By George

George just left.

He came over tonight to lament how horribly he feels one of his two daughters is treating him, because she is letting their mother (his soon to be ex) live with her.

He emailed me earlier today while I was at work, asking me to be the executor of his estate, and to deliberately write out his one daughter and her children because of how badly he felt she was betraying him.

Tonight, he described his situation as being in Hell, and threatened again to take an overdose of his medication.

I wasn’t sympathetic. Instead, I read him the description of Hell from Randy Alcorn’s Deadline (a novel). The section is eight pages of the thoughts of one of the characters as he slips from a coma into death. A sampling of the section:

“Thirst without water to quench it. Hunger without food to satisfy it. Loneliness without company to assuage it. There was no God here. He’d gotten his wish. On earth he’d managed to reject God while still getting in on so many of the blessings and provisions of God. But it was now clear, excruciatingly clear, the absence of God meant the absence of all God gives. No one could have good without the God who is the source of all good. No God, no good. Forever.

Doc was overwhelmed with the horror of it all. Doctor Gregory Lowell had wanted a world where no one else was in charge, where no order was force upon him. He had finally gotten it.

He missed the sound of laughter. there could be no laughter where there was no hope. The awful realization descended upon him that there was no storyline here. No opening scen, no developing plot, no climax, no resolution. No character development. No travel, no movement. Only constant nothingness, going nowhere. This was Doc’s first day in hell. And he knew, despite every protestation erupting from within hm, that every day would be the same, and of his days here there could be no end. Excruciating eternal boredom. It was all so terribly unfair.

For a moment he longed for heaven, to be in the very presence of God. But he could not allow for this God-hunger to continue. He could not face God’s existence, much less his goodness and justice, and the commentary it made on all the inexorable choices that had shaped his life in the other world, and determined his destiny here.

Hell was merely heaven refused. Denial had always been Doc’s solace, and now that he could not deny the reality of the Other, his only solace was gone. Once you left earth, there was no spin or twist on the truth, no angle on it, only the truth itself. As Finney’s heaven had started on earth, so Doc’s hell had started there. Now he was experiencing its final fruition.

No end. No sleep. No escape. Questions pointed their mocking bony fingers at him. Why had he been so sure about what he did not know? Why had he been so stubborn, insisting on being his own god, living by his own rules? He’d been a fool, and would remain a fool, for all eternity.”

George responded as soon as I had finished reading, “And I still don’t understand how an all-loving God could inflict something like what you just read onto anybody. I don’t understand why, if He knew who was going to choose eternal life and who wasn’t, why He let those who were not going to choose life even be born.

How could He be so cruel?”

I responded, “Of course you do. Didn’t you just tell me you loved your daughter so much that she’d never know how much? Isn’t this the same daughter that earlier today you wrote out of your will?

“You love her, yes. But you are so mad at her, because she refuses to see the obvious truth — about her mother being a … — that you have refused to her your blessings, the blessings of your lifetime.

“Are you really telling me George, that rather than saying to her, ‘I love you so much, that I will take this suffering, this rejection of me and the truth, into myself so that you may continue to live for the next forty years’… that you would rather that she’d never been born, never lived these 40 years, because now in her 40th year she sides with her mother??”

We discussed the ramifications of this parrallel for several minutes. George finally got up and moseyed out of my computer room toward the front door, saying how he couldn’t stand to hear anymore. Not a rejection, but a resignation.

I called to him as I stood up and followed, “Okay George, but just tell me one thing: what is your departing thoughts? What are you leaving with at the moment?”

“That I’m a lost cause and I’ll never change.”

“Why do you say that George?”

“You have no idea how many times I’ve prayed, asking for change. How many times I’ve gone to the alter…”

“For what?!” I interrupted. “Prayed about what, asking for what to change??”

“That I would stop making mistakes.”

“George, why? You are never going to be a perfect person. Being a person means we are inherently imperfect. If we were perfect, or could become perfect, then there’d be no need for Jesus Christ. I can’t change my gender. I can’t change my skin color. And I can’t change the fact that I’m imperfect. A sinner. The Curse is part of my DNA. Part of my soul.

“So if you are praying to be perfect — its never going to happen! But if you are tired of feeling oppressed and want change…then that’s up to you, George, not God.

“If you want change, George, the just do something different!! Do what, you ask? Well, what does the Bible say are the most important things?

• Love God,
• Love your neighbor,
• as yourself. Which means you must Love Yourself, too.

So do you know what Love is? Then decide to find out!! Go read about it, go ask about it, go talk about it, go rent movies about it. Go get books about it. Visit the library, visit the bookstore, visit the Christian bookstore, listen for it on the radio…do something but the key, George is to DO SOMETHING! CHOOSE to change! Choose to grow!

Do something to love God, love people, and love yourself!”

George thought about this. “I used to sing in the choir, spend time in ministries for the church and all that.”

“What happened,” I asked?

“Well, that was back when I had a family that I thought loved me.”

“Exactly, and now that you think you don’t… what? You stopped singing in the choir. You chose to stop those things. So then it begs to ask, why were you doing them in the first place. If you are only going to do nice things for others when people are doing nice things for you, then are you really being generous? Or are you giving to get?

“George, I want to put a basement in this home. Why? So I can put in more rooms and have more people come live here. Because I know its bad to live alone. Do I get some benefit from that, having a basement? Sure, but the reason I’m doing it is for the reason I made public at the house’s dedication: this house is just a place to be. My real home is elsewhere,” as I gesture towards heaven.

“But I don’t know if I should take the money for the basement instead and give it to the church for the capital campaign for the new church construction!!! George, I love giving so much, that I struggle choosing between the things I can give to!

“And I don’t tell you that to boast, but to explain when you start making choices to give to others, eventually you make it

such a habit that you forget about yourself. You are truly living for God, because it makes Him happy. And you feel happy too!”

He thought about that, and then left. I pray that message sinks in, and thank the Lord for choosing me to serve Him.