27 Sermon Illustrations on Restitution

Sermon in Ten Commandments series. Don't steal. Exodus 20:15

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DON'T RIP PEOPLE OFF

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I. Locking the doors.

II. Violation of being robbed.

A. The essence of theft.

B. A loss of security more than the taking of our stuff.

III. Is it valid to own things?

A. The Bible can seem to be anti-private property.

B. Property affirmed in the Bible.

IV. Stealing from people.

A. Old-fashioned theft. (Deprive)

B. Differing weights. (Deception)

C. Unrighteous withholdings. (Defrauding)

V. Stealing from God.

A. We owe him tithes and offerings. Mal 3:7-10

B. Deeper meaning of the tithe - honor God.

VI. What stealing does to you.

A. Leads to deception and lies.

B. Makes you distrustful of others.

C. Starts a vicious cycle.

D. Entices you to frivolous living.

E. Hinders your Christian witness.

VII. Steal no longer. Eph 4:28

A. Restitution is an important Biblical principle.

B. Give appropriate amount to God.

C. Live within your means. (Be satisfied with what you have.)

D. Honesty is the best witness.

Charles Colson was a tough lawyer who worked for President Nixon at the height of Watergate. He was successful, but he still felt empty.

One afternoon a friend shared his faith in Christ with him, and a short time later Colson became a Christian. Comic strips like Doonesbury ridiculed him. Soon Colson found himself in prison because of his previous activities during Watergate. They were the worst 2 years of his life, but he kept his faith.

He was appalled at the prison conditions and how prisoners came out worse than they went in. Today his organization has 15,000 volunteers who disciple prisoners for Jesus Christ.

One reform he proposes is to allow non-violent offenders to redeem themselves by making restitution. Instead of going to jail, they pay back those they have wronged. Such criminals are more likely to be rehabilitated. It is a principle found right in the Bible.

[Also see Christian History mag, #26, (IX,2), page 34]

Newton, New Jersey. Loretta Giordano told jurors yesterday that she does not want to see her son's murderer die by lethal injection. Giordano, whose son Jeremy was gunned down two years ago while delivering pizzas to an abandoned house, said she hopes Thomas Koskovich finds God and reaches out to help other young people.

Koskovich looked at the floor while Giordano testified yesterday about how the murder affected her life and her family. Then Giordano was asked by defense attorneys if she wanted Koskovich to be put to death. It may have been the first time a victim's relative has been asked that question during a death penalty hearing in New Jersey, attorneys involved in the trial said. Giordano called it an "unfair question" when it was asked during a preliminary hearing while the jury was out of the courtroom. But she answered the question, saying she hoped Koskovich would "become something of value to society," then answered it again in front of the jury.

"We'd most like to see Thomas Koskovich take the evil he's done and turn his life over to Christ," said Giordano, who lives with her husband, Joseph, in Hardyston. But she also told jurors that she wanted them to "evaluate everything according to the laws of the state of New Jersey, according to how they feel. … They have to answer to their God."

[The jury gave him the death penalty. The judge put a twist on the sentence by demanding it be carried out in five years or it would be automatically commuted to a life sentence. His twist was expected to be ruled illegal. It became moot when New Jersey outlawed the death penalty.]

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http://correctionssentencing.blogspot.com/2007/04/thrill-killing-ten-years-later.html

Sunday, April 15, 2007

A Thrill Killing Ten Years Later

Ben Barlyn

This Thursday, April 19th, marks the 10-year anniversary of one of, if not the most, infamous crimes committed in New Jersey. On April 19, 1997, two pathetic low-rent Leopold and Leobs named Thomas Koskovitch (then 18) and Jason Vreeland (then 17) spent the evening placing phone calls to pizza shops in rural Sussex County hoping to find someone willing to deliver them a pizza at a late hour. After several unsuccessful attempts, the two called Tony’s Pizza & Pasta in the nearby town of Hardyston and placed an order for two cheese pies. The owner of the pizzeria, Giorgio Gallara (25), accompanied his employee and friend, Jeremy Giordano (22), to the address provided by Koskovitch and Vreeland.

Unbeknownst to Gallara and Giordano, the address was for a dilapidated and abandoned house located in a very remote and rural part of Franklin Township. There, Koskovitch and Vreeland lay in wait armed with handguns that they had stolen from a gun store three weeks earlier. When Gallara and Giordano pulled up to the house, Koskovitch and Vreeland killed them both in a hail of gunfire. The pizzas were casually discarded near the victims’ car.

Koskovitch and Vreeland were suspected almost immediately. After all, both had previously bragged to acquaintances about their desire to experience what it would feel like to kill someone. After his arrest, Koskovitch nonchalantly explained to the detective in a recorded interview that he and Vreeland had enthusiastically embraced after the killings. When directly asked if he felt any remorse for his crimes, Koskovitch said no because he was unacquainted with either victim. Following a lengthy guilt-phase trial in 1999, a jury concluded in a separate proceeding that his crimes warranted the punishment of death (Vreeland’s age spared him a capital trial).

