Criminals, Suspected or Convicted, Are Humans Made in the Image of God Too.

As a newspaper reporter, I get to see all sorts of things cross my desk, all sorts of news stories and photos and police reports.

One section I’m responsible for putting together is the “Cops” section, which curates the police reports from the local police department and local sheriff’s offices. You’ll see a wide range of things on there — people charged with failure to appear in court for whatever reason, stealing from Walmart (8 times in a 3-day span last week), and sometimes harder offenses.

Last week, there was one day where there were two men charged with several sex offenses – indecent liberties with a child, statutory rape, things like that. It broke my heart. I literally sat at my desk with my hand over my mouth for a good minute because I didn’t know how else to respond.

Turns out, in both cases, the kids weren’t viciously raped, but likely persuaded to participate in these acts by older people and the kids were too young to give consent. But that doesn’t excuse the actions. Justice must be served. The appropriate punishment must take place, if indeed those men are guilty.

At the paper, we often post these reports on our Facebook page with mugshots. Those posts are shared and commented on more than just about any other. It becomes a platform for people to be judges and juries without all the information. The newspaper simply reports what it knows, and we’re careful to not say definitively whether he or she is innocent or guilty, because we don’t know.

But what I’ve seen on those comments sometimes makes me just as sad. In the comments of posts like the ones involving those men I mentioned before, I saw pictures of nooses. There’s harsh words of condemnation. There’s lots of terrible things being said.

Yes, perhaps, some of those things are deserved. Raping a child, as these men were accused with, is horrendous and awful and terrible. If these men were indeed guilty, they deserve their due punishment. I’m not going to talk about whether they do or not because it’s clear, they do.

But the way the information is handled by the public on those things is nuts.

I saw a shining example of how it should be handled on the Facebook page this morning regarding someone arrested for drug offenses. The page is public, so this is readily available. I’m changing the name mentioned here because it’s not relevant to this post. Here it is:

I had the privilege of teaching TONI when she was in high school. She’s a smart, thoughtful, and caring person. It did not take long for me to identify the potential she had to accomplish great things. I do not condone criminal activity in any way. However, I notice that this post refers only to her arrest. It does not refer to her conviction. There are no details or evidence regarding what may or may not have taken place. I can not speak to TONI’s guilt or innocence. The piece in the (newspaper) does not speak to her guilt or innocence either. Why do so many feel the need to condemn someone based on a brief blurb in the (newspaper)? I have seen such harsh and heartless comments on this post, and other posts, referring to this situation. What is solved by berating and degrading TONI? If TONI was involved in this does this sort of language and abuse help her in any way? Where is our humanity? We as a society love to spout the evils of drug use, but fail to understand the power of addiction that can happen to people from all walks of life. To be clear, I have no knowledge of any crimes TONI may or may not have committed and I have never known her to use drugs. I am speaking only to the accusations thoughtlessly posted on social media. I admit that I know TONI only through a student-teacher relationship as opposed to a social relationship, but I think so much of her as a person that I have made a point to check-in with her as often as I can to see how she’s doing. I have seen the love she has for her two beautiful children. I have seen the loyalty and devotion she has for her family. I also had the privilege of teaching one of her sisters who is working towards a degree as a special education teacher. This family doesn’t deserve this treatment whether or not a crime was committed. There are many, many families out there that don’t deserve the kind of abuse I see splashed across social media. Take a moment before pressing “Post” and ask yourself if this is something you would want written about your loved one. If it isn’t, please press “Delete”.

I love this. I can’t really put it any better.

You can tell it comes from a teacher, by the way, a good one. There’s a reverence for and understanding of due process of law. There’s a care for Toni (again, not her real name) as a person because she is a person.

She is someone who was made in the image of God. She’s someone who, on that basis alone, deserves to be loved and respected. If she was guilty of the supposed crime, then yes, she deserves punishment as well.

