The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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When I spoke to the troubled Christian I mentioned here I rambled a lot. [I will ramble some more in this piece.] I’m certain that what I told him was true but it was fragmented, mostly bits and pieces that were undeveloped and because that was true whatever help I was giving him was limited and had the weaknesses that all “quick fix” speech is subject to. The man was bleeding out of every pore; I was dealing with a systemic infection armed with a few sticking plasters and skin cream.
But because what I was saying was essentially the truth it was better than nothing—it was right that I should have given him what I had in heartfelt prayer and guidance. It makes no sense for us to withhold what we have to give because we don’t have all that the person truly needs if he/she is to survive in hope and finally triumph.
What would have added tragedy to the tragic would have been if I had thought that my bits and pieces of truth were the complete cure that he only had to recognize as truth. Imagine my meeting him several years later and learning that he was still struggling in the same fashion despite "all I had done for him". Worse still, imagine my being upset with him because he was still in a hand to hand brawl for his life even though he knew the truth about his behaviour.
I rambled in my working with this tormented brother because I had no systematic grasp of the truth about life or the scriptures and because I didn’t know him either; neither his childhood shaping, the strength of the addiction, his present environment, his attempts to overcome the sin that was devouring him or the genuineness of his trust and commitment to God. The one thing I knew was that here before me was an emotional wreck of a man who was begging for help. As it turned out, in his own way he knew exactly how the woman felt who suffered from haemorrhaging and who ran from one doctor to another, exhausting all her energy and money in a vain quest for healing and felt only worse when she discovered the sure-fire cures failed her (Mark 5:25-26).
“Well, that’s the answer, don’t you see? The woman was healed when she turned to Jesus and this troubled man should have turned to Jesus!”
And had this fractured man not turned to Jesus? How, precisely, does someone like him “turn to Jesus”? Does he pray in sincerity for deliverance, does he fully practice the good that God has enabled him to do and seek help from the caring and wise to enable him to break his chains? Tell me precisely how he is to turn to the Lord as Mark’s woman turned to him. If he does turn to Jesus will he experience instant cleansing and freedom? [And if we were as troubled by our greed, apathy, bitterness, gossip, scorn, hyper-criticism, self-serving, laziness, self-promotion, glibness, impatience, evil temper, quickness to take offence and hold a grudge—if we “serial sinners” were as troubled about any or many of these of which we are guilty and turned truly to Jesus for deliverance would we find instant cure?]
Such texts are there to give us profound assurance that the reign of God has definitively appeared in Jesus and will be completed on a coming day; but to trot them out as an assurance of quick healing to those who truly want healed is a shallow understanding of the texts. What’s more, to proclaim such an understanding can destroy lives when the desperate come to believe that they must not be genuine in their trust or that God for some unknown reason isn’t willing to heal them or that they don’t truly want to be free or (pathetically) that their case is even too hard for God who must have a very cooperative “patient” which the struggler thinks he must not be.
The man I’m speaking of was looking for more than forgiveness—he was begging God for holy freedom!
What should I have told him?
[To be continued, God enabling.]
