Hyperbole, Growth, and Eight-Year-old Tweets

Someone recently mentioned that with the flood of sexual harassment complaints going back decades and re-surfaced tweets from eight or nine years ago, a new precedent is being set.  Even if the guilty person has grown and changed in the subsequent time, it doesn't matter.  Jobs must be lost and the guilty must be punished.  I'm not talking about ongoing behavior, a la the self-righteous Matt Lauer and pig Harvey Weinstein.  I'm talking about something done when a person was young and stupid and hasn't done for years.

The new precedent has a law of unintended consequences:  Why bother to change if what you do is going to follow you forever?  You're doomed; your fate is determined by your mistakes.  

I am glad God doesn't hold us to that standard.

However, I think we Christian fall into a different type of hyperbole.  I heard a well known speaker say the other day on the radio (oh, we must fill up air time and blogs and websites!) "Herod was living his own way, he was the king on his own throne."  And then the kicker, "Just like us."

Umm, excuse me? 

Do we have to make a spiritual lesson by saying all of us are like Herod, a genocidal maniac? Anyone with a sane mind would say, "Wait a minute.  I'm not Herod.  I'm a sinner, I need forgiveness, but give me a break. Is this what I signed up for?  Being called Herod for the rest of my life despite trying to live for God?"

Our hyperbole will be the death of us.