November 2013: Civility in Christian Scriptures
If you’ve been around me much, then you know that civility is an issue that interests me. I surely haven’t perfected the skill of civility, but I do try to use it and I appreciate so much when others do the same. Incivility makes me crazy. I’ve preached about civility and I’ve written about civility.
One of the funner things I’ve done was last year when I blogged and twittered statements about civility each day of October. All that is sitting in another blog of mine that’s been mostly inactive since, The Civil Pen. Those statements tended to be original ideas I wanted to convey, along with famous quotes and statements.
I really enjoyed that month of writing. I enjoyed it so much that I’m back for November of 2013. But this time I want to contribute something to the “theology of civility.” Each day of November, for each and every one of the 30 days, I’m going to blog, Twitter and Facebook a passage of Christian scripture, something from the Old or New Testament, that opens up the wonder and grace of civility. We’ll hear from Jesus, we’ll share ancient Proverbial wisdom, and we’ll dig in with other writers from the New Testament who are actively forming and being formed by the earliest Christian traditions.
I look forward to any and all participation from my circles of friends and family. I will try my best to be first and foremost faithful to God, then respectful of the scriptures and loving of my neighbor. I think it will be fun. I will also be preaching a series on Sunday mornings in November tied to some great scriptural themes on civility that we’ll see emerging from the scriptures, things like “control your anger” and “shut your mouth.” One of my favorite themes is that Jesus doesn’t send us out into the world to “win,” but instead to “make peace.”
Ultimately, I do this because I need it. I need to wrestle with these passages. I need civility planted deep in my heart and mind, and having taken root there, to grow into fruit in my life by which my God is both pleased and honored. If I end up boring you, then I apologize in advance. If this resonates and moves with you, if we make some connections that vibrate in your soul and cause us to dialogue and pray, then I will be satisfied. Either way, I commit the journey to God.
The stuff I’m writing and throwing out there will be available through my Twitter account (@Swirlyfoot) and my Facebook (also Swirlyfoot), and my own blog here (A Faithful Path) as well as our Church in Bethesda Blog. You’re invited to follow along as best suits your tastes.
AMDG, Todd
News Outlets Are Not “Live Social Media”
As I finish breakfast and head out from my perch at Starbucks I want to mention something that is trending on Facebook, blogs and in other outlets… it’s the Fox News host who quoted a parody news story as fact. And it leads me to hammer out a 20 minute blog post before I leave the coffee shop. In the clip, the Fox News host, Anna Kooiman, gives a teaser of a coming story they would expand on: President Obama uses personal funds to keep a Muslim cultural library open despite the shut down.
Mostly, people are pounding on the idea that she was simply being blatant in her attempt to divide us, Republican vs. Democrat, Christian vs. Muslim, etc. And I don’t completely disagree with that commentary; she was definitely looking to sensationalize a contrast she believed she understood. But of course, our President wasn’t using personal funds to keep any museum open.
Instead of playing the “I Hate Fox” card, how about we just take the life lesson that far more news outlets than Fox News need to grab hold of… “News outlets are not simply live social media.” How many of us have blogged, tweeted or posted a story just to find out it wasn’t accurate, truthful or even intended to be factual? We can giggle at a friend who gets confused by a well written Onion story that supports their prejudices or shocks their sensibilities, but national news outlets should know better. And Fox isn’t the only offender. (Remember the poor news host in California who actually read those racist, sick fake pilot names? Holy smokes.)
I love social media. I like Twitter, I enjoy some blogs and I’m tethered to Facebook. Because of my addiction to these various social mediums I am willing to expend energy on the needed filters to spot the slip ups and antics of my friends and favorites. But when it comes to national news outlets, I need better. We all need better.
And the lesson is for all of us to remember, as we begin pecking at the keys for our own next post, that things like this chip away at our credibility. Anna Kooiman is not a horrible person, and she isn’t stupid either. In fact, she seems to be a decent person who made a gaff, and then owned up to it and apologized. But it’s still a teachable moment.
Please, Fox News, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and all… we don’t need you reading the Twitter trends or falling for parody news. Slow down and get it right. We already have one Reddit, and the cosmos can’t keep balance with any more.
One Reason I Love Life Coaching: Healthy Dependence
“On Whom Do I Depend?”
I think that creating healthy dependence is one of the things that makes life coaching a great experience. Life coaching helps us exercise a kind of healthy dependence that strengthens independence. Healthy dependence is the power behind that old axiom, “There is strength in numbers.”
