Do we give the guy a chance or not?
Jesus tells us we need to love our enemies and forgive them if we are to call ourselves Christian.
In fact, it’s been said that forgiveness is the single greatest influence toward happiness.
Imagine that!
Yet that practicality is often blunted by the horrid nature of a crime or a criminal’s insensitivity to the ordinary person’s care or concern for an issue.
Consider the love we have for our pets and animals.
As a dog owner myself, I can only imagine the hurt I would feel if my “Mollie Mary” were victimized by some barbarous activity.
Any form of animal abuse is an abomination and forgiveness is not easily extended.
Moreover, the emotionalism of the issue becomes that much more despicable when the perpetrator is a person of prominence or fame.
Why can’t those who are gifted or talented consider beforehand the responsibility that is theirs? You know – what the rest of us have to do estimating consequences and postponing immediate gratifications!
And so we have a unique problem when a professional football team hires a former pro-football quarterback who has bankrolled a dog fighting operation and who himself participated in the senseless brutality and killing of animals.
It’s the Michael Vick story we’ve all seen in the headlines.
And so the debate goes on. The former Atlanta Falcon quarterback did his time, spending 23 months in prison for his crime. And, if you saw the 60 Minutes piece about Vick, he faced the world, confessed his wrongdoing not just in a confessional but publicly, and with the help of Andy Reid and Tony Dungee, pronounced his intent to reform himself with their guidance.
Can we ask any more? Do we forgive or not?
But before you render your judgment consider this different turn: Daniel Rubin wrote a piece this week in The Philadelphia Inquirer about a conversation he had with Peter Singer. Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and the author of 1975’s “Animal Liberation,” a book widely considered the bible of the animal-rights movement.
In a phone conversation with Singer, Rubin writes, “I’ve read about Michael Vick,” [Singer] said. “I know the Eagles just signed him. What he did was certainly awful. But many people do not participate in things regarding animals that are awful. To some extent, I think people may have rushed to judgment because he did something awful to dogs.”
“For example,” Singer went on, the kinds of things that are done to pigs to turn them into ham or bacon are awful, but we don’t care as much about pigs as we do dogs. And I think there’s every reason to believe that pigs are as sensitive and intelligent as dogs.”
“What I’m saying,” he went on, “is that the people who are very quick to jump on Michael Vick maybe could spend some time thinking about how they participate in the cruelty to animals just by walking into the supermarket, spend some time thinking about what happened to that animal before it was turned into meat.”
Singer says he is moved by Vick’s expressions of remorse and his public appearances on behalf of the Humane Society to speak out against dog fighting.
Dan Rubin concludes his article with a thought all of us might consider – “I had spent the day savoring the satisfaction of the moral high road, never thinking that I would run into compassion and a belief in redemption along the way.”
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