{"id":6178,"date":"2019-09-30T04:11:32","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/can-forgiveness-and-justice-go-together\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:11:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:11:32","slug":"can-forgiveness-and-justice-go-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/can-forgiveness-and-justice-go-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Forgiveness and Justice Go Together?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Les Snodgrass, pastor of The Door Christian Fellowship Church in Melbourne, Florida, said a man had attended church services before, but wasn\u2019t a regular.  Then, while Snodgrass was delivering a sermon, the man stood up and showed a gun, allegedly pointing it at Snodgrass\u2019s mother\u2019s head.  \u201cI tried to divert his attention away from my mother,\u201d Snodgrass said.  \u201cI kept calling out to him, \u2018Johnny, Johnny, what are you doing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he talked to the man, Snodgrass worked his way closer, then lunged.  \u201cI just pushed against the wall with all my might,\u201d he said.  \u201cI had him by the shoulders, and as soon as I did that, my son leapt from the platform into the air and pounced on him.  He punched him twice in the head.\u201d  Snodgrass\u2019s wife then held a stun gun to the man until police arrived.<\/p>\n<p>John Grace faces 21 charges, including robbery.  \u201cI gathered my family at the church, and we all held hands and prayed and forgave him on the spot,\u201d Snodgrass said.  \u201cBut he will face justice and should.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n<p>Editor Randy Cassingham adds the comment: \u201cForgiveness and justice: not mutually exclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>________<\/p>\n<p>1.  WKMG  Orlando<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Les Snodgrass, pastor of The Door Christian Fellowship Church in Melbourne, Florida, said a man had attended church services before, but wasn\u2019t a regular. Then, while Snodgrass was delivering a sermon, the man stood up and showed a gun, allegedly pointing it at Snodgrass\u2019s mother\u2019s head. \u201cI tried to divert his attention away from my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[550,527,1565,1226,691],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}