by Randy Alcorn
“What have I done?” Raymond clenched his teeth, hurting the inside of his mouth. He waited for the taste of blood. There was none. He was a bloodless man, able to feel pain but not able to destroy the body he’d be trapped in forever.
There was no family here, no gang, no hood, no turf. Only unending nothingness. Uninterrupted boredom. The tedium crushed him already, though he’d been here only a short time. What would a million years of tedium do to him?
At first he tried to rehearse his deeds that earned him his rep, his Original Gangster status. He now saw them for what they were—pathetic self-indulgent attempts to get recognition. No one was here to listen. Even if they had been, they wouldn’t be impressed, only absorbed in their own self-centered misery. The things he’d done and boasted of he was now being punished for. He had planted on earth. He was reaping the harvest here.
“What’s that?” Raymond cried out, cowering in fear at a horrid sight. He caught just a glimpse of a face, a terrifying face. Somehow he knew that in another place that same face brought endless delight, for it smiled with approval on its inhabitants. But here it brought unmitigated terror. He who by his presence made heaven heaven, by his absence made hell hell. And yet, somehow he must not be entirely absent, for his untempered holiness was the burning fire, his attributes the sulfuric air that caused Raymond to choke. In a moment of insight, he realized the Holy One had actually been here once, been here for him so he would not have to be here. Yet here he was.
He saw the haunting image of the Terrible One, and caught a glimpse of ugly scars on his hands and feet. They repulsed him. The thought of touching those hands or being touched by them appalled him.
He remembered Pastor Henley’s assurances in Los Angeles that everyone was good by nature, that people were not responsible for the bad things they did, that the fire and brimstone message of the Bible literalists was not from God, not Christlike. “God is love, and therefore there is no hell,” the pastor had said. “You and I would not send people to hell, and God is surely more merciful than we.” The words had sounded so reassuring. But it was all a lie, Raymond realized with startling clarity.
He cried out for the rocks to fall upon him, to obliterate him. But there were no rocks here. There was nothing here. Nothing familiar. Nothing comforting. Nothing at all.
Here there was no opportunity to kill, no opportunity to die, no one to dare or boast to, no one to jive or hustle or con or steal from, no one to seduce, no one to tell stories to, no loved one to embrace. He no longer had dominion. Perhaps he’d never had it, perhaps his sense of control over turf had been an illusion all along. Perhaps true dominion belonged only to one, the Terrible One with the monstrous scars.
His mother had warned him. She’d told him about Jesus. He’d never really rejected him, not in words anyway. When his life was in danger, he’d even prayed to God. But he’d never followed through on his vows made in moments of crisis, never accepted God’s one and only provision for his rescue.
There was no color here, no texture, no richness, no variety. The utter isolation meant there could be no culture here. Hell was not multi-cultural. It was non-cultural.
Across the far reaches of this nothingness, others he’d known on earth now existed as shriveled souls, husks of humanity. On one of these desert islands of misery, a pathetic nameless man once known as Pastor Henley engaged in an unceasing litany of telling God that hell was a violation of his love, that he had been a man of God, that he had preached a message of love and acceptance, and God had no right to keep him here.
The smell was horrible. Raymond’s stomach turned in revulsion. It was as if he were immersed in hot excrement, the sewage of sin and self. It was putrid. He wanted to vomit, but could not. He was held captive to the moment before relief. There could be no relief here. Only endless self-preoccupation, self-hatred, self-everything, and therefore nothing. Self stripped of its one reference point, the God of the universe, and therefore stripped of its worth, stripped of its humanity. The vomit continued to build within, but it could never be released.
Was hell God’s fury exploding upon him? Or was it his own fury imploding within him? He felt himself shrinking, the ever-narrowing man. In heaven, he somehow knew, his brother Jesse was the ever-broadening man. Jesse had been right. Raymond had been wrong.
“Too late. It’s too late!” he cried, hoping the words would travel far enough to be heard by some other soul, someone else to join the company misery loves. No. There was unlimited misery here. But there was no company.
