What’s Cooking: All responsible for own actions
After someone has spent 10 years in prison for robbing a bank and then set free into society, should this person and his family think the community ought to accept him/her with open arms as if he/she had done nothing wrong? This would be perhaps the ideal way if you had been the criminal and looking at the situation from his/her point of view. However, when looking from society’s point of view, as a whole, I think it takes quite a bit of time before an ex-prisoner can redeem himself/herself from having done the crime.
I think about the guy who robbed a bank in McMinnville and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. You know the story. He was released a while back and begins his bank robbing again.
He robs one in Smithville. Apparently he got away with that one, at least for a while. Then, he robs one in Murfreesboro, whereupon he was chased down by police.
There are two or three things in this scenario that concerns me. The report said the suspect got out of his truck with a gun in hand. The policeman shot the bank robber in the leg. For this the family of the suspect was upset because they said the gun the suspect had wasn’t loaded.
Excuse me please. What is a policeman to do when a suspect gets out of his vehicle with a gun in hand? Ask, “Say, fellow, is that gun loaded?” By the time he did that, the policemen could be lying in the street dead? The gun may not have been loaded, but how was the policeman to know?
The family was upset because they said the suspect had tried to get a job since he got out of prison but nobody gave him a chance.
Two things we need to look at. One is, according to reports, jobs around are as scarce as hen’s teeth everywhere. Lots of people are out of work. Lots of people are seeking work. Then, there is the other thing – his record. This guy nor his family cannot blame society for his prison record. He earned that all by himself. He had a choice? To live within the law of the land or not. His choice was not. Now he has to live with that decision.
All of us are responsible for our actions. We need to weigh carefully each decision we make each day to make sure that the course we are taking is the one we most desire. It is not easy to straighten out things when we mess up. Mistakes happen. We’re human beings. But yet being humans doesn’t need to be an excuse to break laws and hurt others.
Laws are needful. Without laws confusion would reign supreme. We make not agree with every law, but they are there to protect other people’s rights. The things I do today may determine my destiny. The deeds you or I do today may live on for years to come. Those deeds may shape and mold the life of others to the point that it can be said, “It was good for them to have been here.” If that can be said of us, then what ever we may have done would not be in vain.