Sanctity (5 of 9)
Series: 10 Rules
Jason Dees
Exodus 20:13
Our Scripture Reading for Today is a Short One, and it comes from Exodus 20:13:
13 You shall not murder.
John Grisham's first novel was his 1989 story, A Time to Kill. He couldn't get it published but eventually did, and it eventually became a best-seller. It tells the story of a black man in Mississippi in the 1980s, named Carl Lee Haylee, and his daughter who was raped by two men. They brutally attacked her and even attempted to murder her. Well, he knew that his daughter wasn't going to get a fair trial; he knew the men who had raped his daughter would never really get justice, and so he decides to take justice into his own hands, and he kills these two men who had attacked his daughter. The novel makes the reader ask a lot of questions - what do you do when you don't have a fair justice system, what does civil disobedience look like, and when is it a time to kill?
Now this sermon is not about ethics or when is it ok to do one thing and not another, and it's not about social action and how to improve the justice system. No, it's about this command - Do Not Murder. The real reason I bring up that story is because most of us are privileged people, most of us are people who are not regularly mistreated, most of us are people who trust of the justice system, and most of us are people that have never been so angry with another person or so hurt by another person that we have considered killing them, however, it's interesting how most people answer the question, ''Are you a good person?'' As I have asked people this question, you know what the number one response usually is? It's usually, ''Well, I try to be a good person; I mean I haven't killed anyone.'' Now, obviously that is a pretty low bar for morality, and I think the reason that people go there is that we know we are pretty sure we are guilty of every other command - but murder? Well, only .000032% of Americans have actually murdered ...
Series: 10 Rules
Jason Dees
Exodus 20:13
Our Scripture Reading for Today is a Short One, and it comes from Exodus 20:13:
13 You shall not murder.
John Grisham's first novel was his 1989 story, A Time to Kill. He couldn't get it published but eventually did, and it eventually became a best-seller. It tells the story of a black man in Mississippi in the 1980s, named Carl Lee Haylee, and his daughter who was raped by two men. They brutally attacked her and even attempted to murder her. Well, he knew that his daughter wasn't going to get a fair trial; he knew the men who had raped his daughter would never really get justice, and so he decides to take justice into his own hands, and he kills these two men who had attacked his daughter. The novel makes the reader ask a lot of questions - what do you do when you don't have a fair justice system, what does civil disobedience look like, and when is it a time to kill?
Now this sermon is not about ethics or when is it ok to do one thing and not another, and it's not about social action and how to improve the justice system. No, it's about this command - Do Not Murder. The real reason I bring up that story is because most of us are privileged people, most of us are people who are not regularly mistreated, most of us are people who trust of the justice system, and most of us are people that have never been so angry with another person or so hurt by another person that we have considered killing them, however, it's interesting how most people answer the question, ''Are you a good person?'' As I have asked people this question, you know what the number one response usually is? It's usually, ''Well, I try to be a good person; I mean I haven't killed anyone.'' Now, obviously that is a pretty low bar for morality, and I think the reason that people go there is that we know we are pretty sure we are guilty of every other command - but murder? Well, only .000032% of Americans have actually murdered ...
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