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Why you should give Michael Vick a second chance



Almost everyone has heard about the Atlanta Falcons NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s arrest, conviction, and imprisonment for federal dog fighting crimes.  Vick served 18 months in a federal prison and was released.  The NFL has stated that Vick will be able to return to football with conditions.   The media is speculating on which teams are interested and what Michael Vick will do next.

You might be asking yourself, “Why does all this matter?”  Well, for the most part, the public opinion on animal abusers is strong.  Naturally, people are mostly animal lovers.  Sometimes, I think we love animals more than people.   Clearly, abusing animals is wrong and setting up a dog fighting ring, making money off dog fighting, and treating dogs poorly is wrong.    Yet, Vick has received more negative press and more public out cry than Cleveland Browns receiver Donte Stallworth, who was  suspended by the NFL  for driving drunk and killing a pedestrian in Miami.  Or, singer Chris Brown, who beat/harmed girlfriend and singer Rihanna.

Here is the problem: People seem to be more upset at Vick than they should be at Stallworth or Brown.  Stallworth got drunk and killed someone with his car and only served a 30 day  sentence.  Now, I am not saying you should feel sorry for Vick.  Vick broke the law and hurt animals.  Clearly, there is an inequity here.   Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune echo these sentiments:

I could run down the long list of athletes behaving badly over the years — did I mention it was a long, long list? — and tell you case by case how muted the public reaction was compared with the Vick case. Domestic abuse. Sexual abuse. Murder. The outrage over a drunk Donte Stallworth killing a pedestrian in March was a whisper compared with the response to Vick’s actions.

Vick has paid his debt to society. He served time and lost two years of his football career, as he should have. He has declared bankruptcy. If a team believes that prison has rehabilitated him and that he’s still good enough to play, it should be able to sign him. Whether a team wants to put up with the abuse it will take for adding him to the roster is another issue altogether.

Have we lost our sense of forgiveness?   Can someone do something that is unforgivable?   My point is that in our culture we are quick to judge and extremely slow to forgive.  Our culture does not value forgiveness and that is a shame.   Do I think Vick should have a second chance because he is a celebrity?  No.  Do I think Vick should have a second chance because he deserves it?  No.

Christ forgave all sorts of sinners.  People who were adulterers, cheaters, liars, abusers, etc…  Our call as Christians is to forgive.  Why?  Because people screw up.  We all need a second chance (sometimes a third chance).  I am not saying we need to enable people by giving them more and more chances to repeat their behavior, but we have to begin to soften our harden hearts.  The Vick case showed that there is injustice in the world of celebrities.  The media loves to show celebrities when they get their “come-upins”, but never shows people who are forgiven.

We need to practice restorative justice. Restorative justice is the practice in which people serve their time and pay their debt, but are guided through a procession of restoration.  People who go through restorative justice learn why they hurt people, have to hear from the people they hurt, sometimes preform a good deed that is somehow connected to their crime, come to a point of realization of remorse, and ask for forgiveness.   An example of restorative justice was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

Michael Vick needs a second chance, but not because he has a status as a special person, but because he is a person, a human.  We humans are flawed, but we can correct those flaws when we get a second chance to right the wrongs we have done.

What you think? Should we forgive Mike Vick?

Categories: General
Reverend Alan Rudnick

20 Responses

  1. TruthMatters says:

    As a secular humanist, here is something we agree on. It makes the best sense for humanity to maintain it’s focus on the rights and needs of human beings. I don’t like to see anything suffer, but most lower life forms cannot suffer the way humans do.

    The animal rights group is a small, but rabidly vocal group which has among it’s ranks many journalists, and nothing makes the job of a news organization director’s job easier than a snared monster which they can flog. This unfortunately makes the mem of a hate group, whose largest component are those who turn to animals to get back at the humans who rejected them, very easy to propagate.

  2. Mitch says:

    I strongly disagree.

    First of all, the comparisons to Stallworth and Chris Brown are completely immaterial. This has nothing to do with what Stallworth or Brown did; if you want to argue that their crimes should’ve received wider condemnation than they did, I agree. Not just Stallworth, but *all* those who drink and drive and, as a result, injure or kill innocents, should be prosecuted with much more vigor than they are now. Unfortunately, our legal system is filled with — as you rightly point out — humans. Legislators who drink and drive. Judges who drink and drive. Lawyers who drink and drive. Whether or not the handling of these criminals is strong or stringent enough has no bearing on Michael Vick.

