by Nate Allen
different from the one I was talking to before. He looks healthy. No maggot is stuck to his neck. His hair is a well brushed set of curls. His eyes are softly set into his face instead of bulging. He appears to be fine.
I know I’m no longer viewing the spiritual realm. This is what he sees when he looks in the mirror. Though healthy on the surface and what women would consider to be handsome, everything he sees lies to him. The only real part of him is emaciated and dying, no matter what his outside shows.
“Do I look like a religious man?” I ask him. “Do I look like someone trying to sell you something?”
“No,” he shakes his head as he looks back toward the bed that’s still hidden by the wall of the entryway. “But, looks can be deceiving. And I’m also confident once you see what’s on the bed, the happiness you hope to offer me will be taken back, because I don’t deserve it. And you will see that.”
He steps backwards into the hotel room. From where I’m at, I can only see the very corner of the bed to my left. But, as I follow him in onto the tan carpet, I see a woman’s lifeless body laid out on top of it. Her bruises are severe. She is halfway dressed. On her bottom half she is wearing a long black pencil skirt; on her top half a red and black polka dotted bra. The pit in my stomach would be deep if I didn’t know what she actually was. There is a reason why I was shown levels of this world. It was to give me perspective I otherwise wouldn’t have. If I came in here, never seeing what this “woman” actually was, would I care enough to save this man? Even if I was able to compare myself to him, I would still feel more deserving of Christ’s love. And I would probably act just like everybody else has: judgmental and above him.
I had to see the truth in order for me to still care about his soul. I had to be given a Godly perspective of his reality to look past everything else. I wonder if Jesus would have died for mankind if He only had a human perspective. If He wasn’t able to see the brokenness and need under the surface, His only reality would have been the surface. And on the surface, they laughed while they ripped the flesh from Him. On the surface, they spit on, beat up, and constantly mocked the One willingly dying for them. On the surface, they joyously nailed Him to a cross…
“What happiness do I deserve?” he asks as he looks over at the bed. “She isn’t the first. Many have ended up like this over the years.” His head is hung and the words coming from him are hardly audible. He is a defeated man in every aspect.
“What happiness do I deserve?” I ask. “Do I deserve more than you? Do I deserve happiness because I never physically hit my ex-wife? In my mind I did far worse to her. And since I am trying to talk you down from killing yourself, let me speak to you about endings. If you kill yourself, what happens next? Do you believe that death is the end? If so, death is better than life, because you can escape. But, what if it isn’t? What if the hell you’ve experienced in this life is waiting for you in the next? What if death is only the beginning to something eternal?”
“You said you aren’t a religious man.” he says as he lifts his head. “It sounds a lot like a pitch to me.” His tone mirrors the one I’ve used so many times to deflect the crazy Christians.
“It’s a conversation. And I’m asking a very real question. What if this isn’t the end?”
“Then I’m eternally unlucky,” his smile is a skeptic’s default. It drips with arrogance and self assurance. I’ve worn it countless times in my life. And I now see how foolish it looks.
“If you are desperate enough to end your life, why did you let me in at all? It’s because deep down you knew what more meant, because there is some part of you that has always reached out for more. And you let me in because you want to be convinced. You want to think, no matter how much bad you’ve done, happiness is still a possibility for you. You know that sex doesn’t fully satisfy; in fact, in your case it usually ends with a dead prostitute on your bed. You’ve always known that more points to God.”
“No. I just know what words to look out for.” His stubbornness is baffling. Though broken hearted for what he’s done for years to “women”, he has no problem lifting his head to argue about “religion”.
And yet, I can’t fault him for it. No matter what’s going on around you, when you don’t believe in God, the very mention of Him is an annoyance. And it automatically pulls you out of your current circumstance into a defensive position, because, in all honesty, most Christians are the type of people you want to maroon on an island. You want to prove them wrong just to shut them up, because they judge from some high place as if they are above the dirt of the unbeliever’s situation. They talk at them instead of trying to reach them. And worst of all, they paint Jesus in the same, terrible light. If Evan sees me like one of them, I’ll never reach him.
