Jeanne Bishop's Speech Analysis

Today Jeanne Bishop gave a talk about how she made peace with the man who killed her sister. Throughout this presentation Jeanne talked about how forgiving him was for her and that she wanted to let go and let God take control of the situation. She also said how eventually she made the first move and wrote him an apology letter while he was in prison, for telling everyone but him that she had forgiven him. Our class is also advocating for prison reform and writing to prisoners to learn their story, hear what they think of the prison systems, see how they are doing and much more. Jeanne Bishop is advocating for, “mercy for people convicted of serious crimes.” Bishop said that she is still writing to him now and says that her sister’s killer
feels awful about what he did and he would take it back if he could. I believe that this has a lot to due with what we talk about in our Christian social teaching class. In our class we are learning about helping those that are less fortunate and advocating for several different injustices. Our class also talks about Christian ethics. When Jeanne Bishop was talking, she cited a quote from the bible, “Father, forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I thought that this quote was very appropriate for her speech and it also stands for what we learn about in our class. It represents compassion and whole-hearted giving even under the hardest of situations. In our service, we see many people that are struggling and need a helping hand. Jeanne Bishop is trying to show the world that we need to, “let go and let in” those who have wronged us in order to continue moving forward.