(Seeking to place legal and/or Biblical blame for one’s actions enables us to engage in America’s favorite indoor sport, jumping to conclusions.)
Children are really into placing blame, finding fault, and excusing actions from the playground, to the school ground to the family dinner table. Every little boy at one time or another had his mind racing a mile a second seeking a scapegoat for a momentary act of stupidity, carelessness or just plain meanness. I know, I was there many times in the tumultic years of my growing up.
I was about seven years of age when one sunny afternoon in Great Bend, Kansas, mother asked me to take Nancy to the park to play on the swings. We had a great sibling relationship and were off to the park a few blocks away and our favorite play ground.
Nancy loved to swing and I had her swinging high on the big girl swings, she was hanging on for dear life and squealing with glee. I got her going enough to come around and watch her swing from momentum. Then I got the brilliant idea of using her for a moving target to improve my rock throwing ability. I didn’t say I was the smartest taco on the plate. I missed with throw one and two, just scared her, and brothers like to do that. Throw three was dead center her forehead and blood was flowing as I caught her and swing seeing dooms day ahead for me when I got her home. Mother did the spanking there would be no waiting for daddy.
My mind was racing, how could I escape the belt? I told Nancy as I quieted her down and got the bleeding stopped, “Nancy, so we can come to the park again we need to tell mother you fell out of the swing and hit a rock that caused the bleeding.” Nancy was shaking her head in agreement, I had it made. We went home.
We walked through the door to mother’s waiting arms and on queue Nancy started crying and shouting, “Herbie throw a rock and hit me while I was swinging.”
Guilt, fault was established, punishment decided and for the sake of our readers of a family Epistle, I will bleep out the rest of the day.
Most criminal cases are not as easy to establish guilt and fault, either legal according to the laws of the land, or Biblically by what ever dispensation that applied. That makes lawyers wealthy and masters of loop holes and escape clauses in the rule of national and regional law. That creates denominations and biblical renewal of the old time argument between the Pharisees and Sadducees that allowed Paul to start a riot to draw attention away from him.
It seems that shootings and knifing mayhem are almost daily events in the news feeds of today in the United States. After each one, everyone is quick to place blame, or to excuse the action and seek a different blame. It has become a national past time. To listen to the hue and cry of the media, the bloggers, the essayists and Face bookers, everything from Rush Limbaugh to NRA to the Pro Life activists, the “drive by” media, the Muslim terrorists, almost any conservative Christian, on to video games must be at fault. No one seems to want to admit, ‘they threw the rock.”
This past month’s killing of three and wounding nine at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs is a prime example. Colorado Springs is an island of red in a sea of Colorado blue to use the political terms. That is in ever day language in a very liberal, progressive, legal marijuana Colorado, is the “Springs” a town of 33 conservative, prolife, right wing ministries that shape the thinking of much of the rest if the United States. There is always high tension along I-25 and the Eastern Edge of the Rockies.
This shooting had all the makings of Hollywood drama of Stephen King’s quality. Right now there is a President that owes much of his political life and success to Chicago politics and their allies such as Planned Parenthood, and his statement that he will veto any congressional action against Planned Parenthood. There is the move in Congress to defund the $600,000,000.00 annual federal grant to the largest abortion provider in the Western Hemisphere. There are the independent research videos that prove what many have known for years, that Planned Parenthood is selling baby body parts at a high profit, and birthing some babies alive to preserve body parts and killing them on the table as they dissect them. There is the active right wing conservative pro life movement that is very anti abortion as well as a strong woman’s rights group that has named all this, “The war on women.” Tempers run high at every level.
Abortion clinics are very legal in Colorado and in the Springs. A week ago last Friday, Robert Lewis Dear a 57 year old recluse that lived in a small camper set up illegally in near by Hartsel, Colorado shot up the clinic. This is one really mixed up person. His rap sheet shows arrests for being a Peeping Tom, animal cruelty, domestic disputes, cross dressing and he one time registered to vote as a woman. The blaming media are now trying to say that was a clerical error, the person filling it our marked the wrong box, but the first name was the feminine, Roberta. There was no doubt that Robert Dear was against abortion, he said so during the five hour armed stand off in which preaching elder, lead guitarist in the praise band of Hope Chapel, a 100 member small church in Colorado Springs, Officer Garrett Swasey was the hero. The retired competitive ice skater officer Swasey was one of the preaching elders of Hope Chapel, and earned his living for himself and wife and two children as a Campus Police officer on the U of Colorado in the Springs.
It did not matter to the very prolife true Pastor that he was rushing into an abortion clinic, he was sworn before the law and before God to love, cherish and protect life and he dove head first into the abortion clinic to save as many as he could before he was cut down with Dear’s bullets. He is attributed with saving a number of lives. “He knew in whom he believed and was persuaded that he was able to keep that which he had committed to him against that day.”
Within an hour of the ambulances finishing their exhaustive work at the clinic, the news media was blaming our lack of gun control, and the right wing frenzy against the abortion industry and against Planned Parenthood in particular as being responsible for the killings.
A national talking head was blaming Rush Limbaugh, and a college professor in North Carolina that had made eastern headlines for his lawsuit against the state university for denying him tenure due to his prolife blog, and winning tenure. The blame game was in full court. The Right wing struck back, the most balanced I quoted in this Epistle, the Focus on the Family lady, Kelly Rosati in the Exchange. Joining Kelly seeking some balance to the attack was John Stonestreet of Break Point. Coming in where I am is Presidential candidate, Dr, Ben Carson that is calling for a calm of accusations till the investigation is complete by the Colorado Springs police department that has made no releases yet. Then to come together in a civil manner and seek national solutions to unregistered guns, mentally handicapped persons, angry rhetoric and a seeking to a return of civility in our country.
It is politically incorrect to suggest that Robert Dear’s mental condition, his mixed emotions about sexuality, or his natural nature of cruelty to animals is indicative of his willingness to be angry and cruel to everyone around him.
Just his one statement as he shot up the place that he was against abortion and something unintelligible about body parts; is all that is mentioned in the media.
There is no doubt that he was anti abortion, but can we blame the right wing talk shows, the prolife movement or the Operation Rescue that have all condemned the killings and the attack. I believe Kelly Rosati wrote the best about it as quoted in this Epistle.
But the question of fault and guilt remain. In decades past and seeking to be a center stage problem again is the question of racial killings in our land. Was the atmosphere of black hatred and subhuman classification or the angry street mob more guilty in the hanging of a black man for an infraction yet proven? The answer is “YES.” The national atmosphere fostered the anger and hatred that made it easy for street mobs to form.
Then there is a 180 degree different question about a Biblical wrong called abortion that is murder and there is a right and wrong side biblically that for the Christian is not 50 or even 1 shade of gray, “To not speak against evil, is evil itself.”
Thus if Robert Dear was enlivened in his motives to shoot up the clinic, no doubt an evil itself, were the words the right wing, prolife speaking against abortion and Planned Parenthood responsible? The question of the day is, ‘IS SPEAKING AGAINST AN EVIL WITH CLEAR BIBLICAL STANDARDS THE EVIL, OR IS THE EVIL OF MURDER ITSELF THE EVIL THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SHOOTINGS?” The clear biblical answer is, the evil of murder is responsible, so Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs in murdering preborn children is responsible, at fault, guilty of the shooting that took out the lives of three and wounding of nine others.
If that is not true, then every minister in America that speaks against murder becomes responsible for every murder committed in the United States.