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We all remember Lionel Tate. In 1999, then 12 year old Tate killed a six year old girl, and his attorneys pinned the blame on professional wrestling. While our collective unconsciousness wanted desperately to call this individual a thug and a career criminal, we were silenced by elements within the minority community that convinced us it would be somehow racist. Tate became the youngest person sentenced to life in prison, but the conviction was overturned and Tate was allowed to plea bargain 10 years' probation.

Now Tate will spend the next thirty years in prison, following a robbery and weapons possession charge. He was given a second chance and he blew it, perhaps (in my opinion) because the extremely lenient sentence did not give him ample opportunity to appreciate the seriousness of his actions.

I am a firm believer in second chances. In fact, I owe much in my life to second chances. But I am a believer in second chances AFTER a price has been paid, after consequences have encouraged the person to appreciate the seriousness of what they have done, and to become properly penitent. Otherwise, their second chance becomes what Deitrich Bonhoeffer once called "cheap grace", and they fail to comprehend the debt from which they have been liberated. Lionel Tate was a recipient of cheap grace, and instead of using his liberation as an opportunity to turn his life around, he returned, like a dog to his vomit, to the life of a criminal that had apparently been his birthright. One has to wonder the value of freeing Tate, only to put him back in a few years later.

Is it too early to call him a "thug" yet?