About Me

Jim Killebrew has 40 years of clinical psychological work for people with intellectual disabilities, and experience teaching, administration, consulting, writing with multiple publications. Dr. Killebrew has attended four Universities and received advanced degrees. Southern Illinois University; Ph.D., Educational Psychology; University of Illinois at Springfield, Counseling Education; M.A., Human Development Counseling; Northeastern Oklahoma State University, B.A., Psychology and Sociology. Dr. Killebrew attended Lincoln Christian Seminary (Now Lincoln Christian University). Writing contributions have been accepted and published in several journals: Hospital & Community Psychiatry, The Lookout, and Christian Standard (multiple articles). He may be reached at Killebrewjb@aol.com.

Welcome to my Opinion Pages

Thanks for stopping by and reading some of my thoughts. I hope you will find an enjoyable adventure here on my pages.



The articles are only my opinion and are never meant to hurt anyone nor to downgrade any other person's ideas or opinions.



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Friday, September 30, 2011

Forgiveness

On Friday 9/30/2011 I heard a news report on the radio that a 13 year old girl in Pakistan had misspelled the word "Mohammad"  on a paper.  The Teacher of the class lost it emotionally and almost had an emotional break-down.  The school made a big deal of the girl's spelling mistake and when word got out, over fifty religious Muslim leaders called for the girl's arrest and for her to be charged with blasphemy; which carries a sentence of death.  The incident caused the girl and her family to go into hiding for fear of their lives.
Perhaps it is just the consequence of a life-time of Western culture and socialization of living in a Democracy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that has established my thinking, but does this sound a bit too harsh a punishment for misspelling a word?  I know there is a vast difference between the theology of Islam and Christianity, just as there was a difference between Isaac and Ishmael.  The subsequent feud between those two brothers has likely created more hatred and bloodshed than any other feud in history.  All the same, if the peoples from those two brothers could examine themselves deeply enough to reach to the core of their basic humanity, I would hope that they would find some level of commonality.  If nothing else, I would hope that commonality would be forgiveness.
If the God of Abraham could find it within His heart to find a way to provide forgiveness to His crowning creation, I suspect that somewhere deep within the deoxyribonucleic acid shared by human nature there is a glimmer of hope for finding a shred of forgiveness for each other.  If this 13 year old girl could be the object of that micro step toward forgiveness from a tradition so deeply rooted in reactionary hatred, it might be the first step onto a path that would lead to healing for humanity.
I will pray for that balm of forgiveness and a glimmer of a new day.
Jim Killebrew

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