Whenever I make a plan for action or set a goal in my life it’s good to know who is going to help me get to my destination. I ask: Who’s got my back? Who will help me? Who encourages me? Who can help me be accountable? Who cares about my success?
Who supports you? Who encourages you? Who will help you stay on track and meet the goals you set? Sometimes in life you might naturally gravitate to those people, but others times it can helpful to stop and think about with whom you will share your goals and plans. Surrounding yourself with a team of dependable people can make any goal in life, personal or professional, easier to meet and more enjoyable in the process.
Think about a few things:
1) With whom do I not need to confide and share my goals? Too often we have chosen poorly and shared our goals with the wrong people. Do you have a person in your life who has consistently discouraged you from your goals, even if they did so with the best intentions? You can’t change that person, but you can change yourself and your decisions. Evaluate the opportunities you have for creating a “team” of friends who will commit to helping you succeed. There is a difference between a friend who challenges and stretches me, and a friend who criticizes and discourages me. Often, the most well-intentioned friends hurt us the most simply by not communicating well. If they can’t tell the difference between challenging in a healthy way and hurtfully criticizing, I sure can, and I need to choose wisely when it comes to sharing.
2) How do I need to be supported? Most of us have been on the receiving end of unhealthy accountability. Unhealthy accountability is the friend or coworker who decides to hold us accountable when we haven’t asked them to do that for us. It’s also when we haven’t processed how we wish to be held accountable. We aren’t talking about being accountable to a boss or a supervisor at work, that’s a different thing. When I make healthy accountability with a peer or a friend to help me meet a goal, I need to do these simple things: 1) I need to chose a person who genuinely cares about me, 2) I need to share honestly and openly with my friend about my goal and the steps I am planning to achieve it, and 3) I need to decide how I want to be held accountable, as in what questions I want my friend to ask me and how often.
3) This is exactly what a life coach does! Sometimes we might already have these friends surrounding us and we know exactly how to fall into a rhythm of healthy sharing and dependence to meet goals in life. Often we don’t. A life coach is a dependable friend who listens, challenges, reflects and encourages, as you reflect, set goals and plan the steps to meet those goals.
Who’s on my team? On whom can I depend for help and support? I need a teammate or two or three to make the most of my time and energy applied to setting and meeting my goals in life. I may call on you sometime to “be on my team.” Please be gentle with me if I do. And if I can ever jump on your team to help out, you only have to ask!
Ignatius of Loyola, My Spiritual Friend
Sometimes God brings us the friends we need at just the right moment, and other times we meet someone and just hold on for dear life because we know we found a treasure. I believe St. Ignatius of Loyola entered my life in a combination of both those movements… I am so thankful that God brought me in touch with Ignatius’ lasting influence, and I’m determined not to let go of my connection to him.
I have a painting on my bedroom wall of Ignatius with his community’s catch phrase, “AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM,” to the greater glory of God. I meant this to be simply a study, a first expression of a painting I was carrying in my heart. As often happens, my attention span gave out and the study is all I ever painted.
Today is his feast day, July 31st! It’s one of the few feast days I will think about in any given year and I always look forward to it. Ignatius is my friend, a spiritual friend and mentor. I’m blessed to have become an heir of his contributions to the world.
Ignatius, as I have come to understand him, was a mystic who enjoyed laughing. He was not terribly well educated in theology, but had a passion and a zeal, sometimes tempered by wisdom and sometimes not so much. He was devoted at once to community and individually hearing God. He was an opposable mind.
I like Saints who shine in their humanity as much as their connection to the divine, who make us stand in wonder at the way the two are so often one in the same, as God intended the two to intertwine in us. I like the way that Ignatius was a person of vision and visions, though he sometimes didn’t know what a particular vision meant. Such an occurrence didn’t cause fear or anxiety for Ignatius, because “perfect love casts out fear.”
He was a soldier turned saint. He was a Don Quixote. He was a renaissance dreamer who took a canon ball to the leg and was forced to slow down long enough to see what would matter most to him in life.
He taught me to pray with the saints. I had grown up with many “s” saints, the wonderful people of faith all around me, but I hadn’t grown up with the “S” Saints. Ignatius’ life work, his Spiritual Exercises, welcomed me into the joyful practice of praying with, and even just sitting with, a community of comfort, love and support I had not previously known. Suddenly, I joined the generations who call Mary “blessed” and I prayed with Jesus instead of only to Jesus.
