I’ve spent the last 2 weeks listening to stories and such, by different people about what they can and can’t accept. I have listened to interpretive perceptions regarding humanity and our progression, or digression if that is what you want to call it.
I’ve listened to “opened minded” rhetoric, that so blatantly shows lack of open-minded thinking and understanding.
I really wonder if anyone listens to themselves? Does it occur to people that the lies we feed ourselves – as convincing as they are for our own validation – actually fool anyone else?
Granted that in this day and age 99% of people don’t listen to themselves, or others for that matter, and only choose to process those things which they desire to stomach, as they recite wonderful platitudes of “love, peace, joy, hope, faith” as well as many other Hallmark Card moments.
None of which are anything but the inability to sit and face the truth of self and life, and earth, and people and heaven, and God and existence or history.
The other night I watched “A Time To Kill.” If you haven’t watched it then I recommend to you that you do so, as it is an interesting premise on the definition of truth, and justice.
Here is a link to the plot summary, as it is not the point of this particular blog (A Time To Kill – Plot Summary)
Anyway, the end of the movie is interesting to me, for one single reason. The defence summation is about “truth” and “a black man’s ability to have a fair trial in the south” specifically Mississippi.
Now, what I’m about to write is likely going to piss off a good portion of the readership, however, so what. I deal with truth, not convenient emotional validations, justifications, or rationalizations.
2 wrongs do not make a right. What occurs in 1 instance, does not validate, or justify the 2nd instance, and it is no more valid, justifiable or righteous. By any stretch of the imagination.
Here is the final summation given by the defensive so that you will be able to see it, and hear it with your own ears and eyes. And yes, it is a moving argument in the perfect drama of Hollywood tug on your heart strings. However, if you at all have watched the movie, and if you have a conscience of truth and honour before God – not by the rules of men, but by the grace of God – then this closing argument, has absolutely nothing to do with the trial, or reason for the trial.
Pretty moving isn’t it?
Was Carl Lee Hailey righteous in the killing of these two men for hurting his daughter as was explained? To any one of us reading this, and hearing that summation, then yes, of course he was completely in his rights! Not only was he completely in his rights, but he was justified, and I doubt there is a single man, woman or child alive that would not have done the very same thing that Carl Lee Hailey had done.
However, I want to submit to you a little something that will not taste good in your mouth, and if you say that you are a God fearing individual then you are going to really hate the truth of this statement.
God is the only one who decides who can live, and who can die. No man has that power. No matter what the circumstances.
You see folks. It is very easy to sit on the sidelines, and make a commentary and I’m quite sure that many of you will have very adamant statements and comments to make to me about my defence of right and wrong, over what we consider justice, and travesty of justice.
But I will tell you another story. A story about 2 boys and a mother, who’s father/husband made dramatic efforts to kill his children, before they were born, and continued to beat them and his wife for 15 years. How these boys were dropped on their heads as punishment, thrown down stairs, beaten so raw that the welts would not close for days due to their severity. How a mother had almost bled to death 3 different times by the beating of this man, and tossed in the bathtub to die, each time, and only by some miracle survived it.
How for years – and still to this day – the wife lives in fear of the man whom was her husband, and who raped her for the birth of her two sons.
How the youngest son of the two brothers has so much rage within him, that he is incapable of having a healthy relationship, and how the eldest has kept his distance from men, women, and children alike so he will never be like his father.
How the eldest son of this family, had an opportunity to beat this man, his father within an inch of his life only to stop and say, “It is by God whom I serve, that you live. Not by my choice.” as he walked away.
I am that man. The woman is my mother, and the other son is my brother.
So then, will you say that I cannot compare the brutality of that young girl in this film to the brutality of what my brother, my mother and I suffered? Are you either that girl or my mother? or my brother? Or me?
I can not at all in anyway shape or form fathom or perceive the suffering of that little girl, or the pain and anguish of the father who killed the two men who did that to his daughter.
But I can know what it is to see my own mother almost die on many occasions, and still see the pain and results of my brother and my mother to this day. As well as the many demons to which I must fight still to this day, and I can say from the bottom of my heart, that when it was in my power to put a bullet into the skull of the man who propagated these atrocities upon us, and after having beaten him to a bloody mass on the ground, did not, against all of my desires and rage, and would not, end his life.
Because only God has the right to give life and end life.
It is always very easy for individuals to declare I would do this, and I would do that, and it is just as easy for many to say, that they could “never hurt anyone” or any of those foolish commentaries.
The fact of the matter is ladies and gentlemen, we are only as deceived as the lies we tell ourselves in order to sustain and manage the hurts we refuse to face and conquer.
Now I submit to you something further and more frightening. The lies you tell yourself to make it through the day, are the same lies you are telling your children, because you have convinced yourself that they could not handle such a depth of truth or suffering.
And that is a lie. you have decided of your own accord that the very thing which you will not face, that very thing which you have no courage to stand up against, is too much for your children to bare, because then you never have to deal with it.
It is the greatest lie of all lies which we tell ourselves, and I can tell you personally, that I have yet to meet a child whom is NOT able to stand, sustain and understand the very thing to which you have deceived them regarding, because of your own fears, doubts and cowardice.
When you lie to your children “to protect them.” You have opened the doors and windows to pain, and an inability to cope with life and the future and that is the fact of the matter for one simple reason.
The truth is what sets us free, and gives us strength.
A lie is the end of faith and trust.
side note: I forgave my father long ago and all of the rage and anger towards that situation no longer exists. My mother and brother are still sitting in that rage, hurt and anger.
I’m not ill. I have no disease, i do not take medication of any kind and I have healthy and alive, loving relationships. They fight constantly and are always ready to be hurt, and betrayed. I don’t think about being hurt and betrayed. I think of the joys of my interactions.
It is by forgiveness where we find and live in freedom, not in vengeance, or exoneration. God will care for those who live as He desires us to live.
When I think of my father, I pray for him. Not that he gets better or any of those kinds of things, but that he learns to love himself. Because I can and do remember the good times, as rare as they were perhaps, about the man that cared, and was fun to be around and the gifts musically he was given and so forth.
Forgiveness means you actually forget the pain, and the reasons for the hurt, and see the things within a person that God sees and loves. Not complicated 
