Jesus Christ

The Hypothetical Sinner

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

There is a hypothetical situation I hear brought up a surprising amount. It goes something like this: ‘a horrible murderer does something terrible to myself or my family. He is sentenced to execution. Minutes before the lethal injection, he repents of his sins and gives his life over to Christ. Should that man’s salvation be taken seriously? Should he really be given the same Heaven that I, or my family, should get?”

Before I answer anything about this question, I want to point out that the penalty for this murderer’s sins were NOT avoided. They were much steeper than the injection, in fact. They included a blindfold, vinegar, nails, thorns, a leaded whip, and heavy, rough-hewn wood. They involved public humiliation, being spat on, being beat up, and being tortured to death. And they were all fulfilled by Jesus, who has volunteered to be a sacrifice for this man’s sins. So the justice you crave has not been denied to you one bit; it’s been bled out, severely, humiliatingly, over the course of many, many hours. The problem in your heart is that you expected this sentence to be carried out on the body of the murderer, not on the body of your Lord.

But think of it this way – all through the legal process, this murderer has had access to government-granted rights, which you also share. These include, among other things, the right to legal counsel, the right to be spared punishment deemed overly cruel or unusual, the right to food, and so forth. You would not realistically want these rights taken away from the murderer because, of course, you or someone you love may someday be arrested, and you want these rights to be applicable to you and yours. These are rights for all American citizens. Now, just as this man has his American rights, he has spiritual rights. The worse he has sinned, and the less life he has left, the more impossible it becomes for him to pay that debt he owes to God. The only options left to the man are atonement or Hell, and he has chosen atonement. God has granted him and all others the ability to trust in Jesus’ sacrifice for forgiveness of sins. And if some colossal sinner decides, at the very end of life, that he wants that wonderful forgiveness, then yes, he escapes the pain of his sins and receives a joy which he has not earned. But NONE of us were ever good enough to deserve eternal joy, not a one of us. You may have led a decent life, you may deserve some joy, but eternal joy? A perfect life? In the presence of the most holy of all beings? Even the most precursory self-searching should show that you no more belong in God’s Heavenly court than a potato! And actually that potato would have a much better claim than you!

The fact that you – and others – receive salvation should not be an upset to you. It makes happy the heart of God. You, as someone who cares about God, should try to share his happiness when a sinner repents, even if it is difficult for you yourself to forgive. You can separate your pain, grieve what has happened, and thirst for resolution. But please, do not become angry that God shows mercy, because he shows it to all. And your only comfort out of this tragedy may be to try to share God’s joy in watching one less soul go to Hell. After all, a thousand years from now, I would much rather see my enemy in peaceful service and communion with those I love, giving love to them in return, than watch his pointless suffering for a sin already paid for. And if he chose repentance and salvation, that is the outcome that his soul craves, too, even if his decision was made under duress.

So if it bothers you that every “customer’s” debt has been paid, you should examine your soul, and your relationship to Christ. Because the start of a relationship with Christ is to realize he died for your sins; maturity involves realizing that he died for the sins committed against you.

God bless you, and have a good weekend.

Please message the author for scriptural references.

A Piece of Writing

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment

Hello all! If you’ve wondered where I’ve been disappearing to, I’ve been putting more work into larger projects. (Plus trying to earn an income.)

I’ve been writing a book since April — I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, but like any artistic project, it refuses to leave me be, despite all my other, more immediate, obligations.

Anyway I thought it might be good to occasionally share pieces of the “big dogs” writing projects.

This piece comes out of a fiction work currently in progress. It tells the story of a woman agreeing to stay in the spare room of a stranger’s home as a means of escaping an abusive boyfriend. Though not religious, she quickly becomes suspicious that her host is none other than Jesus. (And, to clarify, she usually just calls him J, avoiding saying his name.)

Anyway, here goes!

———————————————————————————————————————–

There were a lot of strange things I learned about J from living with him. You meet people sometimes who you can tell they’ve been through a lot, and he was like that — but different. I guess the best word for it was that he was not haunted… It was all light with Him, even in trauma. He was so convinced of purpose, it left no room for doubt; and with no doubt, he was unafraid.

