But Susan’s parents, understandably, didn’t feel that this was sufficient punishment. They sued him in civil court for emotional distress, for $1,500,000.

Then quite unexpectedly, after meeting Kevin, Susan’s parents offered to settle out of court. The terms of the ruling included and amount of $936, and a bizarre condition:

The penalty seemed like he had been let off easy (again), but soon the burden of guilt proved too much for Kevin to bear. He tried to present the Herzogs with two boxes of pre-written checks, dated each week through 2001, a year longer than required. The couple refused to accept them. 

After seven Sisyphean years of the weekly purgatorial ritual, Kevin began to miss a few payments. The Herzogs promptly dragged him back into court. Giving an account before Judge Jack Stevens, a teary Tunell admitted that the agonizing guilt he felt each time he filled in Susan’s name had become unbearable.

You get to a point where you kind of snap—and you say, it hurts too much… I used to, like, lie in bed, and if I heard … noises, I used to think Susan was going to come to visit me.”

He was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Suzan’s dad, Lou said:

Susan’s death is there every waking moment. But every time we don’t get a check, there’s only one thing that comes to our mind: He doesn’t remember.”

The Herzogs insist that their insistence is not vindictive retribution. Suzan’s mother, Patty explained,

We do want him to remember, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want him to accept it and get on with his life.”

Interesting. That’s reasoning that Dostoyevsky could have used for a provocative sequel to Crime and Punishment.

Naturally, I feel deeply for the grief of the parents who mourn the loss of their precious daughter. I can’t imagine their pain. But there is a part of me that shudders to think of what it must have been like for Kevin to relive the unshakeable regret so frequently.

I can’t imagine what my own life would be like if my sins were held before me on such an incessant and recurring basis. The tunnel vision of focus on sin with no relief of basking in mercy, would leave me a basket case.

What a blessing it is to know that, though there are consequences in this life for our sins, mistakes, and weaknesses, there is the promise of an afterlife with no remembrance of our sin to haunt us.

Consider these four glorious passages, which I trust will bless you this week, and help you be forgiving to others.

Rom 8:¹  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

1John 1:⁹  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Col 2:¹³  And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,¹⁴  by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Ps 32:¹  Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. ²  Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

May we cultivate tunnel vision, fixating on the grace we need, focussing on the cross of Calvary.

Update: Mr Kevin Tunell contacted me after reading this post. He graciously filled in some of the details for me, which I’d like to add here.

 The agreement of the settlement was a) the full cash value of his parents insurance policy (a sizeable amount of money), b) the agreement that he would send them the $1 check for 18 years and c) a letter to the Herzog’s telling them that he had purchased the alcohol the night of the accident (Mrs. Herzog told him this was to take back to the store where he purchased the alcohol, to show them they were selling to minors. However, it was used in court against him.)

I also found out that Kevin has spent countless hours telling his story to teenagers in an effort to help prevent others from making the same choices he did. He supports the use of his story to help make a difference in society, especially to educate those about the dangers of drunk driving.

I’m grateful for Mr Tunell’s help in providing these details. 

By the time the case popped out of the Supreme Court, the law was on the side of executing unborn people, a monstrous legality that began to rapidly and incessantly devour millions of unborn babies. Legally. The rest, as they say, is history. And a bloody one at that.

But in 1994, Norma McCorvey flipped sides. She made the acquaintance of pastor Flip (yes, Flip) Benham who ran a pro-life outfit based adjacent to the pro-choice (for death) reproductive health clinic (read: infant abattoir) where McCorvey was working. On her outdoor smoke breaks she would engage in heated banter with the pro-lifer next door. She eventually began to see him as a caring man, and even agreed to visit his church. Within a year she publically declared that she had converted to Christianity, and was baptized in a backyard pool on national television.

McCorvey was a changed woman. She renounced her former views on abortion and began to live out what she said.

In 1998, she testified to Congress:

It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the ‘right’ to abortion out of legal thin air. But [my attorneys] never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me fifteen, twenty years later and say, ‘Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn’t have been possible.’ [They] never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control…women already wearing maternity clothes.”

In 2005 McCorvey petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn their 1973 ruling, and she has endorsed politicians based on their pro-life voting record.

The dramatic 180 turn of attitudes and behavior provides an apt illustration of the nature of repentance. Biblical repentance is a change of mind and the necessary difference in behavior that accompanies it.

The prodigal son also had an about turn. He confessed his sin, expressed contrition, committed to action, and displayed action consistent with his repentance. So is this a work of man, or of God?

The Bible teaches that repentance is a gift of God, and no man can boast in it as a good work of his own.

Acts 11: ¹⁸ When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

2 Tim 2: ²⁴ And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,  ²⁵  correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,  ²⁶  and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

Eph 2: ⁸  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  ⁹  not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

This gift of repentance starts with a Spirit-initiated moment of conviction (John 16:7-8). Think of the prodigal son trapped in a pigsty of sin and shame. And then he has an epiphany that led to repentance. Jesus described it this way: “When he came to his senses…”

Paul’s murderous bent was stopped and reversed in a moment of blinding clarity too. As was ever other conversion in history. However subtle it may seem, there is a moment when the gospel light breaks through into the darkened mind of a sinner. And everything changes.

Charles Spurgeon avers,

There is no doubt that multitudes of sinners have been led to repentance in this way and, in some respects, this must be the universal way by which the Spirit of God conducts men to the goal of true penitence. As long as they live carelessly and thoughtlessly, they go on in their evil ways, but if they are stopped in their mad career, if they are made to consider, if they begin to think over their sin—if God, the Holy Spirit, convinces them of the guilt of it—He uses that thought and conviction to lead them to trust in Jesus Christ. The remembrance of sin committed is the Holy Spirit’s frequent, if not constant method of bringing men to weep over their wrong-doing and to turn from it.