    Michael Vick did not make a single lamentable decision (as many drink-and-drivers do); he made a series of decisions over the course of, at minimum, five years. Those decisions included arranging, or (in some cases) actually physically participating in, the deaths of thirteen dogs. And he wasn’t simply “putting them out of their misery” or killing them outright; he deliberately chose a variety of actual brutal, lengthy tortures, including wetting dogs down and then electrocuting them.

    He also thought it was amusing to put other people’s family pets into the ring with the trained pit bulls, and watch them get torn to shreds.

    These aren’t “mistakes” in the same sense as somebody who gets inebriated and then decides to drive home. Deliberately, and with a clear head, deciding to torture and kill animals is sociopathic behavior; what’s more, he has never admitted to any of this publicly. He has only admitted to “making mistakes,” acting “immaturely,” and “fighting dogs.” He never admitted publicly to killing, or arranging the killing, of any of them. So don’t try to paint him as repentant; he cannot even own up to his sociopathic behavior.

    I don’t value animals’ lives over humans’ lives. But we’re supposed to be their stewards, and they are relatively helpless.

    Vick is an unrepentant sadist. And those who would welcome him back into society must be considered complicit in the crimes he will go on to commit.

  3. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    Wow Mitch, me thinks you have something against Vick. :) Is there no forgiveness for people who ask for it and make restitution for their crime(s)? Even for multiple wrongs? Who decides who is forgiven? What authority grants forgiveness?

  4. Mitch says:

    I have something against people who deliberately, thoughtfully, and even “creatively” torture sentient beings who feel pain, yes.

    I don’t believe Vick has asked for forgiveness, because he’s never admitted to the crimes he’s known to have committed. Maybe you need to refamiliarize yourself with his public statements.

    And as for “who decides who is forgiven,” I believe that victims are the only ones who are in a position to grant true restorative forgiveness. Unfortunately, by choosing (over and over and over, year after year) to kill his victims, Vick has eliminated the opportunity for his victims to forgive him.

    You may forgive him all you like. After all, you weren’t one of his victims. It’s quite easy for us to sit back, in the comfort of our middle-class homes with our TVs and computers running water and A/C, to forgive those who haven’t wronged us directly. There are others of us who recognize soulless evil when it hasn’t affected us directly.

  5. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    Mitch, it seems you are speaking for Vick. Can you prove to me through statements that Vick has not asked for forgiveness? If victims cannot forgive because they are dead or cannot speak, who can forgive in the place of them? Does not paying a debt for wrong doing restore a person?

  6. Elaine says:

    Hello Reverend.

    You ask, “Does not paying a debt for wrong doing restore a person?”

    The answer is ‘no.’ Evidence has been amassed by criminologists, psychologists and others that one who tortures animals is a pathological case. They usually go on to be the Jeffrey Dahmers of our society. Vick served time for crimes committed related to the dog-fighting ring, not for the torture of the animals, which has no attendant legal ramification. We are concerned here about his ACTUAL crime, which was the torture of innocent animals. He has not been rehabilitated, for he is un-rehabilitatable, at least until he get professional help for his act of torturing animals. I do not care about his jail time because that was not punishment for the torture. Just as child molesters are un-rehabitable because of the nature of their illness, just as pedophiles often belong to such clubs as the one that promotes man to boy sex as a ‘teaching experience,’ just as people with narcissistic personality disorder do not believe they are narcissists (but that everyone else is beneath them), just as paranoid schizophrenics often do not believe they are ill, so does the person who would willfully take an innocent animal – unlike the jackass who didn’t look both ways crossing the street and walked in front of a drunk driver (who got drunk, by the way, because he wanted to drink, not because he wanted to run somebody over) – willfully take that innocent animal and put them to death in the most painful possible way. Well, he is unredeemable. You sir, are a typical religious sycophant.

  7. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    Elaine, I was asking a general question about a general principle – not necessarily about Vick’s situation. Have you ever wrong a person and they have forgiven your debt? Based on your statements and logic, no one can be offered forgiveness? I would encourage to refrain from name calling no matter how mild it may be. We encourage adult, thoughtful, and respectful discourse here.