I will always be thankful for my spiritual friend Fr Leo Murray SJ in Georgetown who patiently led me in the Exercises for four years. Community and friendships come to us in many ways, and the lasting influence of Ignatius’ joy and devotion is a gift I will always carry.
A New Word for Prayer
“Prayer” is just a word, and the word is not the reality of actually praying. I’m kinda tired of the word to be honest. In my own life it’s just accumulated too much baggage and confusing background noise. I want to pray, but I’m tired of trying to pray. I find myself wanting prayer, but what I need is to pray.
Back in the day, the New Testament most often used a handy compound Greek word for prayer that signified both intimacy and longing. In Hebrew we have the history of an even more amazing word that conveys attachment and self-evaluation. I’m not going to painstakingly link my readings in for you. I usually do, yes, but this time I’ll let you do some Googling and digging if you’re interested.
In English we have a nice latinized word we are all used to, “Pray.” Our good friends Merriam and Webster tell us that the word has two general meanings: 1) to ask for or entreat (the linguistic roots of the word), and 2) to address God (the general historic use of the word for the last bunch of centuries).
But I’m more interested these days in praying than in prayer. I picked up a quote some years ago from my reading of Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ, “I would rather feel compunction than know how to define it.” Let me to just say “Right freaking on!” to that sentiment. That statement can be made of many things, not just our bigger more complicated terms like compunction. It’s how I feel about prayer. I need to experience something bigger than the word.
So, thinking about the Hebrew roots and the Greek roots and thinking of the way Jesus taught and practiced praying, what is a word for what I’m looking to find and do? What word captures what prayer would be in my life if prayer becomes freed from some of the baggage it’s been carrying?
I think often of a lost word for most of us in the West: meditation. Years ago, as in like over 20 years ago, I heard of “soaking.” Soaking was the practice of laying in bed or sitting in a chair with the lights down and headphones on, letting music guide you into a meditative state for connecting with God. It’s good stuff. Worthy of a try or two.
In Mother Teresa’s “Simple Path” prayer is sandwiched between silence and faith. Hmmmmm. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
Rumi has an amazing quote about passion, what I will call “passionate swimming“: “With passion pray.
With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?” But I’m not sure that replacing prayer with passionate swimming will be useful for me in a daily way. He does though capture in a beautiful style the desire to revel in the fully present and enlivening God.
A quick look around shows an affinity we have with linking dance and prayer, and not just among those who follow Christ. Like swimming, I think dancing embraces an immanence that I want to experience in prayer. But I’m not even a bad dancer. I just don’t dance.
I want to have a word like imagining. I want to have a word like creating. I want a prayer experience that is foundational to a constant becoming. I want a word that can include riding my scooter, painting, crying to God in anguish, singing a hymn and journaling. I want a word for the capture and crafting of a soul.
I need a word for at one moment losing and finding myself in God. I need a word for at moment experiencing and re-creating the reality in which I live. I already know that hugging one of my sons is praying. I know that every kiss I give my wife is a prayer.
I’m still looking, and still trying to find it, even if I can’t define it. I am hopeful and expectant, that even a simple blog post becomes prayer, an imagining and a rooting of myself in something unseen and yet present. And for a while, in a moment of time and place, my soul is remade a little closer to the image of God’s heart.
Jesus Didn’t Weep Over Liberty
With the historic ruling this week by our Supreme Court on same-sex marriage we have been inundated with media coverage of responses from both sides of the issue. I understand that emotions run high on issues like this one, but I also know we still need to speak and react in responsible ways, especially if we step out to offer what we suppose would be God’s commentary on events, or more specifically, commentary from Jesus.
I was honestly, totally, down-right majorly peaved off when I saw this Tweet start making some headlines, from Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee), My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: “Jesus wept.” He also Tweeted this gem, 5 people in robes said they are bigger than the voters of CA and Congress combined. And bigger than God. May He forgive us all.
Now, first I want to give the one nod to the Gov. that he’ll get from me, the fact that he began the “Jesus wept” Tweet with the words “My thoughts on…” But that’s all the praise he’ll get from this Pastor after moving on to a complete misuse of the tears of Jesus to essentially make Jesus appear as the enemy of our gay neighbors. Wrong, sir. For the love of all that is Holy, stop it! Here’s a bit of the text the Gov. quotes from, John 11:32-37:
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34“Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Let’s just break a few things down, shall we? Why did Jesus weep in that famously short verse the Gov. quoted? He wept over the death of a good friend whom he loved. He wept with hurting people, hurting friends. The weeping of Jesus is not a rejection of anyone, but a connection to all hurting people. Jesus wept in love, sorrow, loss and the experience of both his own pain and empathetically the pain of those around him.