So much for the crimes. In anticipation of the 10-year-anniversary of the event, today’s Newark Star Ledger has a profoundly moving account of the incalculable suffering and astounding perseverance of the victims’ families during the previous decade. By enshrining the memories of the victims in various endeavors, both the Gallaras and Giordanos have sustained themselves and drawn previously unknown reserves of strength. According to the story, both families have finally achieved something akin to tranquility, which is nonetheless unsettled by what seem to them to be interminable legal proceedings occasioned by the filings of both Koskovitch and Vreeland.

On a purely personal level, the story evoked some very intense memories. The morning after the trial judge signed Koskovitch’s death warrant on May 7, 1997, I was notified by my bureau chief in the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice that I had been assigned to represent the State in Koskovitch’s automatic appeal to the Supreme Court of New Jersey. My first responsibility was to immediately persuade the Court to vacate a bizarre order issued by the trial judge to the effect that unless the sentence of death was carried out in five years, it would automatically be vacated. The trial judge reasoned that by remaining on New Jersey’s death row one minute beyond the fifth year, Koskovitch would necessarily endure cruel and unusual punishment. Two months later, the Supreme Court summarily vacated the order. The trial judge, incidentally, had placed on the record prior to Koskovitch’s trial his personal perspective that the death penalty was in inappropriate punishment.

I was first introduced to Loretta and Joseph Giordano, Jeremy’s parents, by the trial prosecutor, Mike Briegel, just before oral argument was set to begin. Both appeared tense and physically drawn but otherwise emotionally composed. I briefly conveyed by condolences before heading to counsel table. It was an admittedly awkward encounter, made more so by the fact that Loretta Giordano had testified before the jury at the penalty phase of the trial that neither she nor her husband supported capital punishment for religious reasons. Not only was I going to forcefully argue that Koskovitch’s death sentence should be upheld, but that the trial judge had clearly erred by eliciting testimony regarding the personal views of the victim’s family.

In any event, the Supreme Court of New Jersey subsequently upheld Koskovitch’s murder convictions. But, in an acrimonious 4-3 split, the Court vacated the death sentence due to perceived prejudicial instructional errors. Notably, two of the four justices in the majority wrote a separate concurring opinion that Koskovitch’s age and egregious upbringing rendered death an inherently disproportionate punishment despite the egregious nature of the slayings he had perpetrated. Koskovitch remains imprisoned for life with no prospect for early parole.

When all is said and done, I wish the Giordanos and Gallaras the best in their ongoing and evidently successful efforts to reclaim some semblance of what Vreeland and Koskovitch so brutally and callously took from them almost ten years ago.

Bible Passages: Leviticus 5:1, 4-5, 14-16; 6:1-7

Discussion Questions:

• Why is it important to read the Book of Leviticus as a book about fellowship with God rather than a rule book for religion?

• Why do you think God requires both confession and repentance for the worshipper to give an acceptable offering to the Lord?

• Why does asking forgiveness from someone we have wronged sometimes seem shallow if it is not backed up by actions?

Food for Thought:

Because the blood of Jesus can “cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), believers often take a casual view of sin, thinking all we need to do is say a quick prayer and ask for forgiveness. While God’s capacity to forgive is unlimited, we must remember that all sin offends holy God. Holiness is a concept that is lost in today’s society. Yet God expects His people to be holy. In fact, the theme of the Book of Leviticus is “be holy because I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Honoring God’s holiness involves right relationships with God and with each other.

God requires us to acknowledge our guilt. Leviticus 5 begins with a section that describes cases when sin offerings are required for both sins of omission and commission. When we dishonor God’s holiness, we need to recognize that a right relationship with God requires a sacrifice. Thankfully, Jesus made that sacrifice for all sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). However, sin destroys our fellowship with God and requires admitting our sin through true confession and genuine repentance.

Since sin offends holy God and breaks fellowship with Him, the sinner needs to get right with God. This requires true confession of sin; restitution is one way to express true confession. Leviticus required an additional 20 percent restitution for those who had damaged others with their sin. A person meets the demand for confession and restitution when he puts his faith in Jesus Christ. Though all those demands are met in Christ, the grace of God also encourages us to make things right with others we have wronged (see Zacchaeus’s example in Luke 19:8).

We honor God’s holiness by living in harmony with His family. To live in harmony, we often must make amends with those who have wronged us or with those whom we have wronged. Leviticus 6:1-7 describes this process. To the best of our ability, we should seek forgiveness from God and attempt to make amends with those we have harmed.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #698]

New York - A 31-year-old accountant repaid the $40 he stole 15 years ago from an amusement park - and added 286 percent interest to atone for his previous theft. Jeff Street was a 16-year-old parking lot attendant at the amusement park in 1969. Recently, he said, "I was praying at my desk and reading the Word, and it just came to me. It wasn't the Lord's voice, but it came from within me - I had to pay back the money," Street said.

