None reach the height of vice all at once

My neighborhood has been plagued this summer with the death of several teen-aged boys, killed as the result of gang violence and teen-age tempers gone awry. It’s terrible.

What bothers me more is that newspapers, within the same paragraph, cite the young man’s unfortunate criminal history and then quote family or friends lamenting how nice of guy he was.  He’s remembered as  “trying to get things started right” again, or “trying so hard to stay out of trouble.”

What’s wrong in my neighborhood is that young men are dying in part as a result of gang involvement  and being tied to criminal lifestyles, yet their family and friends are unwilling to acknowledge that they were not leading peaceful, law abiding lives. At least that’s how it gets reported in newspapers.

I’m sure the mothers of these boys beg their sons  to get out of their life of crime and gangs, and then they mourn in anguish when that very lifestyle leads to their death.

Our newspapers and TV reporters would do best to honor these mothers’ wishes by telling the truth – even if  it portrays the deceased with a less-than-appealing character. We need to honor the loss of these mothers, and protect younger generations of boys, by speaking the truth.

It’s a tragic ending to a life marked by a pattern of crime and violence.

He’d been in a lot of trouble and was hanging out with the wrong crowd and doing the wrong things.

He lived a violent and angry life that came to an end in a flurry of bullets in a darkened alley.

Now I believe in redemption and transformation. I’m the President of an faith-based organization that has as one of its 3 primary ministries, a re-entry program for men who have served multiple years in prison for often heinous crimes. Redemption and transformation is possible, and it happens.

I know these words are harsh. But I’m angry at the lack of straight talk when someone gets killed, and I think we’ve got to start telling the truth.

Matthew Henry once warned his congregation that “None reach the height of vice all at once.” He meant that the pathway towards even the most hideous evil is long, and marked with many choices to either continue, or turn away.

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