casey anthony is innocent

[nature boy]

as you probably heard yesterday. there have been a lot of reactions to this already. something was bothering me about it though, and this guy summed it up:
http://chadholtz.net/2011/07/05/casey-a ... -wish-for/
(it's reposted on facebook in case you're wondering).

discuss.

[se7entse7en]

Ok... I guess I'll start. I'll avoid the 'does hell exist' topic since we aren't on the same page there.

One of the things the author mentions is the Psalms of lament. To me, the key thing about these Psalms is that they're honest prayers. They're not G rated. They're not watered down, pie in the sky, I forgive them, everything's ok Psalms. They're the, "I'M PISSED OFF" kinds of Psalms. Praying to God to bash babie's heads on rocks... not nice stuff.

Faking forgiveness (or even covering up our rage with 'forgiveness') does nobody any good. If praying that these people go to hell is what's in your heart, then that's what you pray. And IMO that IS the Christian way. The non-Christian way would be to try and send them there ourselves.

Now... what does God do with these prayers? That's up to Him, but I choose to believe that no matter how bad the atrocity, God can turn it around and make it into something Good.

[nature boy]

i don't think he's talking about faking forgiveness, i think he's talking about actually genuinely realising that we're ALL sinners however you want to slice it and the fact that YOU are forgiven gives you the ability to forgive others.

we pray it in the Lord's Prayer every week.

[se7entse7en]

Maybe. It just sounded to me like he's suggesting that being angry... angry enough that we hope/pray that such people are punished in hell, is bad and/or un-Christian and that we need to bottleup our anger, shove it in a corner of our minds, and just forgive because that's what Jesus would do and because we're all sinners. Being Christian is not about being passive-aggressive.

This incident is really current and IMO I'd be skeptical of someone that was super angry enough with this injustice to jump to forgiveness in a matter of days. Of course, if this is basically the first you've heard of this crime and it had little impact on you, then sure... forgiveness comes easy. Just like it's easy to forgive someone for slightly bumping into you with their shopping cart.

I believe that sometimes we need God to help us to forgive and in those times we need to be honest with Him with where we're really at.

[geForce]

Mother is accused of killing baby and tries to cover it up... it's a story we've all heard before in the news. It happened in Florida, but yet this specific case became so hugely followed that it became a national (or international, if you include Canada) news story.

I just don't understand why we're taking all of these types of hyped up news stories so personally. It doesn't concern us directly, so why do we feel that we are are responsible for personally condemning or granting forgiveness to this person? It isn't up to us to do that...

I think why we DO do that is because we love the drama. It's entertainment... the media has got us so wound up around this story and has purposely induced in us a sense of duty to hate Casey Anthony. The media puts in littles bits in the story like how she hugged her lawyer after she was acquitted and how she mouthed "thank you" to him before she left. There were parts during the case where they would show pictures of her crying when she told her story and then laughing during a break. These are things that the media put in to create specific reactions from people like that guy in the article Nathan posted.

The truth is, we don't know the real story beyond what is portrayed in the media. We have to take all this information that's fed to us with a grain of salt. The jury probably had a hard enough time judging this case and they were given all the evidence first hand. Who are we to judge morally or legally based on the biased information we're getting?

[nature boy]

that's the thing, i don't think we can judge either way. the fact of the matter is that we don't know the facts. the jury did what the jury was supposed to do: look at the evidence and condemn if the evidence points to it, or acquit if the evidence fails to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. the jury could be angry too, they could possibly hate her, but their job isn't to judge based on emotion but on fact.

did she do it? maybe, i dunno. did oj do it? maybe, i dunno. does it mean that we should judge them more harshly than we've been judged? i think we like to downplay the grace that we've received and think that no one else should get it.

shaun, i think it's true that we should be honest with God with where we are, but at the same time we should be wondering within ourselves why we are where we are. why do we need to believe in a literal hell (when the bible doesn't specifically say that there is one, yet many christians hold fast to that scare tactic). and most importantly, why are we angry with the verdict?

i think the media played a fast one on everyone with this case. there has been more articles about how the media portrayed this case than the case itself.

[joel]

who is casey anthony? i've never heard about this person before.

[se7entse7en]

Arghhh! Stupid keyboard 'back' button. I'm gonna have to try and figure out a way to disable it. Oh well... here's hoping third time's the charm:

I personally don't feel one way or the other about this case. The first I heard about it was a couple of days ago in a 1 minute clip on the news which I summarily dismissed as irrelevant to my life. I do feel an attachment to the riot that occurred in Vancouver, however, and I'm sure most people here wished to see the rioters get strung up by their testicles instead of merely getting a slap on their wrists... if that.

It's ok to get mad. We're human. God gave us emotions. It's not ok to lie and say that we aren't when we are. However, to STAY mad implies a disfunctional relationship with God.

I'm sure Gordon is right that the media hyped up this case way too much (even though I had only just first learned about it).

Oh, and time doesn't heal all wounds... it just helps make us forget. (I just thought I'd throw that out there)

[nature boy]

[Wetundies]

now the jurors are getting death threats.

[nature boy]

i preached about this in my sermon yesterday. i concluded with much of what the blog post i linked to said. if casey anthony is guilty or innocent doesn't really matter in the great grand scheme of things because really, we're all guilty of something. the good news is that grace abounds and covers all people, whether we like them or not.