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Show and poured out my story. He was always loving, hugging me to him. He was always fair. Why had God let such a kind person be hurt? Why not someone with murder in his heart? I wondered if Isaac had changed, suddenly grown authoritatarian now that he had commited to the group. But I couldn't imagine that. Perhaps he had been victimized, the scape-goat of rigid control by the council members. The old ways and narrow viev»s d±d not woriE£in!0avrap,Ia,xy-cn!anging world. Even I could not adjust quickly enough to the shifting of mores and values around me. Almost everyone I knew was trying something new and dangerous, sacrificing the commandments learned in childhood to ISMMT experience, treading down the same wide path I had gone. I thought of Brian. If someone had tried to cut his hair without permission, he would probably knock them for a loop, if not stab them. It was understandable; long hair A Represented free agency to the new generation in a world of rapidly-diminishing freedoms. The whole situation was proof of my belief that the world cannot be held at bay, that evil cannot be contained simply by walling up^against it, as some of our people had done, erecting a massive ten-foot concrete wall around their five acres of land so that it looked something like a ghetto. "Resist not evil," Jesus had said. Perhaps if they hadn't resisted the boy/s desire to grow his hair, he would have cut it on his own. Perhaps if I said nothing to Brian about his late hours he would decide to stay home. Besides, Christ had long hair and he had roamed wherever the Spirit guided Him. I could not blame Isaac or the group for the stabbing. Nor could I feel that the boy was fully to blame. People |