Thursday

What are we going to talk about today?

An NFL star is charged with murder.  Another jury needs to be seated to determine the fate of Jodi Arias -- life or the death penalty.  The George Zimmerman trial is in full swing in Florida.

Do soap operas imitate life or does life imitate soap operas?  It's kind of hard to say these days.  Each of the above mentioned stories involves a death.  Three people are dead after contact with Aaron Hernandez, Jodi Arias and George Zimmerman.  That makes it much different than a soap opera where after the taping is over, everyone gets to go home.

I almost hate to admit that I watched the made-for-TV movie about Jodi Arias a few days ago.  It seemed to follow fairly closely the details that were provided in the newspapers and on TV.  I did not watch the trial.  The bottom line -- it would seem that Ms. Arias was not about to share "her" man with anyone else.  And it would seem that Travis Alexander was leading a secret life, one that he did not share with his closest Mormon friends who would certainly not have approved. 

George Zimmerman may be the type of person who loves the rush, and didn't find much of that in his personal life.  Being a watch captain gave him that thrill; phoning 911 about suspicious characters gave him that thrill; being out at night with a gun gave him that thrill.  There is so much he-said, he-said in this case that it is hard to say what will happen.  But if you go by the experts on TV, his attorney didn't do him any favors today while questioning the girl that Treyvon was talking to at the time of his death.

The NFL player's story is a little vague right now.  The authorities are keeping whatever evidence they have fairly quiet.  Apparently, the victim in this case did know Hernandez and his body was found only about a mile away from the house belonging to Hernandez.  Bags of evidence was removed from his house.

When I was still working at Akron, I took some for-credit classes.  One of them was criminal justice, and it was really excellent.  Our system of justice in the United States is an adversarial one by its very nature.  The "state" prosecutes the accused and the defense defends the accused.  Each is supposed to do their very best to provide the jury or in some cases the judge with all of the available information.  The scales of justice should balance out.

What does all of this have to do with life in a small town and faith? 

It just goes to show that no matter how small the town, all of us have information about what goes on in the world to the extent that we want to know.  It's everywhere, and 24 hours a day.  It means to me that we see played out in the cases mentioned above that there is good and evil.  Each one of us would certainly hope that we would make better choices -- choices based on what we know and understand about right and wrong.

And that goes for big towns and small towns too.

Amen.