June 25 2018 – Click here to listen
I read an interesting article over the weekend that centered on psychopaths. It stated that the largest concentration of psychopaths in the country per capita is in Washington D.C. According to the article, D.C. has far and away more than any other city. Those cities that had high ratings were in large urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, but Washington D.C. had an enormous number compared to all other cities.
As a young man serving in the military I got into trouble and during the legal proceedings for a court martial I had to be evaluated by a team of psychiatrists. I was diagnosed as being a sociopath or psychopath. Indeed, I was discharged from the military because of that diagnosis with a General discharge under honorable conditions. The psychiatrists told me that I didn’t have a conscience, showed no remorse, was incapable of love and was told by the head psychiatrist that he believed I was well on my way to becoming a serial killer. I asked what could be done about it and he told me it was incurable and thus he was recommending that I be discharged from the service. A month later I was on the streets untreated coping with my hatred in violent ways.
At the time I was far from the Lord and full of loathing and bitterness. I was sadistic and mean and was headed towards death like a runaway train. Then I found God, or should I say He found me. He radically changed my life and I became a family man, serial entrepreneur (and not a serial killer,) and a pillar of the community. I became active in evangelism, primarily in prisons and rehab facilities, and have tried to serve the Lord to the best of my ability since the age of 24.
I have a doctor in my neighborhood who knows of my story and he told me that being a sociopath is incurable and perhaps I was misdiagnosed. I’ve read everything to read about this condition and looking back on it I know that the diagnosis was the right one. I know what I was thinking (and doing) at the time and I displayed every symptom. This man is not a believer and it’s easy to see why he finds it so difficult to believe that God can and does radically change lives, even one like mine used to be.
I would expect nothing less than this from a non-believer; however, I am bewildered when those who say they follow Christ cannot accept the premise that God can radically change lives. As I’ve thought about it I’ve concluded that since many people have not personally experienced such radical transformation they have difficulty in believing it. It’s easy for me because I lived through it, but to someone who has no personal frame of reference it becomes a stumbling block.
It reminds me of Timothy. He refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected until he could place his fingers in the wound in his side. It boils down to faith. To be a Christian, we must have faith in God; however, God is in spirit form. Thus, we must believe in the unseen through faith. In my opinion those who have problems with believing a wretched person can be saved by Christ and have their entire life transformed without making use of a manmade treatment cannot believe the Bible.
The Apostle Paul encountered Christ on the road to Damascus and was radically changed. He went from relentlessly pursuing, torturing and executing Christians to boldly preaching the word of God which ultimately led to his own extreme persecution and martyrdom. Can you read this passage and imagine the transformation as a real occurrence to a real man? Could God radically change this man? If he could change Paul, could he change someone you know or have read about? If you do not truly believe this, then your faith is not where it should be.
The Bible refers to Christ on many occasions as “hope.” Without faith in Christ we cannot have genuine hope. I believe that God can transform Washington D.C. and other hellholes filled with haters, liars, sexual deviants, and power hungry Godless people, provided they would repent or turn from their sins through revival. The God of hope is not merely a God for you and me, but for all people. God loves everyone, and He stands ready to come into your life and welcome you into His Kingdom. Believe it. Pray for it.
Don’t be a modern-day Jonah. He refused to go to Nineveh, (which is now called Mosul and is in Iraq,) and had a moral equivalency to Sodom. Jonah wanted God to judge them for their sins and refused to go warn them of God’s impending judgment. But he ended up paying a price himself for disobeying God. On his journey to escape via a voyage on a ship, a great storm came up, and the others on board began praying to their gods. Then they decided to cast lots to see who was responsible for this deadly storm. Jonah informed them that he was the culprit and he was fleeing from the Lord God. Jonah was in a great state of despair for having refused to do what God asked him and he told them to just throw him overboard and the storm would calm.
He was promptly eaten by a large fish and remained in its belly for three days and then the fish vomited him up near dry land. Many think he was in the belly of a whale. As an aside I once got close to a big whale while fishing in the Atlantic Ocean and when it came up and blew water out of the top of its head it smelled horrible, like dead fish. I imagine old Jonah smelled rough and was quite the sight after being subjected to the digestive juices of a giant fish for three days. He must have had vomit all over him. It’s no wonder that the King repented, and his entire kingdom turned back to God.
The moral of this post is that nothing is too difficult for God. Have faith and pray, and pray, and pray . . . And whatever you do, don’t disobey God. Just do whatever He lays on your heart and smile while you’re doing it. It’s hard to smile with whale vomit all over you.
John 15:7
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.