Sex Offenders

So for the last couple of hours, Ive been looking at this Family Watchdog website, and for some reason I am hooked on it. I would not recommend looking up this website, simply because it is very addicting. Its a website with a list of sex offenders all around the US. The descriptions include a picture, what they did, when they did it, where they did it, where they are now, and a bunch of other personal info.

I started with, of course, Bremen. There were a few in the area, more than I thought would be. One person in Bremen was convicted of rape and voluntary manslaughter, but luckily he lives on the other side of town from my sisters. That just blows my mind that there is someone in my town that had killed a person.

Then I moved on to South Bend, West Lafayette, Los Angeles (full of rapers), and have now been stuck on New York City for quite a while now. I cant even describe how terrified I am of New York based upon the number of sex offenders. It has taken me a good half hour to forty minutes to look at all of the people within one mile of the center of New York. I am completely astonished.
In West Lafayette, there is a man that lives within a few blocks from the apartment I will be living in next year that had committed murder. MURDER. He killed a person, and he is living within bullets distance of me.

But most of all, as I am going through this list, I try to look at each and every person and see them as a person. I have to try and understand why they did what they did. I look at their picture and wonder what went on throughout their life that led to that moment, the moment where their one wrong decision would affect the rest of their life. I had to imagine each person committing their crime, how it happened, why it happened, who the victim was, how it affected that person, if they feel bad, if they even care at all.

I imagine these people as children, each and every one of them was a child at one point, playing with their friends, going to school, looking up to someone. Were they teased? Were they abused? Were they fatherless, motherless? Who were their influences? When was the turning point from innocence?

I imagine each of them was a newborn, at one point their mothers had wrapped them in their arms after birth.

I try and love them. I try to see them as human beings and love them. But then I go back to what they had done. These people look terrible. They look jaded, worn out, most of them look either drugged up or intimidating. They rape children. They sexually abuse their wives. They commit unimaginable acts. I can't love them. I can't love a rapist. I can't love a child molester. I can't love a murderer. But God does.

Why?

One man had committed 1st degree rape, incest, and sexual abuse...on a five year old. Why does God love him?

I have never committed a crime, sexually abused someone, raped anyone, or even been in a fight. I have a personal relationship with our God and love and worship Him. And He loves these rapists just as much as he loves me. This is astounding to me, and also very confusing.

Those were my thoughts from Family Watchdog.