But even if she is a criminal, even if those two men charged for horrible things with children are found to be guilty, they deserve our love. They deserve our prayers. They deserve to be cared for, even in our thoughts and especially on our Facebook pages. They deserve it because God made them and cares for them.

If we as Christians call ourselves pro-life and pro-love, we’ll care for those lives and we’ll love those people, even just in how we think about them. I’m not saying we ignore those affected by these supposed crimes. They deserve our prayers too. But we need to love those affected by sin and those who commit the sin.

We should see the cops reports as a prayer list. The report, in most cases, lists those who supposedly committed crimes and those who report them. If you want a head start, check out the Sanford Police Department’s list. It’s updated throughout the day with reports and charges brought.

Pray for those people to find Jesus or return to Him. Pray that they understand the weight of their sin. Pray that someone would be sharing the Gospel with them. Pray that their hearts would be healed. Pray for them like you do a family member who isn’t a Christian, or a brother or sister in Christ who’s dealing with sin in their lives.

These people are like Barabbas. Jesus died in their place. Will we pray for them? Will we love them with our thoughts?

Advertisement

Three Reasons a King Prayed to God

To be honest with you, prayer is something I often gloss over, something I rush through.

I don’t know when it really started, but I think it comes from feeling like I have better things to do sometimes. I’ve got to go to sleep, I’ve got to eat, I’ve got to do this, that, so on and so forth.

As I spent some time reading the Bible this morning, I remembered just who it was we were praying to, and because God is who He is, prayer is something I should take a lot more seriously.

---

My favorite Bible story, and something I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, is 2 Chronicles 14-16. I try to read through it two or three times a year.

I haven’t read it yet this year, so I picked it up this morning and decided to read it one chapter at a time. Chapter 14 is about introducing Asa, king of Judah, son of Abijah. Asa is one of my favorite biblical characters because I find so much of myself in him. I think a lot of Christians would if you read the whole passage.

Anyways, after 10 years of peace and rest in his reign, war has come upon him. The Ethiopians, under the direction of Zerah, have come upon him and his nation and have brought an army of a million men and 300 chariots (2 Chr. 14:9). In comparison, Asa’s army has a total of 580,000 men, some with shields and spears and some with shields and bows (v. 8). It’s a complete mismatch by any measurement. Zerah’s army has more men and better positioning for the war.

Faced with these obstacles, Asa prays to God (v.11), the God he’s completely trusted so far in his reign:

O LORD, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O LORD, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.

In this prayer, Asa recognizes three huge characteristics of the God he serves – and the God you and I serve, believers – that compel him, and should compel us, to pray like he did.

There is none like God to help. “O LORD, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak.”

There is no other god like God, there is nothing else in all of creation, both in heaven and on earth, anywhere. As David Crowder Band used to sing, “There is no one like You, there has never ever been anyone like You.”

God, being God, has a unique power and ability to be able to help those who cry out to Him. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, and He has the great ability to do great things for us. Why wouldn’t we pray? Why wouldn’t we seek Him?

God is a God worth relying on. “Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude.”

God is one in whom we can place our trust. When faced with difficult circumstances like unemployment or sickness or any other hardship, we can’t fully trust humanity to solve problems. God might use them to offer solutions, but it is really God who is doing the work.

That’s why Asa fights this battle in the name of God. He doesn’t fight in the name of Asa or the name of Judah because he knows that’s not who’s going to give the victory. It’s God who’s going to give the victory. It is God who is worth trusting, always and forever, always more than man.

He is our God. “O LORD, you are our God, let not man prevail against you.”

If you are a Christian, God is a God who has chosen you. He has picked you to be His. Just like He has a claim on our soul, we have a claim on His ear, His attentiveness when we pray. We have a claim on the grace He offers us freely. He is our God, our Creator, our Father in heaven, the one who loves us so much He sent Jesus to die for us.

So we can come to God knowing that He hears us and answers our prayers. In John 16:23, Jesus says, “…Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” All we need is ask, and ask humbly, honestly, in Jesus’ name, for His purposes and glory, and those things will be accomplished. Why? Because He is our God.