The fires of blame and excuses and rationalizations and justifications scorched him. He experienced the corroded metallic taste of life without God. No, not life. Mere existence, stripped of purpose. No work here. What he would give to be able to perform even the most menial task, even to flip a burger. It would give some semblance of meaning. No rest here. How he longed to sleep. No rules here. A structureless hell in which there was no hierarchy, no baby gangsters, no lieutenants, no generals. All eternal wannabes without hope of advancement.
“I had a choice!” he screamed at himself in rage and horror. Why had he chosen what any sane man would not? Why would he live forever, paying for his sin, when there was one who had already paid for it? The utter insanity of sin gripped his soul. The Governor’s pardon had been offered repeatedly, every year and every day and every hour of his life on earth. Now it was too late to receive it. Eternal condemnation. No reprieve. No hope. Eternal regret. Everlasting stagnation. Unending despair.
His circle of influence had shrunk to nothing. His life had gone into eclipse for all eternity, erased as if it were no more than a stray pencil mark. He had no turf, no dominion. Those he’d ridiculed as church-going wimps, he knew now, would reign over the universe, participating joyously in the one true dominion.
“I should have listened,” he yelled, hearing not even an echo. “I should have listened to Mama and Jesse and Pastor Clancy.”
He heard a horrible nightmare of a scream. It sounded like a crazed animal crying out in agony as it is riddled by the lead of a shotgun. Terrified, he realized the bloodcurdling scream was his own. More horrible still, he realized no one else would ever hear it.
Clarence answered his home phone during dinner. “Good news,” Ollie said. “We’ve got a DNA match with Gracie’s envelope.”
“Norcoast or Gray?”
“Can’t talk about it over the phone. Let’s save it for tomorrow. I’ll be out most of the day. How about four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”
“Ollie, you can’t string me out like this. Can’t you just give me the bottom line?”
“No can do.” Ollie sounded like a man who enjoyed holding the cards.
“Okay.” Clarence sighed. “Jake told me you could be a pain in the neck, Ollie. Well, he didn’t tell me the half of it. I’ll be there at four.”
Clarence, Obadiah, and Geneva attended the evening community meeting at Mount Olivet Church. The neighborhood association chairman, Rod Houck, took the floor and pointed to a table. “We’ve got some handouts for you related to discouraging drugs and promoting abstinence. There’s also a sign-up sheet for a new twenty-four-hour hot line and prayer chain through the churches.”
“Amen” and “Hallelujah” surfaced among the nodding heads, reminding Clarence that here, in contrast to meetings he’d attended in the suburbs, a religious consciousness spilled over openly into community affairs.
“First, the bad news,” Rod said. “I’m reading from this yellow sheet called Gang Trends. It gives us predictions based on statistics over the past years. It says, ‘Gangs will become more violent, using military weapons and killing more police officers. They will continue to use and exploit juvenile members to commit crimes due to the more lenient juvenile justice system. They will continue to fund their crimes through expanded drug trafficking. Female gang members will increase. More gang members will become career criminals—less will outgrow or escape gangs. Some gangs will evolve into organized crime groups. Jails
will be overcrowded with gang members, and gang assault on jail personnel will increase. Due to budget restraints, some jurisdictions will be forced to limit their efforts to prosecute hard-core gang members for the most serious and violent crimes. The crime level will outstrip the community’s ability to deal with it—courts will be gridlocked with gang cases. Probation officers and parole agent caseloads will increase to the point where supervision of gang members will become superficial and meaningless.’”
Groans surfaced across the auditorium.
“Now I know that’s a tough way to start,” Rod said, “but maybe if we realize what we’re up against, it’ll motivate us to do whatever we can. It may sound hopeless, but I’m convinced we can turn this thing around. We can’t turn it around by ourselves; we need each other. Well, this is a community meeting. Who wants to speak up?”
