My conviction that real people’s real lives bring theology to life.
I was a young pastor (28) in my first year of ministry. A man contacted me and asked for a meeting. I was eager to be seen as a “real pastor.” Which, to me, at the time, meant giving people advice and helping them solve their problems with my shiny seminary degree. I know better now.
The man arrived at my door. He was older, probably 60. He was obviously carrying a burden, it was weighing on his countenance as he sat in the chair in my office.
“I just have a question,” He hesitated then asked, “Can God really forgive me?”
He left an awkward pause…I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Finally, I said with an unjustified confidence, “Yes, of course He can.”
For the record, I really do believe He can, and I believed it then too. I just had an immature, shallow understanding of what that belief encompassed…for the first time in my young career I was about to find out exactly how theology actually squeezes into real people’s real life. I continued, “Tell me what’s going on.”
He said, “I’m putting my affairs in order.”
He had stolen the life savings of 8 separate families through a Ponzi scheme. I was one of his last meetings before he needed to begin his sentence. He told the story of how he had destroyed these families. Taken everything from them and lost it all. He broke down sobbing several times repeating over and over, “I’m a complete failure.”
He went on to explain his attempted suicide. He had been overcome with fear and couldn’t follow through. Strangely, he described the fact that he was still alive as evidence of his status as a failure. He broke down sobbing again as he declared, “God can not forgive a man like me.”
I had to admit, he had presented a very good argument in favor of that fact.
Thank God his forgiveness is not contingent on our behavior but on the actions of His son, Jesus. So, what I said wasn’t exactly wrong, and yet, it was not exactly right either. It was, in fact, far from what this man truly needed in that moment.
We’re not usually thinking rationally when the pain and sorrow of sin and shame grips us, we’re functioning in something much more volatile and unstable. I don’t think most people ask theological questions. We ask emotional questions based in our broken and biased reality. Understanding theology, therefore, is only the first step of learning how to effectively help people. Maybe, in fact, theology is more for you than them. You need to know theology to stay confident in the face of chaos. They likely won’t. They’ll need your empathy, compassion, sorrow, grief and patience. This man didn’t need the truth captured in a sentence exactly, he needed to be seen and heard. He needed to be loved. I’ve met with hundreds of people over the years, I think most are the same way.
After the man finished his story, I sat there stunned. My seminary diploma was framed on the wall behind him. I was certain of the Bible’s teaching about sin and forgiveness. I had said many times in theoretical conversations with friends that no sin was too big for God to forgive. But I was facing a man who had done the worst and was facing a sentence that would likely take him to the end of his life. How could I comfort this man with the truth, when his reality was going to erase that comfort behind the cold bars of consequences?
I think, despite myself, I recovered okay in the room. We prayed together. The meeting was over and he walked out. The impact of that moment never left me.
Ungrounded truth can seem empty in the face of people’s real lives.
Study and learn. Read your Bible. Know the truth. Then, when you really want to help people find hope, put the books away. Instead, start by honestly assessing your own broken life. Listen intently to the stories of others with as little judgement and bias as you can muster. Be willing to humbly change and grow as the spirit of the law leads you toward becoming one who can teach with authority.
When Jesus finished teaching the sermon on the mount the people standing around commented, “This man teaches as one who has authority, not as one of our teachers of the law.” Perhaps, they felt the difference between the cold hard truth of the law taught by their theologians and the spirit of that law standing in front of them. Perhaps that’s why Jesus responded, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”
There is a tension between what we know to be true in the Scripture and How that truth finds its manifestation in real people’s real life.
Let’s teach and model God’s truth to real people in a way that produces hope rather than judgement, life rather than condemnation, progress rather than stagnation and an increased desire to know the God who teaches with authority not as a teacher of the law.
This can’t be memorize, but it can most certainly be learned. Especially, if you open your heart to the guy in front of you who needs to tell you his story. We are not sentenced to a life of captivity to the law, we’re sentenced to a life of love.
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