For Ms. Jane Roe this happened sitting in the office of a pro-life group, Operation Rescue, staring at a poster showing fetal development. She would say of that moment:

The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath.

I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth — that’s a baby! I felt crushed under the truth of this realization.

I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion — at any point — was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.

There is hope for the pro-death doctors and lobbyists and misinformed women (who are at times as much a victim of Satan’s lies as their babies are of his knives). But that hope must start with the Holy Spirit’s intervention and the ensuing moment of clarity, which only God can grant.

This article be a pro-choice reporter who changed his view after covering the Gosnell trial, is worth the read.

Born in China, in 1893, Zijian developed a love for various Chinese martial arts. He was a late bloomer in the world of competitive fighting, and won his first significant gold medal in 1911 at the age of 28. His notoriety grew rapidly when he killed a well-known Japanese boxer with the palm of his hand, in a single blow.

On January 2, 2009 Lu Zijian inherited the unique but ominously transitory title of Oldest Person in the World, at 116 years old. The spritely supercentenarian was still immersed in the world of martial arts, actively participating in competitions and widely sought-after as an instructor. Zijian eventually died on February 20, 2012, after 118 years, 128 days of life (once you pass 110, every day is a birthday).

Accounts like this inspire me greatly to have a long-term perspective of my life. If Zijian knew how long he would live, retirement planning in his sixties would be considered a midlife crisis! When most people’s vitality is winding down rapidly in their eighties, this fighting fit octogenarian was just getting warmed up.

I find that in the church, some elderly saints have irrepressible energy and contagious joie de vivre, while others have a bleak outlook on the impending autumn of their lives.

Certainly life’s disappointments and trials take their toll on people differently. And the Scriptures present an unvarnished realism about the physical troubles that accompany aging (Eccl 12:1-8). But the Bible is also full of admonitions to the elderly to be good stewards of their life experience and the wisdom that comes only with age. In stark contrast to the “planned obsolescence” of our society’s modern retirement mindset, God’s expectation of His elderly saints is they remain fruitful.

Ps 92:¹²  The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  ¹³  They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.  ¹⁴  They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green,  ¹⁵  to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Jay Adams writes of this passage,

Surely that description doesn’t sound like obsolescence. God’s attitude, as it normally does, conflicts sharply with that of the world. An older green tree, thriving and production fruit, is hardly one that you would uproot and replace with a younger one. It seems that God expects the righteous to lead a vital, useful life among his fellow believers no matter what his age.

Adams possesses a good-natured bluntness that is admirable in this context. He provides this simple response to the age-old cop-out You can’t teach old dogs new tricks: “Tell him he is not a dog!”

People who have lived a long time have that much more credibility when they proclaim the goodness and faithfulness of God. Consider the power of this statement coming from an aged David,

Ps 37:²⁵  I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.

There are at least two significant ways the elderly—and especially grandparents—can support younger families in their pursuit of God’s glory.

Wisdom Support without Being Overbearing 

The Bible is unabashed at extolling the virtue of age. The Scriptures recognize the school of hard knocks as a reputable place of learning.

Prov 16:31 Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.

Prov 20:29 The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.

God gives the gift of wisdom to the aged so that they can share it with the younger generations.

Titus 2:²  Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.  ³  Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,  ⁴  and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,  ⁵  to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

The assumption Paul has is that the younger people are lacking knowledge and experience that the older people have. So the older need to teach and train and set an example for the younger. This is how wisdom is passed down. This should be the preoccupation and occupation of the those in the church family who have been blessed with many years of life. As the Psalmist proclaims,

Psalm 71 :¹⁷  O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.  ¹⁸  So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.

The counsel one gives to younger people, especially in the context of teaching younger relatives (e.g. the proverbial sticky-wicket of a lady advising her daughter-in-law) can become an area of contention between the generations. The advice needs to be offered through the grid of the Genesis 2 reality that grandparents do not carry biblical authority per se. It is important that parents and in-laws respect God’s “leave and cleave” principle. The new husband and wife are a new and distinct family before God, with their own responsibilities and authority structure.

The young family is not merely another branch on a family tree, it is a new sapling that needs support to grow, but must be regarded as it’s own unit.

Financial Support without Enabling Overdependence

Really?

I saw a bumper-sticker on a boat trailer being hauled by a gray-haired man and his wife, that declared cheerfully, “I’m spending my children’s inheritance.” I found it funny, but I also felt sympathy for the man’s kids. The attitude that “This is my money that I have earned for my enjoyment” misses the biblical truth that all wealth is a gift from God, to be used for God’s purposes. One of the reasons God gives wealth is to enjoy it to His glory, but another reason is to meet the needs of those who have needs. And this is especially true of family (see 1 Tim 5:8). In God’s view, using your wealth to help your children become established in life is a virtue.

Prov 13:²²  A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.

It is just common sense that parents (generally speaking) would possess a financial advantage and stability that their fledgling young adults don’t yet have. When Paul assured the Corinthians—whom he considered to be his spiritual children—that he would not be a financial burden on them, he stated the truism that it is normal for parents bless their children financially:

2 Cor 12:¹⁴  Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

I’m not implying that it is healthy to provide ongoing support to enable a higher lifestyle. This can beget laziness and overdependence on parents. Rather than an indefinite stream of parental income, it is helpful for wise parents to provide once-off assistance with purchases that aid in establishing their children’s family for the long term. For example, paying for tuition fees for a young man who cannot afford the studies required to pursue a career that can support his future wife and children. Or to buy a house by giving a lump sum help (gift or loan) for a deposit. After all, “House and wealth are inherited from fathers…” (Prov 19:14).

What are some other ways grandparents can be a blessing to their kids and their kids’ kids?