To take the empathetic, beautiful weeping of our Lord and turn it into a hateful rejection of our neighbors’ search for civil justice is despicable and unGodly in the extreme. As a Pastor, I renounce this distortion of my Lord, I renounce the Gov.’s words and intentions. The Gov. rightly speaks for himself, himself alone. If he cannot do better textual work than that, he needs to shut his mouth and spend some more time in study and prayer.
Why take the time to blog on this? Because every voice that counters that kind of textual abuse is needed. Our gay neighbors who have so long been civilly disenfranchised from basic spousal rights and privileges have a lot of reason to celebrate this week. And to posit the idea that Jesus would weep at their joy, weep at their liberty, weep at this corrected injustice, is horribly wrong. In fact, I find it counter to the Jesus who wept at that scene in John 11. I find it counter to the Jesus who wept in love, not in rejection of people’s joy and liberty.
I respect the Gov.’s right to speak his own mind, hold his own opinions, and even maintain his own beliefs of what his faith may or may not say about same-sex marriage and attractions. To deny the Gov. his liberty would only lessen the hard won liberty bestowed on his gay neighbors this week by the Supreme Court. But I will not respect, condone or be silent at the abusive misuse of Jesus for the Gov.’s political, social or ratings gain.
Just as a reminder, back when so many children were viciously gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary, when it would have been SO INCREDIBLY CORRECT to say that “Jesus wept,” the Gov. chose instead to rail on his political stump against gun control. He says something about slipping over to the “pastor side” and then speaking in blame about a mythical removal of God from schools. Why not let Jesus weep then with those hurting people? Why not let God be seen in the amazing person of Jesus, present with us and hurting with us and ready to make any journey with us, on good days and horribly bad days? Because the Gov. did not ever slip to the “pastor side” of things, but instead remained intrenched in his political/social agenda.
There is a lot more injustice to be righted in our country. There are still many disenfranchised neighbors waiting for us to move in their favor and right the wrongs that have often shaped their lives to their loss. God is not ignorant of their tears, even if pastors sometimes are. Jesus weeps with them, never against them, regardless of any pastor’s personal agenda.
Clerical Healing +5 for every book carried but not opened!
I’ve had a couple of fun clergy moments this week, one somewhat in the line of what people think (or dont think) about clergy, and then one of those classic “you know you’re a clergy when” kind of things…
My character is a Cleric! I get a lot of solicitations at the church office, by phone and mail, every week. I’ve heard it called “preying on the pray’ers,” but for the most part it’s the usual benign inter-company marketing. But this week I got a letter from a company of lawyers who like to represent people disabled at work or in accidents and who need compensation. Their letterhead tagline? For reals, it was “Got disability?” Ugh. Sometimes people think I sit and work at Starbucks because I’m a hip dude, but I’m actually hiding from the marketing.
The funnest part of their letter was that they addressed me as a “Cleric” instead of clergy, hehehehe… and all my gamer friends giggle along. It may not mean much to you, but for a nerd like me to have some rationale for officially claiming myself a cleric is pretty exciting.
And I’m freaking addicted to books! I’ve also been thinking of all the extra books I’m lugging around every day. Is it a clergy thing? “My backpack overflows…” I know I won’t have time to read them all, most will go unopened… but I can’t not have them! Honestly, I’m a clergy, not a cleric… my books are the usual prayer books, missals and theological works, not tomes of spells or priestly runes… but they’re still magical! I love them!
So, I’m just sitting here having my third cup of coffee, waiting for my manna bar to regenerate. I don’t intend to cast many healing spells this morning but I’m reeling from the disappointment of not being able to find a book I wanted to carry. Worry not, I found three others to take it’s place.
Walking Across Bethesda
We’ve all seen the scenes: Humanity has destroyed themselves and now nature has reclaimed our cities and streets! From Logan’s Run to I Am Legend and every 12 Monkeys in between, we’ve been schooled in the thought that nature is just waiting for our demise so that the animals and grasses can again rule the plains.
I don’t think that’s exactly right. I love walking across Bethesda in the mornings. It’s not the exhaust or naughty honking that captivates me, but the bunnies and the chipmunks, the grass and the trees. It was just last year when Asplundh came through and devastated our trees with wanton limb trimming, and we wailed and gnashed our teeth. But a couple of seasonal turns later and they look like they’ll be ok, as if to make a rude gestures back at the trimmers and taunt, “Try it again, buddy!”
