I came to bring peace to the world? No,not peace but division.From now on a family

of five will be divided etc.” Thankyou for tackling this Tough Call, right on

return from your holidays, Phil, it was not an easy statement of Our Lord’s to come to

terms with for us. But your own justification with five reasons were so very helpful

to me and family, friends etc.

and I now have an accurate transcript to go on from your Sermon Notes pages,thanks,

instead of my “back of envelop” notes from the Service, I recommend we all pay

attention to those if we want to get really blessed as families. Thanks be to God.

On the subject of children, one thing that’s been bugging me since I read Jen’s comment is why do we think children are innocent? I’m not sure we think that they never do anything wrong (otherwise parents wouldn’t have to tell them to ’stop doing that’). I think we think of them as innocent because they are too young to know any better; they’re not old enough to understand right and wrong, and so can’t be blamed/punished for their behaviour in the same way as an adult. Of course, the question of when people do become old enough to be punished is a hard one, and even with adults things like mitigating circumstances and mental illness are often taken into account when a sentence is passed. So even if the children did do things that were wrong, the death penalty does seem harsh….

But maybe that’s why we are “casual about sin” – mitigating circumstances seem to make a difference because once we see things from the perpetrators perspective we can empathise with them, and think maybe I would have done the same in that situation. On the one hand that seems like a good thing, as we are to love others, even those who don’t love us. On the other hand, how do we manage to not be “casual about sin” if we are so understanding of why people (including ourselves) do it? (sorry, that turned into a right rambly train of thought!)