I also came to realize that I loved Him. It was strange at first, even difficult – he was so obviously better than me, so much better, and I spent my first days alternating between giddy excitement and depressed self-loathing. How could such a man even love me? I saw all my awfulness drug from the shadows into the light of day, when I looked into his eyes. After a few days, however — once it felt like everything had been drug out of me that could be — and after I had told him everything about myself and my life — I was standing in the garden, quietly, and I realized I was truly happy.

As I lived with him, I began to notice more things – trademarks from his past. He had holes in his hands and feet – I had already known that before I met him. But he had a lot of other scars, too. Sometimes if he ran his hands through his hair, I’d see marks around his hairline. I was going to ask him about it one day when I suddenly realized – these were scars from The Crown of Thorns. The thought of it was so awful that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom. I just stood there in front of the mirror, mouth covered, eyes shut. That evening while I sat in the living room, I could not look at him. When he asked me what was wrong, I lied and said I was fine.

One day we were washing dishes together and J got his shirt soaked somehow. Laughing, he pulled off his shirt and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. I turned, laughing, to speak to him.

When I turned to look at him, I suddenly dropped the plate like a shocked housewife in a sitcom. It came crashing to the floor.

He turned to look at me. “What’s wrong?”

I was trembling and crying, unable to speak yet. He walked over to me, and loosely held my arms. “What’s wrong?” he asked gently. I buried my face in his chest, sobbing.

I had never seen J’s back before that day. It was a tangled mess of scar tissue, from one end to the other. Starting from the base of his neck, going past where his jeans covered him, there were large scars, branching into smaller scars, branching into nasty little blotches and spurs. It was not disgusting, for it had longsince healed solid. But it was horrifying to see, even to imagine. Worse yet, I had the strange feeling that I had contributed to them.

He rubbed my shoulders reassuringly. When I regained my breath, I pulled away from him slightly, not breaking his embrace. “What happened to you?” I cried. He looked intently at me. “Your back,” I said softly. “What happened to it?”

Now tears formed in J’s eyes, but not from sorrow. “It was a cat-of-nine-tails, beloved. A kind of whip they used to use that split at the ends, and they wove sharp objects into the braids.” He gave me a moment to let that sink in. “They tortured me with one. Took my clothes from me, bound my hands to a post, pulled my undergarments down around my ankles like a little boy about to be spanked. They whipped me forty times, from my shoulders to the back of my kneecaps.” Another long pause. “But it didn’t appease the crowd. So they laid a wooden cross across my back — on all the open wounds — and they made me carry it through town, until we reached the outskirts. Then they took my clothes, laid me naked over it, nailed me down and put me where everyone passing in and out of town could see me. It was like that for six hours. And then I died.”

The way he spoke about it, gently and without bitterness, made it somehow even harder to hear. He rubbed my back and I stared into the distance, not looking at anything in particular. All my life, I had known such things: seen crucifixes hung over doors, seen paintings of Jesus’ suffering… But now it struck me that there was an actual guy in there. It wasn’t some Greek god, or some bigger-than-life legend, or a TV character. There was a slightly short man with normal skin and a normal pain tolerance, who actually felt all this. And he was standing here in my kitchen now, holding me.

I could feel tears dripping down my face. Whatever I might personally believe about J, I knew he was good, and the idea of someone hurting him so badly just killed me inside.

“But you’re never angry about it. So much pain. How could…” I swallowed. “How could you even feel so much pain?”

He sighed. “Beloved, people are tortured every day, all over the Earth, often for the very things I taught them. I’m not denying that it hurt — it was almost unbearable. But for that part, I had only to survive; I could count a certain number of hours out, and then it would be finished.” He swallowed, took my head in his hands, and looked directly into my eyes. “But what hurt worse was feeling all of your sins and pain. Because I carried you.” I tensed as I remembered the dream I’d had.

He held me close and stroked my hair. After a while like this, he turned his head and asked, “Do you want to talk about this?” And I knew what he was asking me.

