Sandusky

Hate evil, love good. - Amos 5:15

There is no doubt that the crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky are some of the most heinous imaginable. I can imagine emotions are running high, running the gamut from anger to sorrow. Justice has been served, but it does not change the effect it has had on the victims let alone all who have been involved.

Having been a victim of sexual abuse at a very young age myself, I can understand some of the emotions. Sexual abuse is ugly and dirty. For someone like me, you don't realize the effect until many years later. The immediate effect for me was fear. I was afraid to tell my parents. I didn't think they would believe me because the perpetrator was the beloved son of their close neighbors. It didn't just happen once, but twice. I avoided him as much as possible until he left for the military.

As I got older, it remained a secret and was locked away in the deepest crevices of my memory. I thought I grew up like any other kid with his crushes for girls, but pornography came into my life at the age of twelve. From that point on, it affected me and my view of women. Intimacy for me became sex and nothing else. Love was physical and nothing more. When I didn't enjoy it any more, I checked out emotionally. This was one of the main reasons for my divorce.

Through the course of time, I found out that the guy that did it to me got married and had three daughters. One of the first things that came to my mind was if he had or would attack them as he did me. Should I warn his wife or someone close to watch out for what he might do? I didn't. Not too long afterwards, I found out that he had died from cancer. For me at the time, justice had been served. He died the painful death that he deserved. The anger that was locked up in me was turned loose. 

May 15, 2012 became a milestone date for me. It began innocently enough when I was asked to demonstrate what sharing strongholds would be like. One of the things I shared was that I wished I had the opportunity to forgive him face to face.

What Jerry Sandusky did was a choice. He had the temptation to do what he did and if he didn't act on it, it would still be just a temptation. But he did act on it and it was evil. I am tempted on a daily basis with pornography. When I give in to it, that is evil. The act of evil is what we should hate and not the evil-doer.

The challenge for us as a society is to forgive the Jerry Sanduskys of the world and accept them back. But there has to be genuine repentance, renouncing what they did, before we can accept them back. That acceptance is called reconciliation. We are to love one another to the point of reconciling with and loving our enemies.

It's about forgiveness. It's about love. It's about life.