________

Cited in {Dallas Morning News,} Nov. 11, 1984.

[Young teenager commits a multi-million dollar fraud, then gets saved in prison, becomes a pastor and shares his knowledge with others.]

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Barry Minkow picked up the telephone one late spring morning in 1987 and knew right away that the game was up. Until that point, his life had seemed like a movie plot - the skinny 16-year-old from the LA suburbs who starts his own company in his parents' garage, hoping to impress girls, and ends up a celebrated teenage millionaire, paraded on Oprah, and lecturing in business schools. His carpet-cleaning firm, ZZZZ Best, had started with a loan of $1,600; within four years it was employing 1,400 people, and by the time Minkow took it public - crowning him the youngest chief executive on Wall Street by a stretch - the company was worth more than $280 million, and busily diversifying into lucrative restoration jobs on fire-damaged hotels and apartment blocks. He was stunning. The mayor of Los Angeles was so stunned that he declared an official Barry Minkow Day across the city.

So it was only to be expected that envious rivals would want to cause him grief. Perhaps it was even to be expected that he would have a team of fraud investigators on the phone, like he did now, demanding a guided tour of an upmarket apartment building that ZZZZ Best had renovated in Dallas. But there was something about the building in question which certainly wasn't to be expected, which was that it didn't exist.

Not existing, as it turned out, was a recurring problem with the diverse activities of the Minkow empire. In June 1987, two days before it was due to acquire a competitor twice its size for $40 million, ZZZZ Best collapsed - and Minkow, then 20, stood exposed as the perpetrator of a massive stock fraud which the court would later value at $26 million - probably an underestimate. For years he had been frenziedly negotiating slabs of investment worth millions of dollars for bogus projects he never planned to fund - he just needed the cash to pay for his staff, not to mention his Ferrari Testarossa and his mansion in the wealthy community of Woodland Hills.

Minkow ended up serving seven and a half years in prison, still something of a record for a white-collar crime. “Real prison, too,” he points out, “most of that time with a murderer for a cellmate, not 18 months in a golf-course camp.”

And so he has been watching with a certain wry detachment in recent weeks as the behemoths of the US economy - WorldCom, Enron, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing; now Xerox; now Merck - have become mired in charges of fraud. This is partly because his mind is on higher things these days: for five and a half years he has been the senior pastor of the Community Bible Church in Mira Mesa, California, having found God in jail. (And he knows what you're thinking, by the way. “I'm not allowed to sign cheques and my name isn't on the bank accounts,” he says. “I don't want to be in that position.”)

Mainly, though, it's because he thinks he knows what was going through the minds of Kenneth Lay, Bernie Ebbers and their ilk. The FBI thinks so, too, and has hired him to give seminars to its investigators. Minkow also performs “fraudits” on behalf of the Fraud Discovery Institute, which he co-founded.

“Everyone I met in prison had one thing in common - they never planned on being there,” he says, talking loud and fast and expansively, still with a salesman's charm, using my name at every possible opportunity. “And not one of those companies went into business to defraud. Not one. Neither did I. What people don't realize is that fraud is always a means to an end, never an end in itself. There is always a rationalization: I'm going to do this now, and it's tough, but next week we're gonna get some big carpet-cleaning jobs, whatever, and we're gonna make it back, pay everyone back, nobody's gonna be hurt - and that will be the cure.”

ZZZZ Best started out real enough. Minkow wanted desperately to be popular at school, to find a girlfriend; his twin strategy involved taking steroids to boost his muscles and starting his own business. He chose the logical line of work: his mother had a job cold-calling for a carpet-cleaning firm, and he had an after-school job actually cleaning them. Once he had his own equipment - bought with a loan from a friend - he hired his mother to work the phones, basing the fledgling enterprise in the family garage. Within months, he had more employees and made it on to the local television news, slacking on his schoolwork in his quest to become the carpet-cleaning king of California.

The publicity began to snowball. People magazine caught on, and Oprah, and Newsweek, and the business magazines - and Tom Bradley, the LA mayor, with his plan for a civic celebration of youthful brilliance that caught even Minkow by surprise. “Celebrity was a tool to attract money,” he says. “It isn't like the mayor sent in a team of accountants to audit my books before he declared Barry Minkow Day - but the impression investors got was that he did. When I did Oprah, the impression was given that they'd checked me out, but, of course, they hadn't.

“That's how it works: the bank gives the loan because the numbers were done by Arthur Andersen. Arthur Andersen took on the job because the law firm was one of the Big Ten, and they'd surely have caught on if anything was wrong... And on it goes.”

Everything happened very fast indeed after that. Minkow retained Wall Street lawyers and reputable accountants, using credibility to attract investment and investments to buy credibility. He planned a public stock offering, and ZZZZ Best expanded into “insurance restoration” - renovating buildings damaged by smoke and fire - while Minkow spun tales of 40% profit margins, winning another $15 million investment.