Suddenly scared, I said “no”, and wriggled out of his embrace. I literally ran from the room, leaving behind pieces of broken dishes and J, also broken, to clean up my mess.

A Belated Christmas Miracle

/ Morgan Grace Hart / Leave a comment
I am always a little embarrassed to report when miracles happen in my life. I don’t know why exactly. I think on some level I fear the backlash – people trying to disprove the miracle or tell me it wasn’t a miracle at all – and unlike an intellectual argument, there’s absolutely no proof I can give. It’s a vulnerable piece of my life that, like a memory, is important to me and I don’t want it to be mishandled in the hands of others and given back to me in a crumpled, scratched-up state.
But when you know, you know. And nothing strengthens another person’s faith quite like hearing about what God has done for others. So, as a kind of belated Christmas gift, I give this report to you, which happened the day before Christmas this year. I want to note that, when I talk about the things the Lord has said to me, I don’t want these taken as a direct quote or a Gospel truth – rather, it is the best summation of the best understanding of what I feel Him saying to me.
I had been very sick with strep for about a week at this point. I had had a very rough year and had high hopes of finally getting enough time off to accomplish something, when I was struck with a debilitating bout of strep that kept me mostly bedridden and unable to speak. Even after several days of antibiotics, I was still exhausted, and miserable as I watched my small window of precious time be engulfed by fever and aching sleep. I watched the already filthy house get even filthier and my out-of-control children get even more out of control. No strength for cleaning, no voice for disciplining.
It was on December 24th that I felt called very specifically to prayer. I crouched down on my floor (as tired as I was, my muscles were so achy that laying was uncomfortable and I avoided it as much as I could). I felt the presence of Christ specific and very close to me, and I could see in my mind’s eye Him reaching out His hand and touching my head.
“Christmas…” He said, “you’ve worked so hard to give your family a good Christmas, you’ve made yourself sick in the process… Well, here’s my gift to you: you’re clean.” I just sat there blinking for a minute, not sure what He was telling me. “You’re healed,” He said. And sure enough, from that moment on, I was healed, even leaving shortly after my time with Him to do a 5-hour cleaning binge so that all our Christmas morning photos wouldn’t show the world how dirty our house was.
Someone knocked on the bedroom door, and I begged them to give me a little more time alone. They left. I was still sitting there, cross-legged, in the presence of Christ. He touched my head again, blessing my 2017. I had been terrified of the new year. Between the oil slump, the volatile local and world politics, the threat of war, and the hurdles my kids were facing, it had never even occurred to me that I might actually have a GOOD 2017.
He talked to me more, telling me that He loved me and reminding me that, while in this world our best kinds of love have to be divided into their appropriate places – the kind of love you have for a spouse, the kind you have for a child, the kind you have for a brother, etc. – all good kinds of love exist together simultaneously in God. That’s how He can address me as His daughter, His bride, His friend, and so on: there’s no boundaries needed. He loves me all these ways, all at once. And He also loves me in the most precious relationship of all: with me as His human and He as my God.
When I sensed everything was dealt with and His presence was leaving me, I begged Him to stay just a little while longer. So He stayed with me, His love surrounding me, until I was ready to go.
I was elated as I stood up and left the room. I sat on the couch, utterly alive with the afterglow of having been in His presence. I kept thinking of something totally random… How when Christ “rewired” me, 11 years ago (I have always thought of salvation in such terms, for whatever reason), that He left a part of Himself ‘to fertilize my heart so that good things could grow there’. How proud I felt to know that God had trusted me enough to live on in my heart! How wonderful it would be if I could SHOW it to people, just unbutton my collar, as easily as showing them a scar from heart surgery….
I wanted so badly to TELL someone. Just to pick up the phone and say, “guess what I got for Christmas? A visit from my best friend!”. But, as I have said, I get shy talking about such things.
Needless to say, Christmas was beyond wonderful. I was filled with joy the whole day and got everything I needed or wanted, with the promise of a good year to come. But of course, by far, my favorite gift will always be the un-buyable, un-earnable, presence of Jesus Christ.
With Much Love, and a Happy New Year,
Morgan Hart