This morning in our Bad Girls of the Bible study in Sunday school, we talked about Rahab. Of course the bad part about her was that she was a prostitute before she repented and believed on the God of the Israelites.
I'm not really sure how the conversation steered, but we talked about judging one another. Then the topic turned to confronting a Christian brother who is living in sin - when is it a matter of judging sin or judging another Christian's soul?
One woman told the story of how her family knew this 16 year old pastor's daughter. At one point the girl began wearing a lot of body jewelry and taking drugs/alcohol. She had become very bad. This woman in our class said that they had decided they would just love this girl and accept her even when everyone else was "shunning" her.
After a while, the girl kind of moved on and they didn't hear from her for a long time. Then one day the woman talking to us said that she received a letter from this girl, now grown. She said she was having therapy and part of her therapy was to write to people who had impacted her life. She asked, "Why didn't you ever ask why I was doing all of that stuff? I would've told you." Turns out she was being abused at home and had gone to the police, who didn't believe her because her folks said she was crazy. The drugs and booze and all the rest was her way of dealing with her horrible family life.
The woman in our class said she and her husband went right to the girl's home when they got the letter. By this time the girl was 30 or 40 (I can't remember). She was living in a gay relationship, still on drugs and booze. They had a talk and then the woman didn't see her again for 2 more years. She heard the bad news then that this poor girl had overdosed on drugs and died.
This is tragedy because a lot MIGHT have been avoided if the kind and nonjudgmental family had demanded to know why this poor girl was rebelling so.
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Same class, a different woman telling her story.
This woman went to a Michigan college and met a boy she befriended. She'd grown up in a sheltered type home and was the last to find out that this guy was gay. She decided to befriend him anyway even though all of her Christian friends told her to run.
This girl kept being the guy's friend but she confronted him over and over about his sin. She quoted Scripture and she told him that he needed Jesus. They'd get in little arguments over it, but remained good friends.
One day this girl took the guy home for the weekend to meet her family. She also took him to church. Her parents didn't know about his lifestyle, but they didn't want their daughter seen at church with this boy - he was black. The girl took him to church anyway. Wouldn't you know the preacher talked about homosexuality that morning - the first time in years!
Later, the guy quit college for a while because he could no longer afford to go. The couple lost contact for a long while. Then one day, out of the blue, the woman received a phone call from this guy. He was going to a good Christian college and studying to be a Christian counselor. He'd given up the gay lifestyle when he met Jesus...and it was because someone judged his sin and confronted him about it and made him think. And this person did it without sacrificing a friendship...it was done out of love.
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"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
Romans 8:28 (KJV)
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