The company finally went public in a blaze of media coverage in 1986, catapulted into a stockmarket as dizzy as one that would follow a decade and a half later on the back of the internet boom. Within weeks, shares in ZZZZ Best soared from an initial offering of $4 to $18. Nobody was in the mood for asking questions - which was unfortunate, because Minkow might have had difficulty answering them.

Ever since the company's earliest days, in fact, he had been stealing to boost growth and make ends meet. It began, as he explains it, with “money orders stolen from the money order place at Rick's Liquor Store in Resada”, but it quickly escalated.

“There are two days in my life I remember especially,” he says. “One is when I first started taking steroids, aged 15. I was in the bathroom, and I remember closing the door and thinking the pill was so small, how could it do the things they said? I took it and I knew I had crossed the line: I wanted to be strong now, who cares if you can't have kids when you're 30? Live for the now. Very existential. Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus.

“And then there was the day I decided: I want to be successful this year. This quarter. Not later. That's when I rationalized. I'd have some big carpet-cleaning jobs coming up, and it would all work out.”

For a long time it did: Minkow had quickly moved on from Rick's Liquor Store to obtaining bank loans on spurious grounds; by the time ZZZZ Best had moved into insurance restoration, he had been operating a massive, precarious pyramid scheme, taking in millions and paying off his early investors with money from later ones. It looked like a house of cards, but Minkow had a cure: the public offering had been part of the plan, a surge of income that would allow him to pay off his investors, and then, as a player on Wall Street, build a legitimate business.

As in the recent corporate scandals, it was not the accountants and the auditors who toppled Minkow's pyramid, although in his case they seem more criminally gullible than conspiring. There were thousands of documents to prove that ZZZZ Best's business was legitimate - they were all faked, of course - but when a team of accountants, undertaking routine due diligence, finally asked to see a restoration project in action, Minkow fooled them with an act that this time made his life truly seem like Hollywood. At the last minute, he rented a half-finished building in San Diego, stationed ZZZZ Best staff to stand around with rolls of carpet nearby, and presented it to the accountants as a typical example of the company in action.

They scared him three months later by asking to see the finished project. He pulled it off again this time by re-renting the still unfinished building and, astonishingly, renovating it from scratch in 20 days [at a cost of $2 million].

Going public had not quite proved the panacea he had hoped, but by now he was within 48 hours of another cure: the acquisition of KeyServe, a rival firm, using a $40 million outside investment masterminded by the junk-bond king Michael Milken.

But then there was the Mafia. Minkow had bumped into a Mafioso on a carpet-cleaning job months previously, and by this point one of his biggest institutional investors was the Genovese crime family of New York. It was investigators chasing the Mob who finally caught up with the chief executive of ZZZZ Best. Then a newspaper excavated an old tale of credit-card fraud - one of Minkow's earlier fundraising plans - and then he got the phone call asking him to demonstrate that he really had undertaken a renovation in Dallas. This time the investigators were on the lookout for fraud, and Minkow, exhausted, did not try to fool them.

“Things go from order to disorder,” Minkow explains today, slipping into seminar mode. “This is one of the laws of what I call fraudodynamics. Let's say Nick Leeson got the one good trading day he needed to cure the fraud. Well, he's reinforced subconsciously the idea that he can do it - faced with pressure, he'll do it again. Do you think Nick Leeson's first trade was a billion? Of course not. And if I could have survived, I would have been able to sell my restricted stock, unload a million shares, get close to $20m in cash, pay off the Ponzi scheme and go forward.”

These days he visits executives while wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, telling them: “Look. I know you think you can be one good trading day away. But if you lie, you're going to be wearing this jumpsuit for eight Super Bowls.”

There is one further lesson from the ZZZZ Best story that Kenneth Lay and Bernie Ebbers might like to consider: you can say sorry, even pay back the people you robbed, and the sky, surprisingly enough, does not fall in. Minkow has been paying back his victims - mostly institutional investors - at a rate of around 95 cents to the dollar ever since he got out of jail, first under the terms of his probation and now, he says, because his religion requires him to. One major creditor has received $100,000 so far; Minkow says he pays between $750 and $2,000 a month into restitution funds. At a recent hearing connected to his probation, the judge who first sentenced him praised the fact that he was “on a straight and narrow path” and thanked him for his annual Christmas card.

“I do some prison visiting, and everybody there tells me: you're an idiot, you're a moron, you served the time, so why pay and get hit twice?” Minkow says. “But God would have you pay back the money even if you did the time. Unfortunately. That's what I hate about my faith. I had to get this faith where there's no way out. I'd love to tell them to take a flying leap.” He sighs. “But I can't.”

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U.S. News and World Report, May 10, 2004, page EE14, by Randy Dotinga:

When former federal prosecutor James Asperger first laid eyes on Barry Minkow in a California courtroom in 1988, he saw all the traits of a financial kingpin in the musclebound “whiz kid” of Wall Street. “He was cocky; he was charismatic; he was arrogant,” Asperger recalls. “His talents and charisma were so strong that he could have succeeded in a legitimate enterprise.”

