Photo|Courtesy.
By Male Marvin & News Agencies
The gospel took over a USA courtroom this week when a State District Judge gave her personal Bible to a convict after pronouncing her guilty of murder.
Amber Guyger , a former Dallas police officer, was on 2nd October, 2019 sentenced to 10 years in jail by Judge Tammy Kemp for fatally shooting a youth pastor identified as Botham Jean in his own apartment.
A video of the event revealed Kemp walking over to Guyger with a Bible in her hand.
“You can have mine,” the judge said to Guyger, according to WFAA. “I have three or four at home. This is the one I use every day before I go to bed.”
The judge flipped open the Bible and pointed Guyger to a passage.
“This is your job for the next month. Look right here, John 3:16. And this is where you start: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so whosoever believes’—stop right there and use your name: ‘Amber believes.’ Start with the Gospels. You read this whole book of John. This whole book.”
Fox News reports the judge as saying: “You just need a tiny mustard seed of faith. You start with this.”
Kemp then hugged Guyger and said, “You haven’t done so much that you can’t be forgiven. You did something bad in one moment in time. What you do now matters.”
Kemp’s hug came after she granted permission to Botham Jean’s brother, Brandt Jean, to hug Guyger. Brandt delivered a moving statement in which he not only forgave Guyger but also exhorted her to give her life to Christ.
“I know if you go to God and ask Him, He will forgive you,” he told her from the stand. “… I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that Botham would want you to do. Again, I love you as a person, and I don’t wish anything bad on you.”
Between Brandt’s forgiveness and Kemp’s gospel exhortation, almost everyone was crying in the courtroom, reports The Dallas Morning News.
But not everyone was happy with the judge’s actions or her sentence.
In a letter Thursday to the Texas commission, an atheist group under Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) objected to what it termed the judge’s “proselytizing actions,” saying they “overstepped judicial authority” and were “inappropriate” and “unconstitutional.”
The Wisconsin-based group objected to Judge Tammy Kemp giving one of her Bibles to Guyger.
“It is perfectly acceptable for private citizens to express their religious beliefs in court,” the letter read, “but the rules are different for those acting in a governmental role.”
According to Fox News, the atheist group did not appeared to demand punishment for the judge. Their message seemed aimed only at drawing attention to a “possible violation” of rules of judicial conduct.
