THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502170119
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Wright
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
TWO SUNDAYS ago, on Feb. 5, in the quiet hours of the morning, my sister's 42-year-old heart stopped beating.
It was - blessedly - such a peaceful end to such a turbulent life. Plagued by severe asthma and allergies all her life, my sister Kay had spent the last few years in a constant battle to simply draw breath. Her waking hours were often tortuous ones. The many drugs she took for her many problems often left her either depressed or out of touch with reality.
Finally, her overburdened heart could not fight anymore and simply stopped. Kay died the way many of us wish we could. She died in her sleep.
Two years ago, I wrote another column about my sister. At that time, she had begun (for what seemed like the zillionth time) a quest for God. In that column, I told of my guilt over wondering if this latest quest was real or not. It wasn't the first time my sister had turned to Jesus, only to dump him when the living got tough or the theology got murky.
I told how fear, pure fear, kept me at a distance. Kay had hurt me so many times before that I just couldn't bring myself to embrace her with any real zeal. I'd seen her accept, then reject God just one time too many.
We grew close again for a short time after that column, which she loved, but the weight of our past emotional baggage was too great to sustain a complete reconciliation. Our calls to each other were few, brief and mostly shallow.
Then, in what would be our last Christmas season together, Kay and I had one of our best-ever conversations. She told me she had been attending a small local church and felt closer to God than ever before. When she spoke the name ``Jesus,'' it was said in a tone that reflected true love.
But there was more. For the first time, our talk about God went beyond the surface. She confided that though she loved her little church, she also had some real problems with its hard-line teachings.
``I believe in Jesus, and I know that means I'm saved,'' she said to me, ``but sometimes all this hellfire and brimstone stuff just doesn't seem right to me. I've been reading my Bible, and the Jesus I see in there is full of love and acceptance and forgiveness, but sometimes when I hear the preacher talk about how bad we are . . . well, it makes me feel like I'm not good enough for God. It makes me think I don't know what this Jesus stuff is all about.''
Kay's real concern was for people she loves and knows who aren't Christians, or who know about and admire Jesus Christ's teachings but, for whatever reason, cannot buy the whole deal. She was concerned that a loving God would send a lot of good, but non-religious, people to hell for all eternity.
We talked for 20 minutes about ``this Jesus stuff.'' I admitted that I too - after years of belief, study, prayer and meditation - had some of the same questions.
``When it comes to hell,'' I told Kay, ``I strongly believe it's a grave error for any of us humans to think we know for sure who's going, or for that matter what hell really is.''
I then told her something I remembered reading from C.S. Lewis' classic ``Mere Christianity.'' Lewis wrote that while it is necessary that Christians believe that all who know and follow Jesus Christ are saved, there is no way we humans can know - and therefore it is not necessary to believe - that all who don't know Christ aren't saved. In fact, he explained, Scripture is clear that all humans come to God through Jesus Christ, but exactly how that miracle takes place is a divine mystery.
The day after Kay died, Mom and I went to her home to gather pictures for her memorial service. While there, Mom found Kay's childhood Bible. Kay had obviously been reading it, along with several other devotional books. In her Bible, a bookmark rested on the Gospel of John, chapter 12.
As Mom handed me the Bible, my eyes fell on verse 47, where Jesus tells his disciples: ``And if anyone hears my words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.''
My Christmas chat with my only sister reverberated in my ears. A peace fell upon my heart.
Finally I knew that Kay had made her peace with God. She wasn't embracing God for a quick fix. She wasn't running away from God when the answers didn't match or the questions got tough.
She was on a walk with God . . . and in the wee hours of that blessed Sunday morning, the walk led her home. MEMO: Every other week, Betsy Mathews Wright publishes responses to her
opinion column. Send responses to Issues of Faith, The Virginian-Pilot,
150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510; call (804) 446-2273; FAX
(804) 436-2798; or send e-mail to bmw(AT)infi.net. Deadline is Tuesday
before publication. You must include name, city and phone number.
by CNB