Will,

Malcolm X...wonderful thank you.

Rev. Thandeka makes a few missteps in his otherwise excellent analysis.

How old was the future minister 'Dan' when his moral compass so badly skewed awry?

18 or 19, maybe 20? Not yet legally an adult in most States in the US...unless drafted, then one is adult enough to kill.

That's a very important contextualized piece...'Dan, would you do that now?' What have you done since you were not yet a minister of the Lord?'

Sometimes it doesn't matter so much as to how you got into that hole but how you got out.

Speaking of context, what were the late 1950's like?

Have those times changed now that it's the 21st century and some? Has progress been made and have you Dan, and our society, not grown since then?

I'd hazard that Dan was not interested in a lecture or a need for further 'confession'. It was a sin he carried for 40 years and finally he was able to admit his mistake.

To me that in itself speaks volumes about the effects of latent Calvinism or Presbyterianism or even Puritanism, and its damaging legacy to people: one must be perfect...and if male...not cry.

And man, the bane of perfectionism is still so with us, further inculcated by digital media and 'movements', so much so that teenagers can be publically piliored, branded or more politely 'labelled', for something they texted when 15.

God, pun intentional, have we learned nothing from the Reign of Terror? Is any criticism of any current movement immediately a hate crime or phobic?

IOW, not every single sin a person commits means they are or were 'broken', perhaps young, immature or ignorant or as Rev. Thandeka opines, caught up in the fear of rejection.

Most of us are human and regardless of colour, imperfect. To turn anyone into a Jacob Marley makes for a darkened shame-based society, with no possibility of ascending into the light of atonement.

After all, Dan was the one to prompt his fraternity to pledge a black student in the first place...was that not a result of naivety and not nascent racism?

Reminds me of a line from The Green Mile when the Chief is electrocuted and when Percy slaps his face, Brutus Howell's words come through loud, clear and clean:

"He's paid what he's owed; he's square with the house again, so keep your hands to yourself."

We have to be able to allow people to make mistakes, come clean 'pay what is owed' and in the process of doing so, not risk their jobs, their family and friends, or risk being branded with some 'Scarlet Letter', living beyond the pale, howling out in pain in the wilderness of perpetual banishment.

To do otherwise is to allow the 'Woke Perfecti' to remain busy condemning or 'outing' sinners, while with their pure unstained hands, continue to knit more nooses.

Thanks again for the perspicacity as well as the stimulus of your words. Learned a bit more...and did not know about brocialist.