Well congratulations, it would seem your Lord has decreed it's time to take the training wheels off, cause you're fixin' to go t' school.
I mentioned I was an atheist (and 18 years old) and revenge was very much on the table then.
Your actions then are not at issue: it's your mitigating now.
Man-handled? That's the word for physical violence. Shoving a 6 foot tall woman so hard she falls to the ground?
Yup. You go to a bad man's house, eat a bad man's bread (or dope as it were), then whine about how the bad man treated you?
St. Augustine (at one time a truly famous bad-boy) was once asked "what is the worst sin you ever committed?" He answered by saying as a kid he once jumped an orchard fence, climbed a tree, ate the fruit, and what he couldn't eat he threw to the ground. Now he wasn't counting sin by how much damage he did to the farmer, and he wasn't saying he never did anything worse than that. What he was saying was at no time did he ever act out of more malice and selfishness.
Now he could have come up with all kinds of mitigating circumstances no doubt; the farmer was mean, there were plenty more trees, I was just a boy... etc., but he didn't do that. He, knowing his own heart better than anyone else, divined that as the blackest, most heinous, most treacherous moment in his life.
All your prattling about "taking her power" is just another way of blaming it on the farmer, or making "panties on the head" into "torture." He didn't kill her. He didn't maim her. He didn't rape her. He injured her pride, and that my FRiend is known as vanity.
Let me clue you in to a little trick many people use. They say things like "sometimes words hurt like fists." No, fists hurt like fists, but that's what is claimed when the petulant wish to punish words with fists. I dare say if your drug dealer had done as much damage to your friend as your friend did to the drug dealer, she would have needed an emergency room visit.
Yes, we vandalized his van, but I really don't regret it, though I should...I take exception to your sympathizing with a violent drug dealer and calling him a "victim."
Could the two be related? Count on it. It's easy to hate a publican. It's easy to hate a drug dealer. It's easy to hate a rich guy. But do they deserve any more injustice than you? Don't be surprised if during your walk you find G-d makes a lot more use of such people than he does of the dry, tasteless, shrivelled little souls content to bury their talent, and show up at church whenever the doors are open.
At 18 years old, what were we supposed to do? File charges and fear retaliation from a violent drug dealer?
You didn't seem too worried about retaliation if you'd been caught vandalizing his ride.
"Yup. You go to a bad man's house, eat a bad man's bread (or dope as it were), then whine about how the bad man treated you?"
My friend was not eating his food, drinking his beer or smoking his dope. She was "straight" as a board. She was invited to a party the band was having and that is why she was there. And even if she were consuming his dope, that does not mean he had the right to push her physically around. Are you impplying that she shouldn't have "whined" to me about being physically assaulted without provocation?
"It's easy to hate a publican. It's easy to hate a drug dealer. It's easy to hate a rich guy. But do they deserve any more injustice than you?"
We didn't "hate" him because of his lifestyle. We took issue with his violent behavior.