|
 Despite
my best efforts, I sometimes find myself blindsided by truth. That
happened recently.
On the recommendation of family and friends, my wife and I recently
went to see Jesus Revolution. The movie centers around a revival
movement during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s which saw thousands
and thousands of “hippies” come to radical faith in Jesus Christ.
One early scene, the one that set up the remainder of the movie,
stuck like an arrow in my heart.
The shot involved Chuck Smith, the pastor of a small, aging
congregation in California. Smith was struggling with the
degenerating culture of sexual freedom, rampant drug abuse, and the
rejection of all kinds of authority while trying to faithfully
preach truth and parent a teenage daughter through this perilous
time. While watching a news program that focused on how confused and
hopeless the young generation had become, Smith is shown saying,
“I’m not sure they can be saved.”
Smith’s words put a spotlight on my own unspoken
attitudes about today’s youth culture. Sexually confused. Widespread
use of very dangerous drugs. No respect for authority. Very little
hope. I may never have said it aloud, but I’ve often thought that
very thing – Can they be saved? In Smith’s day, God more than proved
they could be, so who am I to think otherwise about what He can do
in ours? In fact, who am I to think that I can be saved? I may
consider myself a respectable, educated and reasonably good citizen,
but these aren’t God’s qualifications for a heavenly eternity. I’m
no more or less a sinner than the hippie boomer of the ‘60’s or the
Gen Z “zoomer” of today.
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Isn’t that the point of the cross? Jesus died to
forgive, to transform and to give a future to a sinner like me. He
died to forgive, to transform and to give a future to a sinner like
you, too. If any of us is good enough, then Jesus’s died for
nothing.
Simon Peter, and others in the early days of the Church, had to
undergo a similar heart procedure. God had to convince him that the
non-Jewish peoples of the nations could be saved. The Lord said
something to Peter than would have been a great answer to Chuck
Smith’s lament (and my own): “Don’t call something unclean that I
died to make clean.” Or to say it in the other languages of the
cross, “Don’t imprison someone I died to pardon.” “Don’t call
irredeemable what I gave my life to purchase.” Don’t see as
abandoned or unwanted those I suffered to adopt as my own.” “Don’t
make war against the ones with whom I have signed a treaty of peace
– in my blood.”
Normally, I rush to the empty tomb. This year, I’m
lingering beneath the cross and marveling that He allowed Himself to
be completely broken for someone like me. And if His cross is hope
for even one of us, then it is truly hope enough for all of us! |
