my certainties
Exhausted by Tuesday evening I went to bed at 6:30, woke at 12 something, worked a few hours on my Confirmation package and prep. Back to bed and sleep, up Wednesday morning to work on and finish the Cfn stuff. +Time blog didn't occur to me until mid-afternoon as I relaxed during and after lunch with a glass of Cotes du Rhone 2017 bought cheap at Trader Joe's, Tallahassee a couple weeks ago. Anyone who is as cheap as I am needs to peruse TJ's wine offerings. There, I shop basically five dollars and under, and this short, squat green bottle impressed me. It's not too bad. In fact, as satisfactory as the Chateauneuf du Pape I paid ungodly for once and never again.
What brought me to this musing is reading several online cases of young girls American and other European or Westerners who, with common teenage, adolescent romantic idealism, nobility, moral outrage at the world, leave home while parents are asleep or at work, and make their way toward a Mideastern country to join an Islamic terrorist group. Some are apprehended by authorities. Some make it, these that I'm thinking of who after a time have a wake-up and want to come home. What should be our response? Mindful that we regard ourselves as "Christian", a regard that more often than not doesn't even leave Sunday church with us.
My off the cuff instantaneous response is harsh, draconian: you leave and fight with those who hate us, not only will you never come back, you have lost your American citizenship and if you return here and are caught, your life is forfeit. But anyone with a such a pat response to a child's mistake and regret is a mindless, godless, alphabet moron; something about who has not sinned cast the first stone. Cases we are reading about and seeing in the News are children, adolescents when they leave. I've been there, naive as the worst of them, it's part of innocent adolescent and sophomoric naiveté. What to do with them? I don't know. If an adolescent or any person commits murder or any heinous crime, s/he should be subject to the law as it is in the jurisdiction, including such capital prosecution as applies, state or federal. My tentative inclination with such as remorseful ISIS returnees who left as children is to bring them home subject to the law, but I, also tentatively, think the law may need examined for such cases, possibly addressed.
My thinking, I often find to be flawed. My prime lesson was that I long felt that any driver involved in a fatal hit and run should face capital trial. But when a friend of my daughter's did it, a young teen with pathetic home history; and later when the naive and frightened young grandson of parishioners was the hitting, killing, running one and I had to minister with the grandparents in their anguished grief at the situation of their most cherished and beloved one, it was life-changing for me; such that I am no longer certain of anything, much less of my certainties.
The English girl who ran off to ISIS and now wants to come home with her newborn infant,
is perhaps about to lose her citizenship. The hating side of me knows this is right and just; my Jesus side isn't so sure, and who can hate someone's daughter and baby? It's happening in several European countries, with their Muslim children. What to do? Who has the right answer may be as big a gardenia fool as I. Lord, have mercy. On me, a sinner.
T
What brought me to this musing is reading several online cases of young girls American and other European or Westerners who, with common teenage, adolescent romantic idealism, nobility, moral outrage at the world, leave home while parents are asleep or at work, and make their way toward a Mideastern country to join an Islamic terrorist group. Some are apprehended by authorities. Some make it, these that I'm thinking of who after a time have a wake-up and want to come home. What should be our response? Mindful that we regard ourselves as "Christian", a regard that more often than not doesn't even leave Sunday church with us.
My off the cuff instantaneous response is harsh, draconian: you leave and fight with those who hate us, not only will you never come back, you have lost your American citizenship and if you return here and are caught, your life is forfeit. But anyone with a such a pat response to a child's mistake and regret is a mindless, godless, alphabet moron; something about who has not sinned cast the first stone. Cases we are reading about and seeing in the News are children, adolescents when they leave. I've been there, naive as the worst of them, it's part of innocent adolescent and sophomoric naiveté. What to do with them? I don't know. If an adolescent or any person commits murder or any heinous crime, s/he should be subject to the law as it is in the jurisdiction, including such capital prosecution as applies, state or federal. My tentative inclination with such as remorseful ISIS returnees who left as children is to bring them home subject to the law, but I, also tentatively, think the law may need examined for such cases, possibly addressed.
My thinking, I often find to be flawed. My prime lesson was that I long felt that any driver involved in a fatal hit and run should face capital trial. But when a friend of my daughter's did it, a young teen with pathetic home history; and later when the naive and frightened young grandson of parishioners was the hitting, killing, running one and I had to minister with the grandparents in their anguished grief at the situation of their most cherished and beloved one, it was life-changing for me; such that I am no longer certain of anything, much less of my certainties.
The English girl who ran off to ISIS and now wants to come home with her newborn infant,
is perhaps about to lose her citizenship. The hating side of me knows this is right and just; my Jesus side isn't so sure, and who can hate someone's daughter and baby? It's happening in several European countries, with their Muslim children. What to do? Who has the right answer may be as big a gardenia fool as I. Lord, have mercy. On me, a sinner.
T