The Official Writing Challenge
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Date
11/19/09
a couple of typos but things like that can be corrected in your writing. the important thing is the message you conveyed. oh, how judgmental we church folks are. thanks for this thought provoker.
11/21/09
Very powerful and thought provoking! Great job!!
11/21/09
Wow! This story is truer than most think. And it is so sad that some who claim to be Christian see themselves as "power over" instead of "power under" people. Kingdom of God Christians have no right to judge others.
11/25/09
A dear friend and her husband are in the midst of this right now. He is guilty of child molestation. It became known to us that he is a pedophile and has been 'given chance after chance" by pastors. We didn't know. The latest was a molestation in the Christian school where he was working. Ask me how I feel when I learned this. How I feel when I know of many children he has interacted with over the years...in church. Ask me how I feel about his wife who was my best friend. She knew. They adopted a little girl 7 yrs ago. Oh, yes. she's been molested as well. He's not in jail. Justice is not always swift.
The Christian community needs to have zero tolerance for child molesters. Forgiveness...yes. What to do about the wife who "hid" it?

Mona
I thought this was a very powerful message with a very interesting medium (letter to the editor and obituary). Well done. What a tricky and heated topic within the Christian realm! And, oh, how we love to argue! The Bible is very clear about judging one another, and I think you did an excellent job of portraying the negative kind of judgment. They did not lovingly pull her out of the mire (though it is questionable whether she even knew about her husband's sins and was, therefore, in the mire herself), and instead shunned and condemned her, which was never their job. The Bible advocates a positive form of judging, but some of us forget the purpose of that judgment: to reprove, correct, discipline, love, and bring back to the Lord. Our job, as vessels, is to do our best to ensure each and every one of us sinners (for we all are) makes it to heaven someday. That is our goal. So when someone sins, it is with love that we go to them and tell them a better way. Remember Jesus drawing in the ground while a sinful woman was dropped before him by sinful men. He made his point simply by saying, "I am not here to judge you, but don't sin anymore." It is God's job to judge whether we receive condemnation or mercy in the end. It is our job to lovingly correct one another so that we all might receive mercy rather than condemnation. I applaud you on a message well-written.