Series – Losing Our Moral Compass (Pushing & Shoving)

In the Our Daily Bread daily devotion for March 6, 2013, Joe Stowell observes “Life is a lot like “bumper cars” at an amusement park.” In describing the typical playground response of push and push back harder, he hits home with many negative experiences I’ve had since moving to Maryland. The latest one was this Sunday at the Flower Hill Giant.
 

Even after twenty years of living here, I still do not understand what is “wrong” with these people. And, what they do is “wrong” when it involves their failure to yield the right-of-way by shoving their shopping cart into the other person’s. This is not the first time or even the first time this year I was hit by one of these loony’s.

 
Where did their physically violent and grossly inappropriate response come from? Why didn’t their mothers teach them to “wait their turn”? And when it's not their turn, then they need to wait, not shove the other person!

I don’t know the answers to my questions but as a Christian, Mr. Stowell reminds me that God wants me to forgive them as he has forgiven me. Why? Because “When you get bumped in life, bumping back only escalates matters and in the end everyone suffers damage.”

One lady at my church made this insightful remark “it’s another forgiveness opportunity.” Barb, I am still trying. Amen.

Series - Losing Our Moral Compass (Lululemon Killer Looks for Mercy)

When I heard the pleas for mercy this morning on the TV from the family of Brittany Norwood, the woman convicted of murdering her co-worker at the Bethesda Lululemon clothing store last year, I told myself I had to blog about it.

Yes, I am an Elder in the Presbyterian Church but mercy and forgiveness do not mean the purpertrator gets to slide on the consequences of his or her actions. What Brittany did to Jayna Murray was not only brutal but vicious and wild.

Dear parents of Brittany, your daughter stabbed her 332 times. Hello? Are you just as nuts as she is?

Brittany Norwood (Credit: CBS/WJZ)

I also have a psychology degree and I support the conclusion that Brittany “is beyond rehabilitation.”[1] She needs to be put away forever so she can’t “lose it” again and mutilate someone else. When someone does something so heinous, he or she puts themselves “outside” of society and does not have the right to benefit from the safety of the society he or she just violated!

May Jayna rest in peace.

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  [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57367154-504083/sentencing-looms-in-lululemon-store-murder-killer-brittany-norwoods-family-begs-for-mercy/

It’s Not Fair!

In the Our Daily Bread devotion for June 9, 2010 entitled “It’s Not Fair”, Joe Stowell writes about the human view of justice versus God’s view of Justice. Most of my life I felt like his example: I wanted people who were bad to me and people who were bad to others to “get it good” from God. I definitely did not want to see the baddies to go happily along enjoying their lives.

As a child, my grandmother’s response to good things happening to bad people was to mutter something in Italian, then make the sign of the cross. As months often turned into years, the “named party” would die and she would shout victoriously “See, my curse hit him!” Like bobble heads, my brother and I nodded in agreement thinking “ma” was all powerful and vowed never (again) to make her angry.

I went off to college where my tightly held beliefs were challenged. One fall day, I told one of ma’s “curse” stories when I realized the obvious – ALL people die so what kind of curse is that? (Thanks to Philosophy 101 class for getting me to ask such questions.) Because it was self-fulfilling, it worked for ma as a woman of her time with no personal power in an unjust world. I discovered from a psychologist that it was part also part of her Italian upbringing because Italy has a revenge-based culture. Most Italians are Catholic but their responses to injustice go beyond the proportional response of “an eye for an eye…” espoused in the New Testament. Commit an offense and Italians want to totally take you out!

Decades later I restarted my spiritual journey in the Presbyterian church taking some formal classes. What I learned here also challenged my tightly held beliefs as well as showed me other flaws in ma’s adjudication process. I now know that even if someone is bad to me I am not supposed to ask God to kill him or her off. I also understand that god doesn’t exist to get even with my personal enemies. I recognize that only God has the authority to punish someone and all fall short of His glory. And, that means me too.

My earthly search for justice started with the question “How far could I really run with the proverbial plank in my eye?” Just as I started to despair over my faults and false thinking, Stowell’s words pulled me back. The joy is that (in Christ) God “extends grace to those who are undeserving and hopelessly lost.”

Clearly I should be glad God has not given it to me as I deserve (Psalm 103:10). if God were truly “fair” to me, He who can abide in no sin, then I’d be in big trouble – just look at the Old Testament. In fact, I have gotten better than I deserve. So the next time I want to cry “foul”, I need to keep in mind that God is merciful to me. Then shut myself up!

Better yet, I can follow Julie Ackerman’s model who replied to an injustice by saying “I understand how that could have happened.  I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes, and then I left it at that.” (Our Daily Bread, 6/7/10, A Steward of Grace)

Heavenly Father, thank you for giving me better than I deserve. May the Holy Spirit well up with words of grace whenever I am in the midst of struggle. Show me how to walk better in your ways that I may bring you the glory that you deserve.

Amen.