  8. Elaine says:

    I will now sit back and wait for the Reverend to post. I think it will go a little something like this:

    Wow! Elaine, you are so angry! Have you turned to god with that anger? [Smiley face here] Forgiveness will set you free. [More smiley faces.]

  9. Elaine says:

    Okay, sorry about the sycophant thing. Forgiveness is not always the healthiest response to malevolence. It is often better, I believe, to remove those malevolent entities from society so that we can all be safer, happier, and enjoy our lives more. When I think of the evil that is present in the world – an evil I believe is encapsulated in people like Michael Vick – I am angered by the fact that people like him are able to chip away at some of the joy I have in life. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. He should pay with his own life for misery he put the dogs through.

  10. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    Elaine, you make me laugh! Not all pastors are “religious sycophant” as you named me. I really never use shallow expressions of faith like that. I truly seek authentic dialog.

    I appreciate your comments. I too want to remove evil. Are people truly evil or do people do evil things? One thing learned at Nuremberg is that it does not take a monster to do monstrous things. I hear your anger about Vick. I think a lot of people feel that way. True, contrition is the first step to restoration. However, if we never forgive people we become a society of bitter and hateful people. Forgiveness is tough.

  11. TruthMatters says:

    Mitch, just what are you referring to as “sentient beings”? Remember, I’m not like the reverend, who likeley believes that his god has eternally limited such neural development to humans, but then if such a thing should ever happen in dogs we would then have to refer to them as humans with canines. As it is, they highly socialized animals, therefore they have emotional development, but they really have less self-awareness than many animals which aren’t socialized. They don’t care if they take a dump out in the open, and they do not resist the goading to fight their own kind. If it were you, there would be the choice not to fight, a choice which dogs are not capable of making – this is the difference which separates dogs from sentient “beings”.

  12. TruthMatters says:

    Elaine, Elaine, Elaine!!!

    Before you go parroting the questionable theories which your camp presents as fact, or even prophecy, you should understand that it has no more weight with a Baptist minister than evolution, and no more weight with any reputable psychologist than creationism does to an atheist. Answer this question, concerning the crime which happened years ago: Has Michael Vick ever harmed another human being? Has he roughed up his girlfriend or wife? What, you mean he never even got into a fight while in prison? So much for your asinine propaganda mantra!

    Mr. Vick hardly appears to be the sort of man who I would want to have a beer with, but if it takes the fighting between animals to channel his ape agression safely away from other people, then I believe those animals are a necessary sacrifice.

  13. Elaine says:

    Truth Matters, Truth Matters, Truth Matters!!!!

    I do not give a fig for Vick’s girlfriend. She can make her own choices whether to be with him or not, whether to suffer his abuse or not. I don’t care about people who get in his way, for they can decided to get out of it. I care about the dogs. Pure and simple.

    I don’t think horses should be made to race, nor greyhounds, I don’t believe roosters should be made to fight. I have no trouble killing a cockroach, and if our food-providing animals were treated humanely in life, and slaughtered without pain, I would not suffer the guilt I do eating meat. Unfortunately, the attitude you – and those in “your camp” have regarding animals, that they have lesser status than humans, has allowed for the systematic torture of many animals, as our current agricultural system will attest.

  14. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    Elaine, I missed that one. Sorry, I took it off.

  15. TruthMatters says:

    You took that off why, Mr. Rudnick? You know I speak the truth on humanity-hating people such as Elaine, and people who cannot handle the return flack for what they post on a public blog should not post on a public blog. You should also be aware that she would hardly support your religious position any more than I have.

    I had to address Elaine’s person because she expresses an atypical personality.
    1. She cited the common dogma of her group (that people who have harmed animals graduate to harming people as well). The animal rights blog is chock full of this idea, but not a shred of substantiation to back it. Apparently it’s believers see no need for substantiation, which makes it either dogma, or simply a malicious, and convenient lie.
    2. As it happens, Michael Vick has not lived up to her dogma. He has no record of violence against other humans, which is remarkable in that so many who have harmed other humans have no record against animals. Challenge her to prove otherwise, and I guarantee she will fail it – I’d bet my life on it! Elaine is circulating this lie as part of her group’s campaign to manipulate public opinion against those who violate the religion of that group.

