I need forgiveness.God is here for me.
That took a long time to grasp. A very long time.
Now, I have done some bad things in my day. Things I wish I hadn't.
But now and then in the course of my work I come across people who do things so that are so bad I really struggle with these questions:
Can they possibly get the same grace that you and I get?
And, if there are degrees of badness, should there be degrees of forgiveness?
I arrived at the Wright County jail in western Minnesota an hour before visiting time started. I wanted to be first in line. The young woman I was waiting to see wasn't expecting me, a reporter, on that day although I had written her a letter saying I hoped to talk with her. The folks at the jail wouldn't tell her I had come nor ask her whether she would see me. I had to wait in line like everyone else. Fair enough. The woman and her boyfriend were accused in a cross country killing spree that began in Louisiana and ended in Minnesota where they strangled a beloved teacher named Ruth who had, just before they killed her, offered to help them turn their lives around. Start over.
The woman and I sat in small rooms separated by protective glass. She picked up her two-way telephone receiver. I picked up mine. "I am the reporter who wrote you," I told her. She was wary. You would be, too.
I started with the safe questions. The status of her criminal case. Whether she had heard from her family. She hadn't. Whether jail guards had been keeping her safely away from her boyfriend, to whom she had ultimately led investigators. They were.
But as to the murders and her role in them, well she wasn't going there.
"God knows the truth," was all she would say.
"What is the truth?"
"That's between me and God."
"And do you pray to God about that here in jail,"
"Yes."
"So I'm just wondering, when exactly did you find God? Is this something you have come to here in jail?" (I was envisioning a dramatic jailhouse conversion).
"Oh, no. God has always been with me."
And here comes the part I'm not proud of, but seriously, I am only human and we had already interviewed Ruth's devastated family and friends and this I'm okay with God stuff was starting to piss me off.
"You mean even before the first murder and between the first and the second one and before you came to Minnesota and met Ruth, God was with you all that time?"
"Yes."
"So, do you think God was with Ruth the day you killed her?"
See, I know I stopped being a reporter right then. Maybe I wasn't being much of a Christian either. I had become a judge. I'd judged her , not like the guy in the robe would, but maybe even more severely. And she knew it. She started to cry, got up and said she had to go. The guard led her out. The sheriff called the next day wondering what I'd said that had upset her so badly. He wasn't upset. Just curious. I guess it takes a lot to upset a serial killer.
Not long after that I talked with my minister about this encounter. Forgiveness, I told him, is my Achilles heel as a Christian. Fortunately, he told me, it's not your job to forgive her. It's God's.
But, I persisted. Is that how it works? You kill someone. Maybe ask for forgiveness; maybe not. Do it again. Tell yourself you've got God's grace in your back pocket. So, no worries. Cuz I gotta tell ya, that's the kinda stuff gives Christianity a bad name.
No, he explained, what she's talking about is what we call "convenient grace." Convenient grace is a distortion of the gospel.
"What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace: By no means!" Romans 6:15
To truly open your heart to Christ is transformative. When we experience God's grace we become different people. People so grateful that we want to do things that draw us closer to Him. Not things that push Him further away.
Grace is not a convenient thing to be taken and squandered. It is the most precious gift you or I will ever receive. God gives it to us. And it cost him dearly. Let us be grateful. Every day. And live as though we are. Joyfully.