But he didn't. Minkow was a white-collar crook extraordinaire, a greedy college-age swindler with an eye for the ladies and the loot. Now, 16 years and one prison term after his conviction on fraud charges, Minkow spends his days telling businesses how to watch out for the likes of him -- the old, lawbreaking him, that is. In presentations before everyone from FBI agents to corporate CEOs, Minkow confides the secrets of hiding debt and faking revenue. Follow the money, he says, and, perhaps even more important, follow the postman. “When we go on a job, the first question I ask is who gets the mail. They think I'm crazy,” Minkow says. “I know that to hide debt we had hidden bank accounts nobody knew about.

His company also provides consulting and has exposed an estimated $1 billion in fraud. “I had to do eight Super Bowls in prison,” says Minkow, 38, who lectures in an orange prison jumpsuit. “When you've done that kind of time, you get credibility.”

Minkow began his career with a carpet-cleaning business in his family's Los Angeles garage, which he expanded into a home restoration empire. “Barry represented the perfect Republican dream - a 16-year-old kid starts his own business in the valley while he's still in high school and builds it up into a multimillion-dollar organization,” says journalist Joe Domanick, who wrote a book about Minkow. But Minkow had built his ZZZZBest by defrauding investors. By 1988 he went on trial, at the age of 21. A judge ordered him to pay restitution and handed down a 25-year sentence.

Minkow served nearly eight years and, armed with two master's degrees in religion, now serves as pastor of Community Bible Church, a nondenominational evangelical Christian congregation in San Diego. “Everybody thought I'd he one of those born-again-until-you're-out-again people,” he says, but his faith persisted.

Married to a former makeup artist, he lives modestly in a beach town and just traveled to Guatemala to adopt 1-year-old identical twin boys. His conviction, however, will always follow him. While he's been released from parole, Minkow is still making payments to a bank. And he discloses his past on his church's Web site and from the pulpit. “When I getup there, I'm worse than anybody in my congregation,” he says. “I always let them know that.”

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From Barry's church website at http://www.cbcsandiego.com/Pastors/barry.html:

At the age of 16, Barry Minkow started a carpet cleaning company in the family garage. By age 20, he had a 240 million-dollar company and was referred to as the “whiz-kid” of Wall Street. After milking highly educated investors out of millions of dollars, Barry's scam came to a sudden halt when he was arrested in 1987 at the age of 23 and sentenced to 25 years in the federal prison. Against all odds, and with a 26 million-dollar court awarded restitution nailed over his head, Barry decided it was time to make a change.

After accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and receiving God's unmeasurable forgiveness, Barry headed down a new path. It was a path of restitution and comeback. While in prison, Barry accepted the role of heading up the prison's religious services. He spoke to his fellow inmates every Sunday and shared the gospel of grace and mercy that God offers to anyone who will receive it.

During his time in prison, Barry felt the calling of God in his life. With a call to the ministry and an unquenchable fire burning in his heart, he headed his life full speed ahead in that direction. After serving 8 years of his sentence with an unblemished record and with the recommendation of the sentencing judge, Barry was released into society. In the judge's own words, “Barry can do more for his victims out of prison than he can in prison.”

While in prison Barry earned a B.A. and a Masters of Arts degree in Church Ministries (with an emphasis on Theology and Apologetics) from Liberty University. In 1996, he earned yet another degree, a Masters of Divinity, also from Liberty. After his early release from prison, he was called to work as Director of the Bible Institute and Pastor of Evangelism at the Church at Rocky Peak. In March 1997, Barry was called to become the Senior Pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego, California. Since that time the church has more than doubled its attendance and a tremendous outreach has begun.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #19677]

Sermon in Spiritual Recovery series Luke 19:1-10

WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH

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Step #8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became

willing to make amends to them all.

Step #9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible,

except when to do so would injure them or others.

I. Climbing trees can be expensive.

II. The ancient practice of penance.

A. Old Testament principle of restitution. Leviticus 6:5

B. Later Christians adopted this concept.

C. Penance became formalized and stagnant.

D. Some think we should bring penance back.

III. Concrete amends has a place.

A. Recovery movement recognizes its power.

B. Bob Smith and the roots of amends.

C. Properly understood, making amends is a powerful spiritual tool.

IV. Amending torn relationships.

A. We need amends in the justice system.

B. We need amends in our own relationships.

V. Not penance, but penitence.

A. Can we pay for our sins?

B. Only Jesus Christ can pay the price of our sins.

C. Our repentance must be inward and outward.

Michael Graham, an executive from The First National Bank of Keystone, West Virginia, pleaded guilty to embezzlement and money laundering that led to the bank's failure. He has now been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $515 million in restitution -- at the rate of $300 per month. At that rate, and assuming no interest accrues, it will take him more than 143,000 years to pay off the debt.