    3. When confronted on the falsehood of her lie, Elaine showed her truest colors. “I do not give a fig for Vick’s girlfriend!” “I don’t care about people who get in his way”. Believe it, she doesn’t! If any CREDIBLE, objective research into my theory that dogs made to fight prevent monsters like Michael Vick from harming other human beings, it wouldn’t take much to out-do whatever Elaine could produce for facts in support of her dogma. If there really was an objective study, which really covered dog-fighters, the occasional dog-kicker, hunters, farmers who raise and kill their own meat, and other non-freaks who aren’t fond of torturing animals as an end to itself with no other purpose, and produced results useful to Elaine’s position, the animal right’s blog doesn’t know of it. Her position is pure, cold, and hateful politics!

    By the way, I hope all the battered spouses who have been living as prisoners in their own homes caught Elaines words of non-sympathy toward them, should they manage to sneak out and vote. Threats and psychological tweaking can be every bit as effective a cage as any which is made of wire, and they don’t work on animals.

    As for the question of choice, Vick’s fighting dogs weren’t cute little schnauzers, beagles, or spaniels, but the sort of breeds which are aggressive by nature.

  16. Reverend Alan Rudnick says:

    TruthMatters, your comments were personally offensive. The policy for TU blogs is that comments that attack or are offensives will be deleted. Please re phase your comments.

  17. I_Love_Liars says:

    Mr. Rudnick, my last comment (another one which you capriciously removed) was not personally offensive, only personlly observant! I was talking about a person who stated herself that she doesn’t care if other human beings are harmed by monsters like Michael Vick. I was talking about how she stated herself that her empathy is only for the dogs, not the people who their sacrifice (the displacement of Vick’s agression) may have spared. I am talking about the slanderous lie which she is circulating against her groups political punching bag, for which no evidence has been produced.

    You know that whatever generated her group’s premise for the statement that animal abusers move on to abuse humans as well, there were no such studies dog-fighters, the occasional dog-kicker, the local butcher, the farmer who raises and kills his own meat, the hunters who keep deer populations from threatening our highway safety. The statement is simply a malicious lie when applied to non-freaks, who do not enjoy harming helpless creatures without purpose. Given that the person in question is no freindlier to your position on dogs, their abusive owners, and greater things than she is to mine, the above should be of interest to you.

  18. Get Real © says:

    Mitch, you sound as if Vick intruded into your home and murdered your little furry ankle-biter. Get a grip.

    Elaine, you’re clearly misinformed. Before speaking about sociology, criminology, psychology, why not learn some of it? Because theoretically speaking, Michael Vick could be seen as the victim. Due to his socialization, Vick was led to believe dog fighting was okay. The same way you and I learn completely different morals and values holds true for Michael Vick. He was raised in an environment that permitted such illicit activities. So if you’re going to raise an argument from a social perspective, at least present both sides of that perspective.

    In my opinion, the man served his time. Let him be. He ran an illegal dog-fighting ring. A couple of dogs were killed. Big deal.

    What’s despicable about society today is that everyone has got sand in their underpants because of what Vick did with animals. Yet god forbid we come together as a nation and provide healthcare for our fellow man. I vividly remember driving along Rt.155 in Latham and seeing a crowd of people alongside the road. There were cars stopped, and people huddling over a dog laying on its side. Some were on the phone, presumably with 911. Others were crying. Months later, while in Albany, I was walking along State street and noticed a homeless man sprawled out on the sidewalk. He crawled over to a storefront and apparently passed out. Think anyone bothered to stop? Nope. But there was no shortage of people who looked in disgust, and threw their nose to the sky as they walked by.

    Two scenarios. Stark difference in their outcome.

  19. TroyGirl says:

    I agree with Mitch. Stallworth and Brown are completely unrelated. Did Michael Vick serve his time. Yes? Did he pay for what he did? Not in my opinion. Do I have to forgive him for his actions? No. Does that mean I think he deserves further punishment? No.
    I personally think that if I were a Pastor, I would be using my efforts elsewhere and not on a campaign to give Michael Vick a second chance. There are far greater causes out there in need of and compassion.

  20. Its seems to me that Michae Vick has already been forgiven. I mean, he has a job with Eagles, is starting again, and has the love of many fans. Whether he deserves further punishment doesn’t really matter. He’s back.