“I say the gang problem is only as big as we let it be.” It was Frank, Clarence and Geneva’s next-door neighbor. “Everybody these days is sayin’ what we need in this country is more tolerance. I say what we need is less tolerance. We’ve tolerated all this gang foolishness, and now it’s killin’ us. Me, I think my New Year’s resolution is going to be less tolerance!”
Laughter and applause.
Jami Lyn Weber from Atkins Street stood up. “Well, here’s one thing we can do. You all know Stoney’s is the store that sells most the ball caps and T-shirts in our hood, including most the gang stuff. Stoney’s takes drug money to sew on Crip killer and Blood killer insignias as if they were school mascots. I’ve bought gifts there for years, and so have most of us. Well, last week I told them they weren’t getting my business anymore until they stop working for gangs. They just pushed me off. So I’m asking you, how about a boycott, Dr. King style? They won’t listen to me, but they’d have to listen to all of us or they’d go broke.”
Lots of handclapping and amens.
“Dr. King used to say.” Jami Lyn continued, “if a man has to choose between parting with his prejudices and parting with his money, usually he’ll part with his prejudices. So how many of you will agree to boycott Stoney’s until they stop the gang stuff?” Almost every hand in the room went up. “All right, then. Call Stoney’s, drop by and explain, or send them a letter. I happen to have their address and phone number right here.” She held up a half sheet of paper, handwritten and photocopied. “I’ll pass these out, and you pass them on to all your neighbors.”
“That’s a good start, Jami Lyn,” Rod said. “Who’s next?”
“How about we do the same thing at Boyd’s Music?” a man asked. “You listen to that gangsta rap they sell? If I took the words from those songs and said them to a girl on the street, I could be arrested. But the boys listen to this stuff all the time, callin’ girls these terrible names and treatin’ ’em like dirt. You think it doesn’t make them disrespect women?”
“Same with Smitty’s Video,” a woman added. “They carry all this sex and violence crud, and our kids end up watching it. Now I know the main responsibility is ours as parents, but we can sure reduce the temptations by cleaning up these stores. How about a boycott on Smitty’s too?”
“I’ll pass around a sheet of paper,” Rod Houck said. “Sign it if you want to tell Stoney’s and Boyd’s and Smitty’s they’ve got to get rid of their garbage if they want our business. We’re on a roll. Who else?”
Jay Fielding, principal at Jefferson, walked up front and took the microphone, his wife Debbie beside him.
“Debbie and I have been talking and praying about this. Let me put it real simply—we lose the next generation and we’ve lost our country. These kids need a bigger cause. Instead of doin’ battle against each other, they need to do battle against evil, gangs, drugs, selfishness. And not just against something, for something. For God. For family. For country. For their children and grandchildren. We can’t let them run wild—that’s giving up on them. We’ve got to set limits. Can’t let them stay out to all hours unsupervised on the street. What happens on the street, 90 percent of it, is bad. We can’t let them wear gang clothes. And we’ve got to take charge when it comes to their friends. When I was growin’ up, my parents always had veto power when it came to my friends. I say we’ve got to reclaim our children.”
The clapping began, and several people stood to their feet. Then everyone stood, applauding both the man and his words.
“No offense to the principal,” one man said, “but some of you know a group of us have been working on starting a charter school. Now I’ve always been a supporter of public schools, but I think things have gotten out of control and we need a fresh start—a place where kids are taught to respect teachers and each other, a place that’s safe, where there’s no drugs and weapons, where learning is cool instead of lame. Now they’ve got these schools in some parts of the country and they’re so popular, black folk are getting on the waiting list the week their child is born.”
“Just want you to know,” Jay Fielding stood back up and said, “I’m all in favor of anything that helps our children. If a charter school does that, God bless your efforts—and maybe it’ll help give us leverage to reform our public schools too. I say, go for it.” Heavy applause.
