our personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen experiences very similar to the ones reported by Viet Nam veterans. IEDs, ambushes, and not being able to readily tell friend from foe or non-combatant all sound pretty similar to me. I am also not saying that the pilots in our unit didn't face the realities of combat. Everyone knows what a workhorse the Stealth Fighter was during Operation DESERT STORM.

What gets me is the disingenuous way the American public treats its war veterans. At the outset of this current conflict, public support seemed to be solidly behind our troops. Then the media worked away to undermine support for the war by undermining support for our Commander-in-Chief. If you don't think the two things are connected, take a look back at the the archived articles and see if the fall-offs in welcomes for returning troops didn't mirror the decreases in public confidence for President Bush. There is no way to support the troops if you don't support the war, people! Your opinions about the one will always affect or infect the way you feel about the other, and the stronger opinion will always prevail.

I think the way DESERT STORM veterans were welcomed had a lot to do with how people felt about the way that war worked out. Twenty-eight days is a lot more popular for a war's duration than six years. DESERT STORM was a media event. Every night there were new videos of targets being blasted to bits by guided bombs or missiles. The briefings from the Joint Operations Center were mostly entertaining, especially those done by the British officers and by General Schwartzkopf. These broadcasts all drew great ratings and were covered in a positive tone by our news media.

By contrast, after the initial few months of the latest foray into Iraq, most of the media coverage has focused on casualties. It's easy to bring a country to have nothing but distaste for a military action when all the news is about the latest IED or ambush. Strangely, this was the same tone the media adopted during the Viet Nam conflict. Very rarely were there any positive stories on the news concerning Viet Nam.

Maybe we should take another look at this whole thing. Maybe we will finally learn that our armed forces fight better when they know we're all behind them! A really great way to tell them that is by showing our support for the ones returning. (If you don't think the troops still in the danger zone are hearing about the type of welcome troops coming home are experiencing, you are sadly mistaken. In this internet age, they know within minutes.) Let's all see what we can do to show support for our returning troops! You don't have to go out to the airport. You can buy a soldier a cup of coffee or just make sure you tell them welcome home when you find out they have been to war. It doesn't matter which war. All veterans deserve at least that much!





MSgt Kenneth A Davy, USAF (Ret)

A Choice To Make

Today, we Ohioans had a choice to make. Actually we had a choice to make before we could vote. We had to choose one of the two major political parties. For people like my wife, who prefers to remain an independent, this is a cruel choice. She had to choose to declare herself as belonging to a party she does not feel aligned with and would never claim in any other situation. What was her only other choice, to stay home, not vote, voluntarily forfeit her franchise?

So, there were no independent candidates. Whose fault is that? When did it become necessary for a candidate to raise a certain amount of money to appear on the ballot? When did this become Constitutional? According to what I learned in school, anyone who meets the Constitutional requirements to serve as president is supposed to be allowed to run for president. The requirements for becoming president are clearly spelled out in the Constitution. There aren't supposed to be any other requirements. The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, governing the requirements for all three branches of our government.

Why have we allowed the politicos to corrupt our election process in this way? Can it be that we no longer care how the process works, or is it that we have come to believe the process doesn't work? Did it ever work? I'm doubtful. As much as the founding fathers strove to bring the franchise of the vote to the people, they may have underestimated the apathy of the electorate or the level of mistrust in the process.

Here's an idea! Why don't we all get busy and do our homework and start holding our lawmakers accountable? Why can't we all start paying attention to what our government is doing? Do we really need the media to tell us what to think? Our American media is the epitome of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, endlessly affecting events through the process of "observing" them. How else could a reporter have his foot run over by Britney Spears? Anyone who has ever watched a White House press conference should be able to discern the media's role in affecting our political processes.

Now that we have the internet and numerous ways to find out which lawmakers voted in what directions, who proposed which bills and numerous other metrics pertaining to our Legislative Branch, why don't we simply do our own homework and let the media cover the sensational stuff, which is what they seem to prefer anyway? The reason is simple and it is one I already talked about, apathy! Maybe we forgot that Heisenberg Principle. The way to affect something is to observe it and we the people are the ones who are supposed to be affecting this process. We need to get busy and start affecting it before we have no part in it at all.