“Dear Sean,” the letter began, “I am worried about your soul because the Bible is clear that if you don’t answer the call of salvation, you won’t be in heaven with the rest of us…”
Hoo boy, here we go.
“...I don’t care how nice of a guy you might pretend to be on social media, Satan is after you, and if you don’t know Jesus Christ, you will suffer in a place where flame never dies…
“Love, Mary Townsend,”
Topeka, Kansas.
Hi Mary. If you have a minute, I’ll tell you a story.
I am going to call her Peggy, but that’s not her name. Peggy was raped when she was 14. She got pregnant by her attacker. Nine months later, boom, she had a kid.
Funny thing is, nobody in her family believed her when she told them what happened. Her family was very, VERY religious. They blamed Peggy for being a, quote, “loose woman.”
The irony is, Peggy wasn’t loose. Peggy had never cut her hair because of her denominational rules. She’d never worn anything but long skirts, never kissed a boy, never held hands. Never done anything other than Scripture drills and VBS. And here she was, in ninth grade, with a baby.
Then, her parents kicked her out of the house. And her “fellowship was withdrawn” by her local church.
Whatever that means.
Why? Because she was living in sin, of course. That’s what everyone said. Her mother and father told her, verbatim, that she was going to “burn in hell.”
Peggy was now a homeless mother. She tried to stay with an aunt, but the aunt could not allow “bad morals” into her home. She tried to stay with friends from church, but nobody would have her home.
For Peggy was a harlot.
So Peggy took the money she had in savings ($73.29) and bought a bus ticket. She traveled to a big city, and checked into a Salvation Army mission. She got a job cleaning dishes in a restaurant; a side-job cleaning hotel rooms.
She raised her son in the back of a Salvation Army, until he was 4 years old. She worked junk jobs until she had enough saved to rent a dingy apartment in a rough part of town.
Fast forward 40 years.
Someone got word to Peggy that the man who had raped her was dying. Someone had told Peggy that this man had been in and out of jail, on and off of drugs, sleeping on friends’ couches, living in his car, and that he was dying alone on the street.
Something pricked Peggy’s heart.
One afternoon, she went out and found the man who had violated her and stolen her youth.
The man was dying of hepatitis C-related complications. Peggy told him, point blank, that she wanted to take care of him as he died. And she offered him a place to live.
The man did not accept her offer. Whereupon he began to cry and told her to leave him alone. Then he struck her. On the face.
A few days later, the man showed up on her porch, carrying a gym bag and a 40-ounce beer. He was stoned. He was weeping. He asked whether or not the offer to be his caregiver still stood. She opened the door and invited him in.
She gave him the back bedroom and prepared a pallet. She introduced him to Her son. His son.
For a solid year, she and her son took care of her attacker until he passed. And on the final day of his life, Peggy and her son both held the man’s hands and told him they loved him.
Peggy told him she forgave him for the pain he had caused. When he died, his last words were, “I don’t deserve this kind of love.”
Her answer was, “I don’t either.”
I met Peggy when she was a 78-year-old woman. Peggy was in the audience where I was making a speech. After my speech, Peggy waited until the room had cleared to talk to me. She told me her story. When she was finished, she introduced me to her adult son.
I asked Peggy whether she still believed she was going to burn in hell, or whether she thought she would go to heaven. She laughed at me.
Her response was: “I don’t care about eternal trophies. What I care about is loving people while I’m still alive.”
But it was her son who left me with some parting words that still haunt me to this day. He said:
“What a hell of a heaven it will be when all the hypocrites are assembled there.”
Love, Sean,
Birmingham, Alabama.
The enemy wants us to take our eyes off Jesus and get wrapped up in laws and doctrine. That’s exactly what happened to the Pharisees. They felt set apart, chosen because they knew the Torah so well and followed it ever so strictly. They even went so far as to expand the law. Public condemnation ensued, some were banned from society. Christianity does not make us immune to pride, we have a cunning enemy. Our motives can turn on a dime.
We don’t become Christians because we fear death, are afraid of hell or wish to live an abundant life (as the world sees it). Or even to eventually receive a bejeweled crown and dance on streets of gold. A Christian should have one goal, to become a little more like Jesus every day.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matt 6:33
My take is Jesus wants us to live the Kingdom life now. As He did. To do that you must get to know him in his Word. Let it affect your heart so that your motive in everything is love God, love people. The rest will take care of itself.
Peggy did it, she lived out the Gospel. She forgave and loved someone who didn’t deserve it (in human eyes). There’s no better witness.
Some folks forget the part about judging. Some folks forget the part about forgiving. Some folks forget the part about loving. some folks forget the part about “Do unto others…”But you don’t.