Apparently I am one of the holdouts on believing the full conversion of Bill Holda to the issue of Law Abiding Citizens exercising their right to defend themselves via the Second Amendment. Popgun took him and his wife to the range and had them shoot for the first time (incidentally, Popgun deserves a standing ovation for his initiative and work,) but before we sound the bugles, release the doves and prance around the meadow alongside puppies with red bows in celebration, I want to point out that the damage that Dr. Holda did during that television interview is standing.
I am guessing that all those years in Catholic School did manage to set some basic guidelines on how you are suppose to redeem yourself from your sins. Repentance carries certain tasks to be done before forgiveness can be achieved: Sorrow, Confession, Asking for Forgiveness, Rectify or Make Amends, Forsaking and only then you can be forgiven. I know, it is a tall order in our modern world where a quick press release written by a PR manager is all what is required. Other than going shooting with Popgun, Holda so far apologized for his Lubby’s Cafeteria remarks and nothing else and that leaves him well short of starting in the right path for forgiveness. So color me wildly skeptic about him changing his mind and being in our side or at least on the road to redemption.
The Second Amendment is not just an intellectual exercise or a coffee house discussion about Italian painters during the Renaissance, it is a matter of life or death. We damn well know the numbers and stats not only here but wherever people were first disarmed and the massacred by those who did have the guns and chose to do uncontested evil with them. The issue of Less Gun Make For A Safer World has long been debunked and only those seeking total control and their useful idiots are still fighting our rights to defend ourselves. And in this era we are living now of almost instant access to all pertinent information and statistics, there is no excuse for the president of a college to have the facts wrong about something so fundamental or worse yet, ascertain without doubt yet wrongly about an event like Lubby’s so publicized and analyzed. In my opinion, Dr. Holda still has a long way to go in order to get out of the Outhouse List.
Those of you willing to give Dr. Holda a pass and the benefit of the doubt, God Bless you, you guys are very good people and much better Christians than me. I’ll just be the Brimstone and Fire kind of sucker and remain on the side of wrathful if you don’t mind. Hey, I am still keeping tabs on Jim Zumbo, OK? 🙂
I agree whole heartedly with “Sorrow, Confession, Asking for Forgiveness, Rectify or Make Amends, Forsaking.” As part of the leadership at a Celebrate Recovery ministry at my church, these are principles that any Christ centered 12 step recovery program would teach. The problem is, not everybody is a Catholic. I am a Baptist. There much in the Bible to indicate that sins are forgiven upon profession of faith. ALL sins, past, present, and future. That doesn’t mean that we forget the others’ sins, but we accept that they are forgiven, and we look forward to the sinner not repeating the sin. In other words, forgiveness is not something we can achieve by works, because as Ephesians 2:8 says, we have been saved by grace, through faith, WHICH IS A GIFT FROM GOD, and not by works, so that no one can boast about their salvation. God is sovereign in the matter, no matter what man thinks about it.
So to extend that to this particular secular situation, from my perspective, Bill Holda is forgiven. He has confessed ignorance, and he has expressed a desire to rectify his ignorance. He appears to be making amends by acting on that expressed desire.
Of course, his future actions and words will bear out whether or not his conversion was sincere, and as with most people who are in recovery from sin, he is on a journey now, but he may stumble from time to time as he matures in his conversion. But I don’t personally want the spiritual burden of carrying around unforgiveness against him, because that is one of the things upon which *I* will be judged.
Miguel,
Flies. Honey. Vinegar.
🙂
Kathy, bad example! You do attract more flies with honey… then again you attract them to kill them!
I rather have Dr. Holda do the whole repentance thing if you don’t mind 😉