Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. filed a lawsuit against jail officials in Pueblo County, Colorado alleging among other things that they failed to take security precautions to prevent him from escaping. He said that, after his first escape, he had told then-sheriff how lax security was, but that no "improvements" had been made. In the second attempt, He seriously injured himself when he fell 40 feet while scaling a wall. I do not know about you but a forty foot fall sounds like a serious preventative measure. But this man, like so many, falls under the mistake of blaming other for their wrongdoing. This is exactly what James warns about in chapter one verses thirteen thru fifteen of his book, “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death." Whether it is our parents, authorities, or even God Himself that we blame for our sin, the responsibility lies in our own heart.
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
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