{"id":2477,"date":"2012-07-26T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T20:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=2477"},"modified":"2012-07-26T13:28:25","modified_gmt":"2012-07-26T20:28:25","slug":"penn-state-nineveh-sandusky-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/penn-state-nineveh-sandusky-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn State, Nineveh, Sandusky, and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know about Jerry Sandusky and Pennsylvania State University and the sodomy stuff, right? Sure you do (you&#8217;re online, after all).<\/p>\n<p>Do you also know about Nineveh and the evil in that city?<\/p>\n<p>Well, Jonah certainly knew about Nineveh&#8230;and he certainly wasn&#8217;t going there on any errand of grace and mercy! But now look what I did; I got ahead of myself&#8230; <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I hear about terrible things like a former Penn State football coach sodomizing young boys and other men covering it up for fear of bad publicity, I wish God would make me an Avenging Angel superhero, traveling the planet rescuing children and dealing with perverts. I want them to suffer for what they\u2019ve done and feel the same pain they\u2019ve inflicted on the vulnerable and the weak. What I don\u2019t want to do is to pray for the salvation of perverts or &#8220;cry out against their wickedness&#8221; so they can repent. Although God gave me the awesome and undeserved gift of eternity in His presence, I want certain sinners to be denied that gift.<\/p>\n<p>I am like Jonah.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Do I begrudge the salvation of people who hurt children? To do so would be shameful. When sinners repent, God is glorified. When I was unrepentant, people preached to me, and prayed.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m glad they weren\u2019t like Jonah.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alignrightsmall\"><a href='http:\/\/online.worldmag.com\/2012\/07\/25\/are-you-like-jonah\/'>Are you like Jonah?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I just gave you the first two and last two paragraphs of a not-too-long-to-read article &#8212; an article I find very challenging and convicting.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago I wrote some Jonah and Nineveh pieces that still apply today:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top:-1.2em\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/clp\/youth\/12-102.html\" title=\"Jonah Pays and Prays | Mark Roth at Anabaptists\">Jonah Pays and Prays<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/clp\/youth\/1-210ibs.html\" title=\"Anabaptists: Influencing Community Change\">Influencing Community Change<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/clp\/youth\/2-210ibs.html\" title=\"Mark Roth: The Judge's Grace\">The Judge&#8217;s Grace<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yesterday I asked about praying good for Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>Today I wonder how many are praying good for Jerry Sandusky.<\/p>\n<p>And while we&#8217;re praying for Sandusky and his repentance, how about praying also for a society where the uproar and indignation is <em>not<\/em> over the fact that his sexual perversion was with males?<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know about Jerry Sandusky and Pennsylvania State University and the sodomy stuff, right? Sure you do (you&#8217;re online, after all). Do you also know about Nineveh and the evil in that city? Well, Jonah certainly knew about Nineveh&#8230;and he certainly wasn&#8217;t going there on any errand of grace and mercy! But now look what &#8230; <a title=\"Penn State, Nineveh, Sandusky, and Me\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/penn-state-nineveh-sandusky-and-me\/\" aria-label=\"More on Penn State, Nineveh, Sandusky, and Me\">Read more<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[389,4,16,12,534],"tags":[161,640,416,446],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-christianity-101","category-days-of-noah","category-lessons-for-living","category-todays-thought","tag-conversion","tag-homosexuality","tag-morality","tag-prayer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-DX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}