Yeah, he stuttered

On tonight's news was an investigative report on a compound of families in Waco who seem to have a problem with sex abuse of young girls by some of the men in the compound.  Such a travesty!  I was watching the interview of one of the men involved in the abuse.  He had undergone counseling by the compound's "elders" for two years before the girl the abuse happened to reported the tragedy.  Evidently, in the counseling session, he had been told that the compound, or "church" as he called it, pointed out that it was against scripture to take a matter to the courts.  When he was asked by reporters why he thought the he was shielded by his church, he stuttered, "It was God's...  It was God's will... It was God's will  that these matters be kept within the church."

Yeah, I would have started that sentence three times myself.  Those pauses allow the mind to do a little reflecting on what might come out.  If you don't like the possible answer, you just have to start the sentence again.  The second rehearsal of an answer evidently didn't  yield any better results that made sense in his mind.  Finally, he just decided to tell the answer he had been coached to give.  Context determines how to interpret pauses, but in this case, he knew that the reporter was hostile, non-cultic (my words, of course), and not gentle in his presentation to the public he wrote for.  So, the pauses appear to be the man's testing in his mind how his words might sound to an outsider.

Sex abuse of young girls and God's will seem like opposites to me.  They do not seem like they could ever be two terms of a paradox or oxymoron.  EVER!  But the man who only stuttered  about why he almost got off scot free for such a heinous act should pay for all the therapy his daughter will need due to her watching elders administer counseling to the perpetrator and then asking her to forgive him.  Not my idea of God's will. 

I guess I should be grateful the man stuttered to show that he at least was considering how this might play with the non-cultic crowd who would be listening to the report.  But I also think that the stuttering revealed that he was hiding behind someone's misbegotten idea of God's will.  I don't have words strong enough to condemn this man's behavior. 

It might be that God's will for this man is to deconstruct his thinking and reconstruct what is right, good, and true in his soul.  He wouldn't find himself stuttering if he were to do this.