Thankyou Texan and Squid for your decent words. I appreciate your courtesy.
For all: More food for thought below (publicly posted on Facebook so I’m sharing it) Can you understand why I’m not quite willing to just latch on to the whole “family is a sleeper cell” thing?
“I mentioned recently that Bowe Bergdahl’s parents were members of an OPC church when he was captured by the Taliban and since that time I’ve had a lot of people ask me if they had become Muslims or what was up. I asked their former pastor Phil Proctor if he would mind giving me something I could share, this is what Phil wrote:
“I appreciate your asking about the Bergdahls. I’ve really been saddened about how the Christian community is jumping all over this. Here’s the deal...
I pastored the Bergdahl family in 2003, prior to going to Uganda. We were very close, and remained so throughout my time in Uganda (I just found out this evening that apparently I’m referenced in some important Rolling Stone article from 2012).
Bowe was a young man with all the dangers of home-schooling – a brilliant and inquisitive mind, a crisp thinker, and someone who had never really been exposed to evil in the world. He was wanting to determine whether the Christian faith was his own, or his parents’ and was doing a lot of exploring of ideas – never drugs or alcohol, but trying to be an outdoors/Renaissance type figure. We’ve stayed in close contact with Bob and Jani, especially since Bowe’s capture. Since we moved here to Northern Virginia, Bob and Jani have stayed in our home on a couple of occasions, and I’ve spoken on the phone with Bob once a month or so.
Bob felt (with some justification) that the US government was not going to engage with diplomatic efforts and so decided to try to free his son himself. He learned Pashtun and developed a lot of contacts in the Middle East. The Qatar connection is one that either originated with Bob or, at the very least, became very personally connected to Bob. Bob has, for quite some time, been saying that the closure of Guantanamo is integrally connected to the release of his son.
Whatever one thinks of Bob’s political views, I can attest to both he and Jani’s unwavering commitment to Christ and trust in him. I’ve prayed with both of them regularly. They both have been through a torture mill that I cannot begin to comprehend – 5 years of a living death. It has affected their health, both physically and mentally, as Bob has been completely obsessed with tracking down any possible communication avenue to get his son home. There are a number of things I would disagree with Bob on in terms of political statements, but at the end of the day, I think this whole mess is a WHOLE lot more complicated than a 30 second sound bite can explore – the very existence of Gitmo attests to the complicated nature from the very beginning, and it’s only gotten worse over the years.
To the foundational issue: Bob and Jani both have regularly confessed their dependence upon Christ and rest in him – the most recent being Bob’s conversation with me about a month ago. They are broken people who need prayer, love, and compassion. I personally intend to run as hard as I can in the opposite direction of judging his words in the moment of his crucible – I would HATE to have that standard applied to my moments of stress, which have never reached anything approaching his intensity and duration!
Feel free to forward this and use it as widely as you like.
Yours in Christ,
Phil Proctor
Pastor, Sterling Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Sterlingopc.org
FYI. My most recent conversation with Bob and Jani was 30 minutes ago. Still Christians “
What was that “Allah the merciful” Arabic chant all about? Why didn’t they praise Jesus?
HAHAHA!! Totally laughable!!!
Yeah blame it all on HS'ing....
Geesh, the more you post, the more I think you've zero understanding what your "friends" think, believe, or worship period.
It's dangerous to be so naive.
When it becomes clear to you...let me know. I hope your discernment get's better...fore I think it's seriously lacking right now.
I don’t think the family is a sleeper cell. I do think the father is mentally disturbed from this ordeal. But it simply isn’t his father that I find disturbing about this.
What bothers me about this is the liberal canonization of this soldier. He served honorably?
He did not.
Not by any stretch, even a liberal stretch of the mind did he serve honorably. It is an insult, knowing what the government did, that they promoted him while he was with the enemy. This is a man who should be punished for what he did, and severely. Instead they tried to portray him as a heroic figure. It is a disgrace.
That is what bothers me. And the opinions that matter to me are those of the men who served beside him, not his pastor, or even his parents. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel pity for his parents and the ordeal they went through, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether Bergdahl is called to full account for his actions, and the resulting deaths of his countrymen who were ordered to search for him while he may well have been providing information to the enemy to help them kill our men.
It is astonishing to even consider this.
And even if I have any compassion for Bergdahl and his ordeal, it is tempered and far overpowered by the odiousness of the things he has done, and the lives of good men he has cost.
And the lives he may yet cost.
But what makes it worse is knowing how close he came to coming home to a hero’s welcome, and the knowledge that he will likely never be obliged pay for what he has done.
He will, in the words of someone he probably admires, be guilty as sin and free as a bird.
THAT is what bothers me.
As a parent, I can understand the desire and drive to do anything necessary to get your child back. I have no problem with that. My problem is that his son, through his chosen actions, got a lot of Americans killed and injured. I don’t understand why Bowe even joined the military if he had no intention of fighting the enemy.
But the biggest reason I am outraged over the situation is Obama trading five extremely dangerous enemy combatants for Bergdahl. What their son did was disgusting. And Susan Rice told us he “served with honor and distinction”. He certainly did not.
This is quite impressive. It puts a much different light on the matter. I commend you, Persevero, for your own investigation. I believe it merits a thread of its own.
I will admit to having negative feelings towards the Baghdahls; some of that is because of the actions of their son and a large amount of it for being stage props for Obama.
However, the Pastor’s words touched this father’s heart. I believe that FReepers, especially Christians, need to see the Pastor’s words.
I get and hope that they all remain Christians. The visual effect of that Rose Garden ceremony was toxic.
You and others are incredibly naive almost to the point of ignorance. As others have stated to you, please don’t include me in your long posts defending this guy, ok? The next time I would like to hear from you is after this guy is back in the states and is then arrested or caught trying to perform some act of terrorism agaisnt the United States. And that will happen. Then I - and others - want a long post of your apology to us and the United States.