“I told you I’m not a religious man.” I look him in the eyes. “I was a broken man, who still knows more about mocking God than glorifying Him. I was an empty man who wanted to be filled. I was suicidal, just like you are. My reasons weren’t because of what I had done but because of what I was missing. Living life feeling empty is a hell all its own, because you spend your life searching for something that will fill you up—
“But you never find it.” he interrupts. “And you get tired of searching.”
“Yeah,” I pause. “But, that’s what I’m offering you. I’m offering you fullness. I don’t care what you’ve done. It’s still offered to you.”
“Why? What kind of man are you to say that beating a woman to death is ‘nothing’? How can you disregard what I’ve done?”
“I’m not disregarding it. I’m saying it can be forgiven. I’m saying that you don’t have to die in your shame. It isn’t about whether you deserve forgiveness; it’s freely offered to you, whether you deserve it or not. What kind of man would you be to deny it?”
“I would be a just man.”
“You would be a stupid man!” I pause as I close my eyes for a moment and then open them again. “If you kill yourself—if you die as you are right now, Hell will become your only reality. And Hell is eternal emptiness, because it is eternal separation from Fullness. I don’t care how Jesus has been portrayed to you in the past. Please listen to my plea. Forget all preconceived notions and break it down to the simplest details.”
Evan shakes his head softly as he looks down toward the floor. “What can you say that I haven’t heard before?”
“It all comes down to fullness. We crave it. We search for it. And so many of us die without finding it. But, have you ever considered that we’ve already found the Source and simply choose not to accept Him? What if finding fullness is as easy as accepting that you’ve always desired it? And all that’s required of you is inviting it into your life? What if it’s always been about what you choose?”
“What kind of God would let me suffer like I have? What kind of God would let my parents be killed in front of me? What kind of God—
“What kind of God would willingly die for you so that you could live? What kind of God would suffer pain on a scale that can’t be measured so that He could offer you fullness? You ask the wrong questions. And trust me when I say that His fullness will make you forget any pain that came before it. You just have to choose to call out for Him.”
Directly behind me I can hear something scratching on the other side of the door.
“You don’t know how much I hate Him.”
“You just have to trust me. It will all make sense. You can’t see the truth right now. If you could, it would change so much.”
“What do you mean?” he looks down towards me, with eyes like a child.
“Do you want to be full?”
“Yes. But—
“No. If you want to be full, you have to take a chance. Set aside your hate, your disbelief, and the voices telling you this is foolish. It will seem foolish, because we’ve convinced ourselves it’s foolish. There only needs to be one genuine part of you.”
The scratching behind me is getting louder.
“One small part of me wants to
believe what you say.”
“That’s enough.”
“But, every other part of me hates Him. And even if some small part of me believes, the hate is so much stronger.”
“You only hate Him because you can’t see the truth. You hate Him because of what you see. But, you also hate yourself for what you see. Even if the part of you that believes is microscopic, it will grow if you choose to focus on it.”
“Yeah.” His eyes move around as if controlled by gears. “But, then again, even in its simplest form, it’s still so childish. And it’s too easy.”
I now understand the outrage the man in the cabin felt when I called Jesus’ sacrifice easy. The very word now pounds into me with shocks. “Nothing was easy about what He did for you. And I’m only going to ask you one more time. If you say ‘no’ now, I’ll leave you to your fate. Do you want to be full?”
“Yes. But, I—
“If this is about your pride, who are you trying to impress? A man ready to kill himself is already a pathetic man, isn’t he? Opting out of your life is your way of saying that you are giving up.” my words seem to stab into him like knives. “So, what sense of pride do you have left? What stubbornness beats in you strong enough that you are willing to risk your eternity? You aren’t stubborn when it comes to life. In fact, you would be in the act of ending it right now. And