GRaDeD on a CuRVe
You know, as Christians, sometimes I feel like we believe SIN is graded on a curve, and as long as we are at the midpoint or above, we are somehow BETTER than others and DESERVING of Heaven. I don’t believe that’s true.
Yesterday,
I asked Max if he would watch the movie, “The Jesus Revolution” with me. It’s free on Amazon Prime and I thought it was
worth watching. The movie tells the story
of three separate people, Charles Smith – the minister of a flagging church,
Lonnie Frisbee – a hippy, whose message brought many to Christ, and Greg Laurie
– a teenage kid who experimented with drugs then later founded Harvest Church
in California.
Max, being
the inquisitive kid he is, started Googling the various people while we were
watching the movie and at one point he said, “You know mom, Lonnie Frisbee died
from AIDS.”
This morning
I checked on that – and do you know what?
It appears it might be true.
Apparently,
as part of his early testimony, Lonnie told people that he had experimented with
homosexuality, but he said that when he told people that - he felt like a leper
because a lot of people turned away from him.
Soon, he took that detail out of his testimony.
And
while Lonnie indicated that he believed homosexuality to be a sin, he did not
believe it disqualified him from being loved by God.
Not everyone
agreed. Since both of the churches he
helped found prohibited homosexual behavior, they excommunicated him. “He was shunned and ‘written out of official
histories’ of the Jesus revival that occurred in the late 60’s and 70s, and as
part of the ostracism from his former churches his work was diminished, ignored
and maligned”1.
As I
learn the story of Lonnie Frisbee, I think about the story found in John 8 in
the Bible.
One
day, as Jesus was teaching, teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees
brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery before the
crowd. Now you must know back in those days,
such a thing was punishable by death.
“’Teacher,”
they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses sasys to stone her. What do you say?’
They
were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but
Jesus stooped down, and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer so he stood up
again and said, ‘All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the
first stone.’ Then he stooped down and
wrote in the dust.
When
the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the
oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the
woman, ‘Where are your accusers? Didn’t
even one of them condemn you’
‘No,
Lord,’ she said.
And
Jesus said, ‘Neither do I. Go and sin no
more.’” John
8:4-11
I think
it would be wise of us to recognize that ALL of us are sinners, and I don’t
think God grades on a scale. If we were to
get what we DESERVED, then HELL would be the final destination for each of us. Thankfully, God is merciful – and because of
that mercy – He sent his son, Jesus, to die on the cross as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins.
THAT was
the message of Lonnie Frisbee, and I think THAT was the message of Jesus…
1Wikipedia
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