KevinChilds.com

Casey Anthony has been found not guilty of all but the least of the charges against her. Despite what her own father said, despite not uttering a word about little Caylee’s strange disappearance FOR 31 DAYS, despite googling chloroform, despite what was in her trunk, despite lying to people looking for HER child, despite the partying, despite virtually every soul who watched the trial declaring her obviously guilty, … the jury found otherwise.

We’re in for a flood of second-guessing, finger-pointing, pontificating, condemnations, and told-you-so’s. But here are a handful of things I think are worth noting:

1. Our justice system might be the best in the world, but it shows you the limits of this world.  In the words of Geraldo Rivera today: “We all know she was guilty, but knowing isn’t proving.”  The absolute best this world has to offer is always a flawed and fragile thing.
2. Did you notice that, for Casey, there was no embrace from her parents? She escaped the death penalty, and the only people available to celebrate with her were officers of the court.  The whole dysfunctional family is now destroyed.  Sin is like that. One act of wickedness breeds the next, and the next, and the next.
3. Years ago, when abortion was legalized, there were people who warned of a slippery slope.  Only Heaven knows the full cost of declaring children legally disposable.  Nobody can ever convince me that the current epidemic of abuse and violence toward children has no connection to the legal “right” to kill them in utero. There is no moral difference between the decaying body of this precious girl and the destroyed remains of aborted babies in the dumpster behind a “family planning clinic.”
4. Only those who believe there is a God can logically be outraged by this. To believe that this world is all there is, that there is only meaningless, purposeless evolution is to forfeit the right to cry foul.  Other mammals destroy their young, right?  If we are merely animals at the top of the food chain, then there is no “right” or “wrong.”  Only the law of the jungle. But that thing in us that screams out today, that disturbed moral compass, that demand that wrongs get righted … it had to come from somewhere. Where?
5. We should be careful not to hold Casey Anthony up as the example of how sinful we’re NOT.  ”I might get high too much, but I’m not a sinner like THAT woman. I might not go to church, might not treat my wife right, might cheat people at my business, might speak lying as my primary language, BUT I’m not sinful like THAT woman.”  Don’t go there.
6. Here’s a sobering thought: When I was as guilty as guilty could be, God declared me not guilty. He found Jesus guilty of my sin. He punished Jesus as if Jesus had committed all of my sin. And God didn’t just let me walk free. He embraced me, and credited the righteousness of Christ to me, and washed me clean, and changed me, and promised me that I could live forever with Him in the glory of Heaven.

I believe Casey Anthony was guilty, and deserved something different that what she got.  I believe the same could be said of me.