And the bunnies move like the tide across the heart of downtown Bethesda, ebbing and flowing into our flower gardens and munching our wild growing clover. They are gorgeous. They belong among us. Nature isn’t waiting for our demise, just for more of us to leave a seat at the table, to make a little more room for green things and furry things.
So this morning as I walked to my big glass and stone Starbucks to sit inside and sip my coffee in air conditioned humanness, I was so blessed to watch a young rabbit having it’s breakfast in the fresh, green dew-covered grass. I always cringe when it rains and I imagine what our dogs will do to our floors after going outside, but I am so happy for the bright new buds that the bunnies reap after those showers.
I wrote a haiku after watching the bunny…
paving, bricks, exhaust
a young rabbit / eats the new grass
Some Afternoon Body Prayer
“I lift my hands to your commands, which I love,
and meditate on your decrees.” Psalm 119:48
I’m practicing some body prayer at my desk this afternoon as I read my Midday Psalms. You’re invited to do this with me. My prayer is: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Sitting at my desk I straighten my back (though it can be done standing) and cross my arms on my chest, hands open and flat against each shoulder. Throwing my head slowly back I look up and raise my hands into the air, gradually bringing them apart in a circular sweep outward until both rest at my sides. I do this several times praying, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
And I am awakened.
So much better than drinking another cup of caffeine, my afternoon changes as my joints pop and I feel my back loosen a bit. My prayer is no longer just whispered or thought, but now it seeps into my body in newly opened places.
Predation is Not Cool
I feel the need to say it out loud: Predation is not cool. Adults turning to children for their emotional and sexual satisfaction is not cool. Sound obvious to you? Ok, but there seems to be a missing component for some folks in our culture about what it means to grow up and enter the adult world of responsibility and mature action. It turns my stomach more than a little that it’s so necessary to be talking about sex with minors, even in opposition to it.
Here’s the short version: Leave the children alone. Date someone your own age or at least in the same legal and developmental demographic as you, as in adults need to date adults, not minors. I don’t care if you’re 45 and your life’s love is 25. You’re both adults. Adults: If you know me, then you know I don’t personally care if you’re straight, gay, bisexual, transgendered or still a work in progress, if you date another adult. We just have to leave the children alone when meeting our needs.
I know that High School is a tough time of transition for our young people, moving from minor to adult status. They need our clear and unambiguous help to navigate that transition. They deserve our help when navigating that transition. Too much is at stake. We must be clear on this as a society. Young adults need to know what this time of transition means for them.
There are two higher profile legal cases in the media right now dealing with this problem. One case is of an 18 year old Florida girl (a legal adult) having sex with a 14 year old girl (a minor not able to give consent by law for sexual activities). And another case is of a 20 year old Maine man abducting a 15 year old girl after a stint of Facebook predation, but she dies with duct tape over her face in the back of his pickup. He claims that the abduction was a ruse to later “rescue” her and be her hero/love interest. Again, a legal adult preying on a child, a minor.
Florida
Where were the older girl’s friends? When I was 17 or 18, if I had decided I was crushing on a 14 year old girl and did anything to pursue her, my friends would have mercilessly put me in my place for my stupidity. We did that for one another. The age range is not only HUGE when it comes to personal maturity and responsibility, but there’s a giant legal issue involved.
I might feel some empathy for both young ladies being “in love.” I might understand that both are capable of intense physical attraction and authentic feeling of love for one another. That might even be the most mature 14 year old girl you will ever meet. But it is not the time of her life for a sexual relationship with a legal adult. The gap is too large in their ages. The weight of responsibility weighs too heavily on the 18 year old. Welcome to adulthood.
Again, I don’t care that the two girls are gay. In fact, I don’t think there would be the public campaign on behalf of the older girl if they weren’t gay. The younger girl’s parents have said they don’t care that it’s gay sex instead of straight sex. Florida has said that their law makes no distinction and that they prosecute many of the same kinds of cases every year dealing with straight couples. It’s about protecting our children.
The older girl clearly broke the law. In fact, according to the younger girl’s parents, the older girl removed their daughter from their home without their consent. What parents would not be up in arms about that? They are legally responsible for their daughter, their daughter’s girlfriend is not.
Under the law in Florida, a 14 year old cannot give legal consent for sexual relations. We have these laws for a reason. Our children need the space and protection to grow, even if the person preying on them is a very pretty and vivacious 18 year old girl instead of a scary looking, hairy guy. If an 18 year old guy was charged with statutory rape of this 14 year old girl, there would be very little outcry for him, no massive internet campaigns, whether both were “in love” or not.
