As posted a few posts earlier, I do feel compassion for this kid, but I haven’t seen any of the kids who lost their homes mentioned on this thread.
Aren’t they due any compassion? I’m not picking on you here. It just astounds me the pitty this kid has received on this thread, and God’s other children have been less than an afterthought throughout.
The comments like, “I sure hope this kid isn’t treated too unfairly.” drive me nuts. I don’t want to see him overly inconvenienced, but folks, get a grip. Whether we like it or not, he burned down the homes of other children, whether we want to focus on that or not. Does Jesus not have compassion for them? Shouldn’t we?
Sheesh!
The comments like, “I sure hope this kid isn’t treated too unfairly.” drive me nuts. I don’t want to see him overly inconvenienced, but folks, get a grip. Whether we like it or not, he burned down the homes of other children, whether we want to focus on that or not. Does Jesus not have compassion for them? Shouldn’t we?You're absolutely right that the other people of all ages need compassion and our help as well. They are all living through a nightmare of unbelievable proportions. A lot of people are doing everything they can to help the victims of this fire. We lost our home to fire when I was 6 and I can still vividly remember it till this day.
But the current fad is to treat children as way more responsible then they really are. I remember a serious debate not too many years ago about putting 12 year olds to death. I think it was after those school shootings in Arkansas.
We need to find some balance here. Yes they deserve punishment. It has to be that way for their own good. But we need to remember that their brains are still developing physically and not all circuits are firing yet. They are still learning how to "drive" them. Juvenile justice should be focused on rehabilitation and not vengeance. An old fashioned idea that has lost favor in our modern disposable society.
It's the same story about making matches overly available to kids. Obviously it's a lot better to prevent a tragedy like this in the first place. We know kids are kids and will do bad stuff. We need to take extra effort to protect everybody from the worst consequences. Fire in these firestorm prone areas is one of them.
I think this kid and his family deserve to have some people running defense them. I tend to focus more on the lost sheep because there are plenty of people tending the flock. But you're right, they're all God's children and this is a tragedy.