Big Roy

Back in 1990, with no faith to speak of, coming out of divorce and living on my own in a one room flat I started working for Maidstone Borough Council. At the time I was very low, very lonely, somewhat confused and on anti-depressants (this was 4 years before my conversion and a few months before I met Tracey.)

One of my colleagues was 'Big' Roy, an affable, straight talking 57 year old man. He was responsible for Health Promotion and I was responsible for Environmental Promotion and economies of scale dictated that we often promoted our two subjects together. When I got saved it became evident that Roy had no time for religion – you can imagine we had some interesting debates!

In spite of this, I had a great deal of admiration for Roy; he was loyal, happily married, hard working and generous. Last year Roy got cancer and for a while things looked touch and go but Roy being Roy made a good recovery although the adjective 'big' was less applicable than it once was J

A couple of weeks ago a mutual friend rang me and told me that Roy's cancer had returned and that he had also contracted septicaemia and had been moved to a local Hospice. Roy had specifically asked for me to visit him. At the end of our visit I politely acknowledged his dislike of religion but said that I would like to pray for him, with tears in his eyes Roy replied 'that's why I asked for you because I knew you would pray for me'. I held his hand and prayed for Roy, I thanked God for his friendship, for his influence on my life and for his courage and I asked God to relieve his pain and give him peace. I also asked God to have mercy on his soul and to receive him into his kingdom. Roy squeezed my hand tight and struggled to hold back the tears.

The bible says we are saved by faith; sometimes all we have to do is push through the crowd and touch the hem of his robe. Roy, the big passionate atheist, asked me to pray for him. He asked me to speak to what he had always claimed was a non-existent God on his behalf. In this simple act he both acknowledged God's existence and his power to save.

Yesterday morning I heard that Roy had passed away and I have no doubt that he is now safe in the arms of Jesus.

Of course if Roy had died in a car crash or of a heart attack maybe things might have been different – I don't know. All I do know is that when Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven and its citizens he usually spoke about prostitutes, publicans, tax collectors and sinners, he spoke about the 'halt and lame' about those that lived in the alleys and the lanes.

When it comes to heaven and hell things aren't always as cut and dried as they might seem.
Faith saves us and faith is nothing more than a humble recognition that we need God – it seems to me that in his simple hope that I would pray for him big Roy did just that...  humbly recognised and verbally expressed his need for God and I believe that was enough to save him.

Justice or mercy?

Tomorrow I start Jury Service and my thoughts are fairly mixed. First of all I'm disappointed to be away from the Corps for a minimum of two weeks at a critical time. The start of a New Year provides soldiers with a watershed that (if managed effectively) can drive the fellowship in the right direction and if necessary steer wanderers back onto the straight and narrow. So to be away from the Corps in January is frustrating. Secondly, although I am excited about seeing the justice system working close up, I am weighed down by a shared responsibility the outcome of which will impact in a major way on both the accused and the victim(s). As a Christian judgement is taboo for me – it is not my place to judge. If I do fall into the trap of judging another person then scripture informs me that the same level of understanding and compassion I exercised will be used by God when my life is weighed in the balance.

"1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. ³"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7)

Finally, I do believe in justice and in the need to accept the ultimate outcome of our actions. I grew up in an education system that positively endorsed corporal punishment and I felt the sting of the slipper, ruler and cane many times! My headmaster was an old fashioned portly man called Mr Goss. When he punished a child he did so in front of the whole school. The guilty culprit would be compelled to bend over on the stage in a school assembly and Mr Goss would strike 6 times, each swing of the cane punctuating the following sentence – "You must ...(swish) always ...(swish) be prepared ...(swish) to accept...(swish) the consequences ...(swish) of ...(swish) your actions".

Last week someone wrongly stated that as a juror I would be a soft touch, I think the phrase went something like... "Your namby-pamby, limp wristed, born again, liberal view of the world will want to give him a second chance!" Certainly I would endorse anyone's access to a second chance but I also believe that all of us (in this world if not in the next) have to face the consequences of our actions.

Mercy and justice are not incompatible. As a Christian, I do not have to worry about the eternal consequences of my decisions but the practical consequences of those decisions confront me every day. God has 'blotted out' my transgressions, he has made a conscious decision to 'remember them no more' but the devil often replays my past in the cinema of my mind.

So, I will go tomorrow, ready (and willing) to be convinced, beyond reasonable doubt as to whether the accused is innocent or guilty. Ultimately he or she will have to face the practical consequences of their actions regardless of whether they avail themselves of God's mercy and I will pray passionately that they will do the latter. I will make my mind up as a Christian and my thinking processes will be under the control of Christ. However horrendous the crime or unfeeling the accused I will remember at all times that I am nothing more than a sinner saved by grace and it could easily (but for that grace) be me in the dock.

I have always found that Wesley, Orsborn or Gowans usually have an appropriate word for most situations – in this case I turn to Orsborn:

I have no claim on grace;
I have no right to plead;
I stand before my maker's face
condemned in thought and deed.
But since there died a Lamb
Who, guiltless, my guilt bore,
I lay fast hold on Jesus' name,
And sin is mine no more.

Grace and peace, A

Hell and damnation!

The other day while I was standing in the High Street selling ‘The War Cry’ the penny dropped (and I don’t mean into my tin).

I was watching people walk by, praying for them and trying hard to catch their eye and at the same time was wondering about their eternal destiny. The early Salvationists had no doubt whatsoever that the world was lost; such a sentiment is reflected in our doctrines ‘we believe that all men… are justly exposed to the wrath of God”. Yet in today’s world of tolerance where political correctness encourages me to ‘live and let live’ the thought that the people walking passed me “are hell-deserving sinners” is a difficult concept to get my head around, or at least it was until the penny dropped.

It is Satan that takes people to hell not God. Indeed the bible clearly shows that God has done everything he could possibly do (short of revoking free will) to prevent people from damnation and he is as committed today to saving them as he ever was. Every man and woman has free will and a life to spend in anyway they want. The Devil, wanting them to suffer as much as possible, will use any and every means at his disposal to take them to hell. There is an escape route for all who want it.

My job as a Salvation Army Corps Officers is to warn people that without Christ there is no guarantee of an eternity outside hell and offer them (in a way they can understand) the good news that Jesus wants to save them.

Of course it remains true that both we and the devil will be surprised on judgement day just who does (and who doesn’t) make the grade – scripture makes it quite clear that there are some surprises in store. However, God’s right to determine who is righteous and unrighteous doesn’t excuse us from our mission to save as many as we can.

Maybe we need to resurrect the biblical concept of a real devil and a real hell into our preaching and witness in order to rediscover that urgency that was once the compassionate engine of The Salvation Army.

Love and prayers

A