A couple of football players from Kenton, Ohio decided to play a prank by taking a decoy deer and placing it in the middle of the road to watch cars swerve to avoid it. Unfortunately one car had an accident, breaking one guys neck and putting another guy in the hospital. They say he'll have the aptitude of a 6th grader for the rest of his life.
Sometimes I wonder how some of my "pranks" or little jokes could have gone way too far. I've never been the whoopee cushion laying down, bucket of water leaning against a door, sticking a tube of toothpaste under a door and stepping on it - kind of guy. I've thrown a few rolls of tp, made some phone calls with voices that aren't my own, and even written a few notes that were forged. I'm not sure how those could go too wrong...but I'm sure they could have turned out as horrible, horrible mistakes.
I have some friends who went 4-wheeling on what they thought was just some woods...and were shot at by the guy who owned the land. Turns out kids had been destroying his property for years. He decided to fire a warning shot...and it hit the side of the jeep. It was a big deal, but it would have been a MAJOR deal if it had hit one of the guys in the jeep.
I've made jokes that I shouldn't have....been in the wrong place at the wrong time....mentioned things to people that were inappropriate. I've made some major blunders in my life, but there's something inside of me that rages when I heard that these football players were given 60 days of time in juvy to be served after football season. They ruined these two guy's lives..and they're back at football practice.
Am I just a lucky guy who's never had one of my little mistakes blow up in my face like this? Should I just say, "there but by the grace of God go I" and learn to have a little more empathy?
I guess that vengeance isn't mine, it's just that I'd like to see some legal vengeance happen a little more out there.
Am I just a hypocrite? (hypothetical question...I don't know anybody that isn't a hypocrite)
Maybe "vengence" and "punishment" are two different things.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that you avoid punishing a child for doing something wrong and say "Vengence is mine, sayath the Lord" and walk away waiting for His smite.
Now ~ about these "children" who stupidly (yes, now I am JUDGING) put the fake deer in the road ~ ARGGH! They should have been "punished" more. And just because they wear football jerseys, ....grrrr...
I wonder if the judge would have given the same "sentence" to a student involved in a theater production and have them wait to serve it until after
their last performance of "The King and I"?
Whoops..I see that "Vengeance" can be spelled "vengence"..but "sayeth" should be "saith"...but "theater" can be "theatre"..and oh, enuf of this!
ReplyDeleteChoices have consequences. Our society is beginning to forget this. We blame everyone except for ourselves when something goes wrong. Yes, we all mess up, but hopefully we all learn to grow to accept the consequences of those mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure this is a whole other issue but regarding people saying "there but by the grace of God go I", I don't really like it. It seems to be said it cases that we look at with pity in our eyes and say, "there but by...". Why do we think that we have Gods grace because of our situation but that person doesn't because of their seemingly worse off situation?
ReplyDeleteAnd I am so with Steve-o, we need to grow up and learn that we are responsible for ourselves. It isn't always our parents fault or our teachers fault or the broken spedometers fault (which Ive tried) or the heroins fault. We have had some pretty poor examples in our society of people getting out of consequences only to make "normal" people think they should as well.
I don't think a hypocrite is someone who says and expects one thing but does the opposite. We all say that we should love others but we don't always do it, I don't think that means we're all hypocrites. If that were true then every Christian who professes the Bible is a hypocrite for their whole life. A hypocrite is someone that says and expects something but does not pursue that in their own life. We speak the call to love others but when we get angry at someone it's our response to that anger that makes us a hypocrite or not. Do we fight it or feed it?
ReplyDeleteSometimes our issues are very much the fault of our parents, but in the end, like it or not, they're still ours to deal with, and not doing that is our fault. We can blame our folks, but we still gotta clean up the mess. The one nice thing is that we often get to make mistakes with our own kids, and then let them work that stuff out. Ha ha ha! Karma in action! It's the ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiife, it's the wheel of fortuuuuuuuuuuuuuune. . .at least my mom was good enough to help pay for my therapy!
ReplyDelete