January 11, 2019 – Click here to listen
I’ve studied child rape and am intimately familiar of the horrors of it and have come away from it with a regard for pedophiles that is as close to hatred as anything I’ve ever experienced. So, it was with surprise and disgust that I learned that one of my closest friends, Jack – Murf the Surf – Murphy told me he was helping a young man who had who just got out of prison after being convicted of child molestation. I actually had met that guy at a recent prison ministry event in which I spoke. I was told by folks who go in there week after week that he’d made the decision to follow Christ and they told me his conversion was the real deal and he desperately wanted to turn his life around.
Murf told me that it was next to impossible to find a place for this young guy to live. He cannot live near a school or a church or a playground and when he tried to setup a trailer for him at his own home his neighbors organized against him and he had to abandon that idea. He went to the probation folks and they told him to get a tent and let him live in the woods. Murf lamented that one inmate had to put his trailer adjacent to a garbage dump.
When he finished pouring his heart about this “poor” guy my response was: GOOD! I hope he rots in hell and I’d like to put him there. Murf just sighed and we got off the phone.
Several weeks have passed and I’ve talked to Murf about this dude extensively. I’ve been hammering him with stuff like he is getting off easy compared to his victim and telling him that they should have locked him up for life and so on. To his credit he withstood the firestorm of criticism from me and others and has steadfastly helped the guy obtain a job and after weeks and weeks of looking has finally found a place for him to live far out in the country. The guy is working and going to church and doing well.
So, as time passed and I watched Murf working away to help this guy it became a time of deep introspection for me. After a lengthy self-analysis I determined that I am not much of a representative of God. Jesus wants us to hate the sin but love the sinner. That is how He looks at it. I had judged and condemned this guy.
Hmmm . . . What if God had done that to me when I was a meth addict and hardened criminal?
I brought this up at our weekly prayer call for the Jesus Alliance and one member of our group who is politically connected to the Whitehouse level as well as to all of the high-powered members of the House and Senate told us that she had a similar experience except her problem was with the George Soros’s and Nancy Pelosi’s of the world. She explained that she found something that helped her in regard to those who are involved with destroying the moral fabric of America and indeed the world. She simply said: If a blind person stepped on your foot would you hate them for it?
She is right the lost in this world have been so deceived by Satan they are blind to His righteousness and offer of grace. Jesus pointed this out on the cross when He pleaded to His Father, “ . . . please forgive them for they know not what they do.” The following illustration goes along with this thought:
“A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.”
“An observer came along and said to the holy man, ‘Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?’
“To which the holy man replied, ‘That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?” (Joseph B. Modica – Eye of the Needle Newsletter)
My friends it is sin which imprisons; it is grace which liberates. We are to emulate Jesus Christ in everything we do. Hate cannot be allowed into our minds nor leave our lips. I have not only repented and apologized to Murf for ridiculing him, but I have developed a new perspective on the meaning of God’s love as it applies to the body of Christ . . . We all have sinned and fallen short thank God for His loving grace . . .
Who do you hate?
Romans 3:23:
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!