Posted on 06/03/2014 11:52:24 AM PDT by Persevero
Bob Henley, former pastor at the(ir) Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood, recalled how friends periodically would ask Bergdahl if he hadn’t crossed some line, if he hadn’t succumbed to some form of the captive-bonding Stockholm syndrome.
But Bergdahl assured his friends he was just doing whatever he could to ensure his son’s release. “I guess you really had to be in his shoes,” Henley said.
The five-year waittook a toll on both of his parents, according to friends and others .
Bergdahl is fiercely intelligent, friends said, yet he dropped out of college, going to Idaho with his wife in 1980 after studying at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He taught himself Pashto. He is religious, at one point making the 300-mile round trip a couple of times a month to attend an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Boise with his family.
Bergdahhas said he grew his beard as a chronology marking the time that his son was missing. Bergdahl also did it in a bid to win sympathy from his son’s captors.
At the time their son was taken, the Bergdahls were attending a conservative Presbyterian church in Boise. Glenn Ferrell was the pastor.(H)e talked at length with Bergdahl, as the father questioned and probed his own beliefs to reach some understanding of the radical Islam driving the Taliban.
Bergdahl also talked with Mark Stephensen, a board member of the National League of POW/MIA Families, who lives in Boise. Stephensen’s father was a Vietnam War MIA for 21 years. Stephensen saw how Bergdahl had changed his appearance and altered his interests to align with his son’s experience.
“I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt,” Stephensen said, “because, by the grace of God, I wasn’t in his position.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I get and hope that they all remain Christians. The visual effect of that Rose Garden ceremony was toxic.
You and others are incredibly naive almost to the point of ignorance. As others have stated to you, please don’t include me in your long posts defending this guy, ok? The next time I would like to hear from you is after this guy is back in the states and is then arrested or caught trying to perform some act of terrorism agaisnt the United States. And that will happen. Then I - and others - want a long post of your apology to us and the United States.
Yes. It is about his being called to account for his actions, which ended up putting the men he served with directly at risk, getting men killed who were trying to find him, but primarily for leaving his post.
I have heard that he left a note saying he was deserting, but I haven’t seen a direct source yet on that, but his actions even in spite of his characterizing them or not, was desertion.
It makes me angry to see people trying to defend Bergdahl by painting the people who are angry about this as angry, illogical, partisan, islamophobic, racist nuts.
And I feel that I am fully justified in feeling anger at this. It is a typical leftist tactic, and it is an attempt to deflect important questions about Bergdahl’s behavior and the actions of the government.
“God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameeen.”
Where you look for Christian compassion, the father obviously is speaking of vengeance against the US military. The, “ameen” puts a special Islamic Jihadist tint to it, which means the vengeance may not be restricted to military.
Myself, I try to steer clear of saying what God will or will not do. There is a difference is relating the proposition that “God abhors the shedding of innocent blood” and the statement that Bob made.
I do fault him for that.
I’m glad you are keeping and open mind and looking at it with an objective lens.
I do understand your desire to have Christian compassion for the parents here.
I appreciate that. My Christian compassion fails when it comes to Obama, but I can get to
http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/asbury-bible-commentary/Imprecatory-Psalms
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