---

Asa’s prayers were heard, and a great victory was won. 2 Chronicles 14:12-15 says:

So the LORD defeated the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. Asa and the people who were with him pursued them as far as Gerar, and the Ethiopians fell until none remained alive, for they were broken before the LORD and his army. The men of Judah carried away very much spoil. And they attacked all the cities around Gerar, for the fear of the LORD was upon them. They plundered all the cities, for there was much plunder in them. And they struck down the tents of those who had livestock and carried away sheep in abundance and camels. Then they returned to Jerusalem.

The LORD defeated the Ethiopians. God gave them the victory. God heard the prayer of Asa, king of Judah, and went before the king and his army and defeated their foe. This is the God we pray to. This is the God who has called us His own. This is a unique God, there is no one like Him. This is a God we can rely on. And this is a God who is ours.

Pray. Trust. There’s no one better to pray to, to rely on. And we know that Asa prayed this from a position of strength spiritually, but we don’t have to be in that place to pray this prayer, to trust God this way. We could be having a crisis of faith and pray this prayer. God is still the same God, and hears us just the same.

And I must remember that very, very, very rarely do I have better things to do than slow down, take a breath, and pray.

Prayer and Anxiety Are Like a Really Badly Mixed Drink

I hate silence.

Silence gets on my nerves. So if you see me at work or at home, there’s probably something being played, whether it’s a TV show episode or music or something that goes into my ears. Just about the only time there’s nothing played is when I’m in conversation with someone, and that’s because there’s noise being thrown in my direction.

The main reason silence gets on my nerves is resultant of my anxiety. Because I’m constantly on edge, I need noise to distract me from what’s going on in my head. If I stop to think, my brain kicks into overdrive and I start thinking about the millions of things that are going on in my life. OK, perhaps the “millions” is a bit of an exaggeration.

One of the major side-effects, I’ve learned, of dealing with anxiety is that prayer becomes a million times harder.

Sorry, exaggeration again.

Just now, I was sitting down and I was going to pray for a little bit and I got anxious about a couple things. I began asking questions of myself, thinking over and over about the pertinent questions I currently face. I couldn’t calm down my mind enough to pray.

To pray! To spend time talking to my Creator, my Lord and Savior! I couldn’t calm down enough to do that. The guilt is overbearing in those moments. I want to pray, but I don’t want to overthink. One of the easiest ways to combat anxiety is to just change the topic, do something different, but in this situation, I was going to pray.

If only prayer was as easy for everyone as it is for the dude in the picture at the top of this post.

So I end up avoiding prayer. It’s become a pattern over the last few weeks. I can’t just sit and concentrate on prayer alone. I can worship, I can read the Bible, but I need something going on in the background or else I can’t focus. I’m listening to music right now as I write this so I don’t get distracted.

I don’t know if this is a result of the society I live in where distractions are left and right. I don’t know if this is solely a result of my struggle with anxiety. Heck, it could be something entirely different. Living with anxiety means you rarely ever get to slow down, relax, enjoy what’s going on around you. It takes very special circumstances.

Perhaps I need to explore more options for those circumstances. Perhaps I need to be more intentional. Perhaps I’m being sinful. Perhaps I’m missing something.

I’m writing this really as a way to get all my thoughts out and, perhaps, help someone understand more about the spiritual implications of physical anxiety. Lots of people deal with anxiety and stress, but for some of us, it’s a chemical affliction that’s a daily part of our lives, not just something that comes every now and then when there’s a big decision. It affects your whole life, everything about you. And it can be quite damaging spiritually.

That’s where knowing the depth of the Gospel grace that Christ gives is so important in dealing with anxiety and depression. It’s so easy to just say, “Let go and let God,” but it’s not that simple. It takes work, effort and time.

All things Jesus gave so that it’s OK that I struggle to pray. It’s not the end of the world. God’s grace is much bigger than my anxiety.

Now let me try praying again.