Just for IAAL ...
I AM ALWAYS LIABLE said:
MY RESPONSE: Shssssssssssssssh! Not so loud. God might hear you, and read what you're saying. I think you better go back to your Bible and read Genesis 1:24-31. I think that's the Sixth Day of creation, if I'm not mistaken, when God created society. Oooops!
Not really ... he created man, the beasts, and granted man rule over the Earth, but not the constructs of a society that forsakes God.
(Recall what happened in the garden when they created their own rules?)
MY RESPONSE: I guess that's why criminal complaints AREN'T entitled "People of the State of ___________ vs. John Doe Criminal", right?
Of course his "sin" was against man's laws. C'mon Carl. You deal with men's transgressions everyday, just like I do.
Of course. But "sin" is a transgression against God's laws, not man's.
In other words, Charlie Manson, like every criminal, trespasses against ALL of us, and his crimes touched all of us, Carl. Can you think of how the loss of, say for example, Sharon Tate, touched you personally? I'm not kidding. Her loss, even in a tangential, skirting, ever-so-slight way, touched all of us. Can you tell us how?
No, I cannot say how her death (and that of her unborn baby) effected me personally. It was horrible, evil, and wrong ... but not something for which I have any real right to forgive.
In the broadest sense of the term, these acts were "trespasses" against us as a society. But the sin was not against me, it was against God, and redemption is His to provide, not mine. Yes, I can forgive their acts generally, but I cannot provide any form of redemption.
MY RESPONSE: Actually, you can redeem. I've told you how, but you "choose" not to. God only said, "Vengeance is mine." He never said that redemption was only within his perview or prerogative. I've already given you an example of one way man can redeem another man.
John 3:16-18:
"For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned.
The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
There are others, but this is a good one.
- Carl