William P. Barker tells of a machinist at Ford Motor Company in Detroit who became a Christian. He responded to the invitation and was baptized. As the Holy Spirit began renewing this man he became convicted of his need to make restitution for some parts and tools he had stolen from the company prior to becoming a Christian. So the next morning he brought all the tools and parts back to his employer. He explained how he had just been baptized and asked for his foreman’s forgiveness.

This was such an amazing turn of events that Mr. Ford, who was visiting a plant in Europe at the time, was cabled with the details of the matter and asked his response. Mr. Ford immediately returned a cable with his decision: “Dam up the Detroit River, and baptize the entire city.”

Sermon in Exodus series, #14. Exodus 22:1,22-30

WHAT'S MINE IS MINE

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I. Stuff matters to us.

A. Theft hits harder than murder.

B. There are lots of ways to break the eighth commandment.

II. Highlights of the Jewish view of property rights.

A. Crime shouldn't pay.

B. Even thieves have some rights.

C. When in doubt, arbitrate. 22:8

III. Those without property need special protection.

A. Don't mistreat the powerless.

B. Loans have spiritual obligations.

IV. Don't rip off God.

A. Don't steal from his honor.

B. Don't hold back his offerings. 22:29

V. Does God favor a particular view of property?

A. This was a hot topic indeed in the last century.

B. The Bible's perspective.

Most teenagers understand they need their parents for money, shelter and sustenance. Too many teens do not understand they also need guidance, discipline and correction. It seems there are also some parents who are utterly clueless concerning the latter issues.

A former NFL player is trying to impart a lesson about responsibility and forgiveness to a group of young people in Stephenville, N.Y. But it seems the parents of the teens are obstructing the valuable life lesson.

The second home of Brian Holloway, a three-time Pro Bowl player who starred with the New England Patriots from 1981-86, was broken into by teens over the Labor Day weekend and approximately 300 teens invaded for a wild party that included alcohol and drugs.

If the breaking and entering were not enough, the teens trashed Holloway’s home, causing $20,000 in damage. They broke furniture, put holes through walls, spray painted graffiti throughout the house, urinated on carpets and stole several items.

Holloway was alerted to the situation by his son who became aware of the destructive situation via tweets being sent by teens at the party. “I’m looking at these tweets,” Holloway told CNN, “and they’re saying, ‘I’m partying with the NFL.’ ‘I’ve never seen so much alcohol in my life.’” Holloway contacted police, but the damage had been done.

What is even more shocking than the behavior was the attitude the kids displayed in the midst of the melee. Judging by the tweets, they seemed to take pride in the drinking, drugging and destruction.

“I blew past furious to what’s important,” Holloway told CNN. “How do we save these 300 lives that thought this was a good idea?” The Christian, who is now a motivational speaker, began a campaign to hold the teens responsible for the damage.

Holloway also indicated he wanted to address the problem of teenagers using alcohol and drugs. “So, I used the same technology they did,” he told CNN. He compiled a list of names gleaned from the tweets and created a website called www.helpmesave300.com.

On the site, Holloway has posted many of the tweets along with photos the teens at the party posted on Twitter. Law enforcement is using the same information to identify those at the party. Most, if not all, of the 300 will be identified, CNN said.

Holloway took an additional step. He invited the teens who destroyed his home to take responsibility by coming to his home to help clean up and repair the damage. The clear implication was that the consequences could be mitigated if the kids would take responsibility for their actions.

Holloway posted the following on the website:

“I want to thank the parents and community leaders that have taken a stand for these children’s futures; everyone deserves a chance to turn their life around.

“I’ve got some ideas:

“1. Could it be possible to turn this moment into a movement? Where the 300 students, with a new commitment to a bigger future actually became ambassadors to reach 3000 or maybe 30,000 other students? That would save a lot of lives.

“2. Would it be possible to have a group of parents and community members join with these students and the DARE program and MADD program to send another urgent message about the dangers of drinking, drugs, crime and violence? That would probably save lives.

“3. Suppose these students came together and created a voice of accountability and reconciliation that spread across the country with all the power and speed of social media? It’s happened before. That would definitely save lives.

“4. Suppose it was possible for the parents and students involved to determine the best consequences for what did occur? That could save the lives of their children and more. Like, why do I need to press charges? They can handle this, right? Or am I totally off my rocker, or totally soft on what did happen?”

Holloway’s website message indicates that he understands that teens make mistakes. He also would like to be redemptive, not involve law enforcement and allow parents to mete out their own corrective measures.

How was Holloway’s gracious offer received? Only one teen who attended the raucous free-for-all at his house showed up to help with clean-up and repairs. Several parents are upset with Holloway and have threatened to sue him for posting their teen’s tweets and pictures on his website.

“Parents are upset with me when their child was in my house ... taking drugs, using roofies and drinking,” Holloway told CNN. “And they’re going to be upset with me?”

