Recently I was asked to speak at a mega church and the pastor instructed me to be sure and mention an incident that occurred in my life down in New Orleans in Jackson Square when I was a meth addict.
A street preacher was standing on a box preaching in the park and I happened to walk by minding my own business. I wore a Fu Man Chu mustache, had a hat pulled down low over my shoulder length hair, and was wearing dark sunglasses. I was dressed like a typical street person in rather shabby dirty clothes.
Suddenly the preacher pointed me out and angrily shouted at the top of his lungs, “If you don’t change your ways you’re going to hell”.
I walked over to where he was standing and hit him as hard as I could in the mouth with my fist, and knocked him off his box. He was lying on the ground with blood running out of his mouth onto his white shirt and I pulled out my .357 magnum handgun, cocked it, and aimed it right between his eyes, and said through gritted teeth, “You bleeping bleepity bleep, if you ever say that to me again I’ll kill you!”
Today it scares me to think how close I came to killing that man over that incident. My finger was pressing down on the trigger and he was Nano-seconds away from seeing eternity. I’d been up for several days and was all strung out on drugs and needed more. I bitterly hated religious people and their judgmental attitudes and his yelling insults at me was the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. He didn’t know me; he didn’t know my spiritual standing with God; he simply judged and condemned me from my appearance and I didn’t like it one bit; (I’ll bet he didn’t ever do that again).
If he’d said, “Hey man, you look like you’ve got something heavy on your mind and you look hungry; how ‘bout you and I going across the street and I’ll buy you a bowl of red beans and rice and some iced tea and let’s talk, and if you don’t mind maybe I can pray with you.”, there would have been a different outcome.
As it was, aside from very nearly getting his head blown off, he put another nail in my religious coffin and furthered my belief that religious people were just a bunch of self-righteous jerks and hypocrites who looked down on everyone and I wanted no part of what they were selling.
When Jesus Christ walked the earth He did not judge or condemn anyone. The Bible plainly states in John 3:17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” We are to emulate Him.
This is not to say that Jesus will not judge, but it is His job and not ours. He did not select those of us in the church to be judges nor should we condemn anyone. The Christian Church is not incorrect in lovingly telling others what the Bible has to say about sin, and indeed the sinner has to know that he’s a sinner before he can come to grips with the need for Christ in his life to forgive those sins. That is not judgment or condemnation.
I can tell you from personal experience that people can be reached through acts of kindness and compassion far easier than trying to scare or scream them into heaven. I might not have accepted his offer of red beans and rice that day, but I wouldn’t hate him for offering them. I would have been astonished that anyone cared enough about me to make an offer like that. I didn’t know that man.
At this point in my life I’m sure that preacher cared about me, or he wouldn’t have wasted his time and been out there preaching in the first place; however he was misguided in his approach. Hardly anyone is going to be saved through someone yelling at them and calling them names.
Something to think about, eh?
Selah!
I became a follower of Jesus Christ through reading the Bible, primarily the New Testament. It was there that I found Jesus and I found Him to be a loving compassionate Father that wasn’t mad at us, rather madly in love with us.
Many people think O.J. Simpson got away with murder. Yesterday he made parole on some of his most serious counts and he is now slated to get out of prison in another 3-4 years. There are those who will hate O.J. forever for what he did, but just imagine what the Bible states about his spiritual condition. If he asks for forgiveness, truly repents, (turns away from his sins and is sorry for them), and follows Christ instead of the world he will be saved and spend eternity in heaven.
Hmmm . . . When I heard that O.J. got his sentence reduced it really made me mad. How would you feel if you learned that he’d turned to God and was now a Christian and God had forgiven all of his sins and he would live next to you in heaven?
The love and forgiving spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ is mysterious and extremely difficult to fathom. Personally I will never understand grace in this life, or quite likely the next. Make no mistake though Jesus died for all of the sinners in the world and not just a select few. I praise His Holy Name because I am one of those sinners and without Him I would be busting hell wide open like a ripe watermelon.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.