“Now, I’m going to read you a few more statistics,” Rod Houck said, “that reinforce the importance of everything you’ve been saying. Listen to this. African Americans are 12 percent of the population, but 44 percent of all homicide victims in America. Nearly 95 percent of black homicides are committed by other blacks. Half of all children born with AIDS are black. Our infant mortality rate is twice as high, not counting abortions, which are also twice as high. Our unemployment rate is twice as high. Two out of three black children are born out of wedlock, three times the national average. Black children are four times more likely to live in poverty, six times more likely to be on public assistance. A man living in Harlem is less likely to reach age sixty-five than a man living in Bangladesh. But here’s the one that most hits home to me. In the ten largest cities in America, the high school dropout rate for black males is 72 percent.”
A united groan rose from the room.
Reverend Clancy took the floor again. “There’s something else we need in the city, and I say without it everything else will fail. We need the church of Jesus Christ.”
Amens and hallelujahs shot up from everywhere.
“Jesus didn’t say the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the NAACP or schools or drug rehab centers or recreational programs. He did say the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against his church. Now I say the churches have dropped the ball. We used to be the center of the community. Well, some of our churches are trying to be that again. There’s a couple of churches in the suburbs partnering with us. We’re taking kids to parks, museums, the beach, the mountains, on camping trips. We’re getting them into summer camps. We’ve got some classes to teach you to communicate with your children, to talk with them about their futures and drugs and sex and standing up for what’s right. Brother Jim from Teen Challenge sent over some information on helping kids off drugs and evangelizing and discipling them in the process. Now I want Brother Don Frasier to tell us what Bridge Ministries is doing.”
“Well, we’ve got some lofty plans,” Don said. “Mel Renfro’s developing a top-notch recreational facility. We’re starting a family counseling center and organizing clerical support for our smaller churches. After-school tutoring programs. An African American Christian arts and entertainment center. A vocational teaching center. A coffee house. A Christian bookstore. A rehabilitation center for social offenders. Eventually we want a K-12 Christian school. We’ve already started our mentoring program where men work with boys and women with girls. We know all this is ambitious. We’re going to need lots of help. But we believe God is big enough to bring us that help.”
“Amen.”
“Yes, Lord. Do it, Father.”
“There’s some great things going on in inner cities around this country,”
Clancy said, “and we can do them here too. Church-sponsored thrift stores, where folks get good clothes at great prices and people learn to work. Low-cost health clinics, law offices, classes to help people get their GEDs, volunteer tutoring, Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Big Brother programs, job hot lines. There’s two churches in the suburbs that have started feeding us info on job openings. But all these programs won’t matter unless we come back to truth, a moral foundation for families and communities to live by. We’ve got to unleash the truth on the streets, shine some light in the darkness. The heart has to change. Not just the outside, but the inside, and then the outside will follow. These kids don’t just need to be taught math and to put down needles and guns. They need Jesus. Without Jesus our cities are doomed, and so’s our whole country. In 1900 less than 10 percent of the world lived in cities. Now it’s 50 percent. If the church doesn’t claim the cities, it’s going to lose the country and the world.”
“Amen.”
“You said it, preacher.”
“These kids have strong loyalties,” Clancy said, “but to the wrong things, the wrong people. You turn that loyalty toward Jesus and you’ll see somethin’. You make them see their enemy’s Satan. Show them their family’s the family of God, their turf is God’s kingdom. Help them build their rep as followers of Christ. Teach them Jesus is worth livin’ and dyin’ for, and you’ll see things happen like this city’s never seen.”
“Glory.”
Clarence stood up, his voice its own built-in microphone. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood less than three months, so I’m no expert. But I know this. One of the things we’ve got to do is take on the drug dealers. If a man breaks into my house and points a gun at my children, I’m gonna take him down.” Clarence spoke with the fervor of a preacher. “Well, that’s just what the drug dealers have done. They’ve broken into our neighborhoods, and they’ve pointed the gun of crack cocaine at our children. We’ve got to take them down before they take our children down.”