It is a shame that Holloway’s redemptive offer has been rejected. It seems the irresponsible teens who drank, drugged and destroyed have parents that are just as irresponsible as their children. The parents’ responses might even indicate why their children are the way they are.

The Bible makes it clear that parents are to discipline children and correct them when they misbehave. Whether this involves corporal punishment is up to the parents. Neglect correction and a child will become selfish, self-centered and spoiled.

“Discipline your son,” Proverbs 29:17 states, “and he will give you comfort; he will also give you delight.” Earlier in the same passage the Bible says, “A rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a youth left to himself is a disgrace to his mother” (Proverbs 29:15).

The teens who destroyed a man’s home and their parents were offered mercy. Brian Holloway only wanted them to take responsibility and perform restitution by helping repair what they’d damaged.

The teens’ parents rejected his gracious offer and even threatened to sue him. It seems Holloway cast his pearl of mercy before swine and they trampled it. They will now have to deal with the justice of law enforcement and reap what they have sown.

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Version edited by David Holwick for sermon:

Brian Holloway is a three-time Pro Bowl player who starred with the New England Patriots in the 1980s. Over the Labor Day weekend in 2013 his second house in New York state was broken into by over 300 teenagers.

If the breaking and entering were not enough, the teens trashed Holloway’s home, causing $20,000 in damage. They broke furniture, put holes through walls, spray-painted graffiti throughout the house, urinated on carpets and stole several items.

Holloway was alerted to the situation by his son who became aware of the destructive situation via tweets being sent by teens at the party. Holloway told CNN, “I’m looking at these tweets, and they’re saying, ‘I’m partying with the NFL.’ ‘I’ve never seen so much alcohol in my life.’” Holloway contacted police, but the damage had been done.

Holloway decided to make it a little more personal. He collected the tweets and photos the kids sent to each other and he put the images online. The police have already come up with 200 names.

Holloway is a Christian, and he wants to bring some good out of the mess. He invited the teens who destroyed his home to take responsibility by coming to his home to help clean up. A single kid showed up.

Several parents are upset with Holloway and have threatened to sue him, and even beat him up, for posting their teen’s tweets and pictures on his website. It may hurt their college chances. Aren’t they upset their kids are drinking until they are in a stupor and trashing someone else’s home?

Joe Avila took a drive up a California highway -- drunk -- and killed a 17-year-old cheerleader.

He went to prison for manslaughter.

His experience with the law turned out to be religious -- like many other inmates, Avila found Jesus in jail, asked God for forgiveness and came to terms with the horrific consequences of his actions.

But now that he is out, Avila is pushing a program that aspires to do more than encourage prisoners to find God. He wants criminal offenders to make amends to their victims -- a concept, he says, that is both deeply religious and missing in the criminal justice system.

The idea is part of a growing focus nationwide on the role of forgiveness in communities -- in the justice system as well as in physical and mental health.

Avila, regional director of the national Prison Fellowship ministry group, was in Las Vegas from California last week to support an effort to establish a faith-based Victim Offenders Reconciliation Program.

The program is sponsored by the national Southern Baptist Convention as part of a yearlong evangelical focus on Las Vegas. The denomination has funneled more than $1 million into Southern Nevada this year, $35,000 of which will be spent on establishing this program.

The program seeks to unite offenders and victims for a meeting in which victims express their feelings and, ideally, offenders arrange to make amends in some way that is meaningful to the victims. The result, local organizer the Rev. Tommy Starkes of Tropicana Christian Fellowship says, is "the healing relationship of forgiveness."

A similar, but secular, reconciliation program already exists in the Juvenile Court system. Administered by the Neighbhorhood Justice Center, that program focuses on first-time, misdemeanor crimes: vandalism, fistfights, shoplifting -- and is supported by the courts as an alternative to sentencing. Kids clean offices or mow yards to pay for their misbehavior.

But the evangelical group, which met with prison activists Thursday night at Starkes' church, wants to expand the program to adults after they serve time -- and draw attention to the link between the traditional religious concept of forgiveness and the administration of justice.

"Most religions emphasize a balance between forgiveness and punishment," Starkes, a Southern Baptist, said. "Certainly Christianity emphasizes forgiveness. And yet a long time ago, America adopted a justice system that is more punitive than redemptive. The part about forgiveness -- the most healing part -- is missing.

"And our system leaves the victim out of the resolution. They punish the offender, but the victim often feels there is no closure. For example, with the (Timothy) McVeigh execution, you saw lots of victims' families saying they still didn't feel closure.

"Our program -- which is voluntary -- is designed to connect the offender who is about to be released from prison with the victim to say, 'I'm sorry' and 'What can I do to make up for my actions?'"

For many faiths, making amends directly to the victim is a key part of recovering from wrongdoing. In Judaism, for example, the principle of "teshuva" requires a wrongdoer to acknowledge his transgression, make a public confession and express remorse, resolve never to do it again, compensate the victim with acts of charity and ask the victim for forgiveness.