Of course, even as a country of law, we have considerations. In Florida I am given to understand that if their ages were closer, the law has some considerations that come into play. If they were only a year apart or if the younger girl were closer to the age of legal consent. But 14 is simply too young. These two girls are not a fairy tale love story… that happens between consenting adults who are responsible for their own lives.
He’ll Kill Them, But No Sex
If you’ve never seen Bobcat Goldthwait’s movie, God Bless America, then you probably shouldn’t. I was drawn in by the hope a far lighter and comic plot line than I got from the movie. It’s a nihilistic parade of two spree killers sucking all meaning from life and the human endeavor. It’s guaranteed to make you depressed. BUT! Here’s the deal: In the middle of this movie is a little story line about an adult male who rebuffs the sexual advances of a teenage girl. He’ll gladly kill an annoying teenager, but he won’t turn to one for his sexual needs. He says, “You’re a child.” Here are a few lines from the movie:
Roxy: You’re seriously not interested in me at all as a girlfriend?
Frank: What the hell are you talking about? I’m not a pedophile.
Roxy: So we’re Platonic spree killers?
Frank: Yeah. And that’s all.
I’m pretty sure I don’t want anyone using that movie as an an overall framework for ethics or morality, but at the same time, I’m also sure that there’s a serious discussion to have about that story line in the movie. Children do not exist for the sexual gratification of adults, even if they say they want to. It may be easier for us to look at a person in their 40’s or 50’s and say “He’s an adult, sex with her is wrong.” But the law sees adults and minors, period. And the minor’s need for protection is the same, regardless of the age of the adult.
Maine
Ok, the 20 year old guy from Maine? That story is tragically stupid in too many ways. If you’re 20 years old and you decide that the love of your life is a 15 year old, that’s a cue to enroll in counseling, plain and simple. You don’t abduct her. When you’ve crossed the line into adulthood, you carry a mantle of legal and moral responsibility for your actions.
I’m not sure it matters to me much whether he intended to fake rescue this girl after he kidnapped her or not. Maybe it can play to his defense in the sense of removing premeditation in the murder charge, but he definitely premeditated many crimes here, while knowing right from wrong, and kidnapped a young woman, and while knowing there would be some bodily harm to her and wrecking of her life, for his own gratification. And that happened after he preyed on her through Facebook, using lies and social media to entrap her. He should face the lawful consequences of his actions.
Again, it seems too obvious to have to say it. Life doesn’t work like that! You don’t abduct anyone, much less a minor. You don’t prey on minors with fake Facebook accounts! You don’t enter their life and achieve their love by means of criminal activity. Minors need our protection for good reason, and when you enter the adult world, you must begin to shoulder your part of that burden.
Sad Realities
These are both very sad stories. I feel relatively sure that the 18 year old young woman in Florida did not set out to prey on a underage minor and break the law by committing statutory rape. I think she fell in love with a bright and beautiful young lady, a fellow student, and then lacked the moral or ethical compass to further navigate the aspects of their relationship that come into play because of their age gap. I am sad for her at the thought of her carrying a conviction and the stigma of “sex offender.” But do we really want to set a legal precedent as a society that it’s ok to for an adult to have sex with a minor who is only 14 years old, for any reason?
I’m not simply equating the two cases. They are totally different in many respects of the relationships involved and the crimes committed and the outcome of each. What brings the two cases together is the basic wrong of predation on a child, a legal minor. An adult cannot turn to a child for his or her sexual, emotional and relational needs.
Our culture is in need of some new voices and new ways to be saying this out loud: Children must have the space to grow and develop their lives without the intervention of a sexually needy adult! Let’s get both these accused people some help. Get some counseling and help for both the 18 year old woman and the 20 year old man, yes. But for our children’s sake, let’s not ignore the realities of their crimes.
Predation is not cool. Our world is filled with bright and beautiful 14 and 15 year olds who deserve better. Our world is also filled with the moms and dads of bright and beautiful 14 and 15 year olds who need our help and support.
Predation is not cool. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Do you see it happening in the life of someone around you? Does it seem that someone you know is being preyed upon or preying upon another? Be wise. Ask some questions. Speak up. Intervene. Do you have a young adult in your life who is making this transition from minor to adult status? Is someone you love making their entrance into legal adulthood? Help them out. Talk to them about the changes in their life and their evolving responsibilities. We have a moral and social obligation to say this stuff out loud. Predation is not cool.
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