Lyssa Henry

At risk of sounding like an ultra-judgmental-of-other-Christians “Christian,” I would like to address something that I am reminded of upon reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Celestial Railroad. Hawthorne’s tale, in a very similar way to C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, is an account of someone taking a trip to Heaven and who they meet and what they encounter on the way there. Hawthorne’s version includes a stop in Vanity Fair, where people are, as can be collected by the name of the place, vain and self-serving.

Although this may be controversial, I cannot help but recognize that this is in a big way how the church has been behaving today. People are praised for the things that they have done in their lives and let that praise get into their heads so that people think they are, inherently, the best thing that has ever happened to the planet Earth. People are too slow to realize that most of the time they are wrong about what they think is right or good or true. This morning in church, my pastor said something that I believe Christians and others alike need to come to terms with, that “there is no such thing as personal truth.” There is only one truth, the Truth. It is a difference between fact and opinion, not the judgement of different perspectives.

It is a fact that the Ten Commandments say not to commit adultery. One Christian cannot decide that they don’t want this to be true and just ignore that part of the bible because they don’t personally see a problem with it. If someone came up to you and asked “If my wife cheated on me, is it okay for me to cheat on her,” what would you say? If you were living in a world of personal truths, you might say “an eye for an eye,” and encourage your friend to be unfaithful to make up for the pain that they were put through. If you were living in a world of ONE Truth, you would tell your friend to turn the other cheek and deal with the situation gracefully. You may not stay married, but there is never a reason to hurt anyone else, even if they hurt you.

Living by a philosophy of revenge wouldn’t sound so rewarding if someone thought about everything they’ve ever done wrong to God. If God turned His back on humans the same way humans turn their backs on Him, we would all be doomed to a hopeless and terrible eternity.

God is gracious to us, so we should be gracious to other people.

We hurt God often enough that any person would be certifiably insane if they tried to say that they would be fine if God decided to turn and do the same things to us that we have done to Him. We should consider ourselves incredibly lucky and humbled that a God so great would spare us the pain that we really deserve.

So, even though the truth may not be as fun and instantly gratifying, people need to realize that what they want may not always be what is best for them in the long run. If people stop trying to improve before they get where they are going, they will never see the full potential of their lives. They will never get to see how amazing eternity can be by just listening to what we can already see as the truth. It might not be fun 100% of the time to do what Jesus wants us to do, but it will always, always turn out better in the end when we listen to Him instead of ourselves.