Huckabee defends admitted child molester

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

The rationale is perfectly acceptable (edit: from Huckabee's perspective, obviously not the offense itself), and we should all be able to have so much compassion. Major plus in my book. Huck is a great man.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Believing in redemption is scandalous.  It has always been thus.

It's fine to believe in redemption, but Huckabee goes out of his way to defend these people solely because of their Christianity. I don't believe he would be talking about redemption if this were some random child molester.

I agree unfortunately regarding Huck picking solely Christian bretheren to support, but is there much doubt this man seems to have turned his life around? We are but outsiders so it may all be just a visage, but Duggar truly seems to be living virtuously post-intervention.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Liberals have largely abandoned the idea that criminals are good people who made bad choices; criminals are instead bad people who do exactly what one expects of bad people. 

This is literally the only thing that keeps me voting D. If the parties switched on this, I would never have a difficult choice of conscience in the polling booth ever again. For once, I hope you are right.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Believing in redemption is scandalous.  It has always been thus.

It's fine to believe in redemption, but Huckabee goes out of his way to defend these people solely because of their Christianity. I don't believe he would be talking about redemption if this were some random child molester.


Yes, there is nothing wrong with redemption.  Being a Christian means hoping that all might one day be redeemed.  When it comes to child sex crimes and premeditated murderers, however, the perpetrators will have to seek redemption in the next world.  Not because they are inherently irredeemable, but because of public safety.    

Redemption doesn't mean that you don't have to face legal penalties.  It means that you are not defined by what you did, that you are not forever judged for it as being unworthy of respect and incapable of goodness.  If you do not believe that people can change and learn and grow from what they did in their youth, then you do not believe in redemption.

Redemption is not without a price -- namely, taking the worldly penalties (including shame, pain, imprisonment, and financial ruin) that one accepts if redemption is genuine.

A murderer is still a murderer in our world. A thief is still a thief in our world. A rapist is still a rapist in our world. If one accepts Christianity as true, then even being burned at the stake is a minor payment for eternal salvation.

What kind of weird theology claims that being burned at the stake could be payment for salvation?  The idea that a person cannot be redeemed from sin if they do not suffer criminal penalties, or that they should live their entire lives being shamed by those around them for what they did completely misses the role of grace. Christianity is not "you deserve forgiveness if you suffer enough or what you did isn't that bad."

For the unbeliever, Christ is nothing more than a new Kevin Trudeau, promising something too good to be true.  Works-based plans of salvation make more sense to people at one level, and I include many folks who profess to be "Christians" in this because it seems unfair that a murderer/child molester, or someone as awful as a Hitler or a Stalin could have a deathbed revelation and truly accept Christ and receive an eternal reward and be forever in the same Heaven that a "good person" goes to.  The real attraction to works-based plans of salvation is that it seems to offer folks some control over their eternity.  ("I can be good and make the cut!") 

I recall seeing an account an incident related to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. A Christian evangelist went to Jerusalem. A Jew asked what the evangelist was there to save, and the evangelist replied "Eichmann".

The same Jew asked, "but what of all my relatives that he killed?"

The evangelist said, "They are in Hell for not accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior".

Another Jew said, "So I will be content to go to Hell where my relatives are, and you can be with your pervert forever!"

... All in all I find the Jewish promise of Heaven to all righteous people far more satisfying for humanity as a whole than any credal toadying limited to any single culture. That is a far better hope than almost any other religion can offer.

1. This never happened
2. This is a total misrepresentation of Christianity
3. This is actually a disgusting post on the level of Snowstalker

Lol, don't flatter pbrower by elevating him several tiers to the level of Snowstalker.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Child molestation is damnable and inexcusable. Children need to develop some wholesome trust in humanity as a whole, and child sexual abuse utterly destroys such trust.

Children of a certain age (latency) have no interest in sex. Sex can only hurt them; they cannot enjoy it. I think that we can all agree on this: adults must repress any urge to mess with a child sexually. This is an absolute, and there are no excuses.  Not alcohol or drugs, and certainly not religion.

I'm probably digging myself into a hole here considering this forum, but it's a bit excusable for a 14 year old, especially one who was growing up in a household like this that doesn't know any better because of how closed off some topics must be. And honestly that goes for probably anyone of that age. Not denying the results can be horrific, but we're not talking about a 27 year old man doing this.