RESEARCH

If forgiveness is a matter of faith, it is also becoming a matter of science.

Research on the effects of forgiveness -- psychologically, physically, sociologically and economically -- is on the rise.

To wit, the international Campaign for Forgiveness Research started in Washington in 1997 and has committed $5 million to research projects on "the power of forgiveness and reconciliation."

About 30 different projects at universities around the world are being funded, and 30 others have been tagged for future funding. Among them: "Does Forgiveness Benefit Physical and Mental Health?" at Purdue University, and "Does Forgiveness Enhance Brain Activation Associated With Empathy in Victims of Assault?" at the University of Manchester, England.

The campaign is a nonprofit organization endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former President Jimmy Carter.

"The new wave of research we've begun has the potential to reveal the profound value of forgiveness in our lives -- information that could reduce human misery and enhance the quality of life worldwide," campaign Director Everett Washington said.

Yolanda Morales has seen the seeds of forgiveness planted in Las Vegas.

As a volunteer mediator for the Clark County Neighborhood Justice Center, Morales has met with juvenile offenders and their victims, and seen emotional changes take root from some of the pettiest of crimes.

"I had one case where these two seventh-grade girls went to a mall and shoplifted some hair accessories," she said. Rather than prosecute, the owners opted to use the victim-offender program.

"What was really very positive is the mall security people were involved in the mediation, and the girls were able to see the impact on those people. The security people were also very empathetic with the girls, and it enhanced the idea that young people are accountable to the community," Morales said.

"Another time, I had two 11-year-old boys involved in an incident. One had been bullying and teasing and humiliating the other in the park, and finally, the other one beat him up," Morales said.

"It was kind of scary to see that kind of violence from such little boys. But what was so positive about our mediation was that the parent of the bully realized she needed to get help for her son because he was so violent. And the boys were able to see their similarities.

"This can work on a broader scale."

Mike Hull, another volunteer mediator in the juvenile victim-offender program, said the court system discourages offenders from taking responsibility for their actions.

"The first thing the lawyer tells them is, 'Don't admit guilt,' " Hull, a Henderson police officer, said. "Through this program, the offenders and the victims learn that the other one is a person, too. If they just go to prison, they may never learn how much harm they have done."

EFFECTS

Face-to-face reconciliation also can affect recidivism rates, according to Steve Goldsmith, director of the Los Angeles County Victim Offender Restitution Program, a similar program.

"We've been able to show a 50 percent reduction in recidivism among those offenders who participated in a meeting with their victim," Goldsmith said. "The idea is to create empathy in the offender."

The Los Angeles program began in 1992 and was instigated by a juvenile judge. Today, it works in collaboration with religious groups, but is administered by a panel of civic officials -- including the sheriff and public defender.

Barbara Strahl, senior mediation specialist at the Clark County Neighborhood Justice Center, said the most difficult part of administering the juvenile reconciliation program has been getting the necessary stakeholders on board and organized. Her program mediates about 60 cases per year -- with both staff and volunteer mediators that bring the victim and offender together.

"Vegas is a little behind, there are communities that use it much more extensively," Strahl said. "But we're getting there."

Starkes, Hull and Avila received training from the Fresno Pacific University Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies -- a Christian university that helped establish more than 50 such programs worldwide.

The center's website explains about the religious roots of the justice program:

"Humanistic motivations do not have the driving force or staying power of religious convictions. Neither do humanistic motivations demand strict adherence to principles, which are seen as right from an absolute perspective. A humanist does not necessarily see eternal principles at work in restorative justice ... A person working out of religious motivation ... understand God's call to shalom, to wholeness, as a timeless call."

Starkes and the coalition of religious leaders from churches valleywide plan to begin their program this summer.

In Avila's case, the victim's parents have not agreed to meet with him. But in a coincidence he attributes to God's will, his wife happened to meet and become friends with a woman years after the accident who, it turns out, is a friend of the victim's family.

Avila met with her and asked for her forgiveness. The woman, long angry at Avila, cried. She told him about the girl he killed -- a bright, happy teenager.

And then she forgave him.

"It is a journey," Avila says. "Right now, the restitution I am making is in making a life transformation. I have changed my ways, and I am trying to help others. But I do have hope that I will someday meet with her (the victim's) parents.

"These are never easy matters."

*

William P. Barker tells of a machinist at Ford Motor Company in Detroit who became a Christian. He responded to the invitation and was baptized. As the Holy Spirit began renewing this man he became convicted of his need to make restitution for some parts and tools he had stolen from the company prior to becoming a Christian. So the next morning he brought all the tools and parts back to his employer. He explained how he had just been baptized and asked for his foreman’s forgiveness.

This was such an amazing turn of events that Mr. Ford, who was visiting a plant in Europe at the time, was cabled with the details of the matter and asked his response. Mr. Ford immediately returned a cable with his decision: “Dam up the Detroit River, and baptize the entire city.”