Guilty with an Explanation

In a day when rules are being rewritten, guilt has come up with a bad rap. Many parents rush to emancipate their children from such troubling apprehensions–and the results are telling. This coming-of-age memoir traces the challenges of a fatherless boy growing up amidst the folly of his peers and the ever-present predators who cannot be wished away. Faced with the reality of evil, the theological concept of Original Sin looms large.

This book is an observation that trouble often springs from circumstances that look pretty benign. It's the prerequisite of every murder trial, that accidents happen from a confluence of events and decisions that seem innocuous but end badly.

We who live in the world are wounded by the same evil that sociologists explain away. Yet part of adulthood is the willingness to call things what they are. When Jesus cast out demons, he first asked their names, because naming something is to see it clearly. We must render verdicts. Sound judgment is a forgotten virtue, and failure to judge will leave us accountable to our children for the weeds that have grown in the course of our neglect, as evil that goes unchecked is sure to grow.