Following Judah's Lion

Truth War Casualties

This is a post from 2007. I am reposting it because of reading about another manifestation of lost and troubled youth called "embedding".

Resue the perishing, care for the dying...

There are many teenagers who now go through a variety of emotional and sexual manifestations that are not only not mainstream, some are obviously bizarre and self destructive on many levels. One of the most intriguing and bewildering exhibitions of emotional instability is the phenomenon known as “cutting”. This is where a teen, usually a girl, will derive some emotional relaxation by cutting her own flesh. They will take a razor or knife or some other sharp object and cut the flesh on their arms or some other place on their body. Usually these cuts do not require medical attention so the secrecy of their actions remains intact, but why would someone cut themselves and what benefit emotionally is derived from cutting?
We may never figure out the reasons with any amount of accuracy, but we can know with complete assurance they are in desperate need of help. They, like the goth, gay, and other communities of the lost world, do not need mocking and ridicule, they need Christ to meet them at the very intersect of their crisis. How dare the body of Christ, saved only by God’s grace, ever mock or berate them or use them in any self serving posters like visual stepping stones to a further self righteous elevation. The Lord reveals that “such were some of you” and indeed we were, but through God’s grace we have been changed. But these “cutters” are so representative of the lost world, desperately seeking any way to relieve the pain and unhappiness that has burrowed itself deep within their hearts.
Have we learned nothing from the way we railed at homosexuals in the past and thereby misrepresented the gospel of Jesus Christ, and by that misrepresentation the devil blinded them to the only hope they had? Will we continue in like manner to hammer home the sin and the sinner along with it, or will we sacrifice our precious reputations and eat with sinners and publicans and gays in order to shine a redeeming light where darkness now prevails? And do we now buy into the false teaching that God hates the sinner as well as the sin and in so doing soothe our carnal conscience? And if God hates these sinners then so should we, but don’t worry, they hate themselves anyway.
And while the workers spend an abundance of time in the theological threshing floor rehashing the doctrinal points concerning people like these cutters, the real life children of Adam continue to cut themselves inside and out only to be mocked by posters and pictures and because they do not know the Ten Commandments. Are we willing to be cut in their place? He was. They have a hope which was given for their sins, but that hope loses something when it comes mixed with pride and condescending humor or scorn about them and their bondage. We are so ambivalent about the unimaginably deep pain that some experience from a horror that describes their childhood. We are indignant about some petty mercantile mistreatment and yet some of these kids walk daily with suicide as a companion searching for any hope, and if they don’t find it death will find them.
I have grown so weary of the meaningless banter and smug effervescence about the sins of others when the church as a whole lies exposed as having a heartless and restricted view of the suffering and spiritual condition of the entire world. Tonight there will be young girls who so hate themselves and their predicament that they will secretly wound themselves and somehow appease the inward battle momentarily. Who will reach out in love to them? Who will mend and not mock? Who will see their blood and remember His for them? Who will leave the doctrinal debate long enough to feel compassion about their souls? Whose eyes will be so like Jesus’ eyes that they will look past their rebellion, their makeup, their dress, and their language and see their souls?
There is much talk of truth wars these days, but is that truth restricted and confined to pen and paper, or is the truth alive and waiting to be carried by the recipients of grace to sinners who need it? Put yourself in her place, she is 14 years old and she comes from a broken family. Her biological father left when she was 8 years old and since then she has never felt the same. Her mother married the first man that she dated after the divorce and he began to molest this young girl three years ago. He drinks and has a violent temper, and he has threatened to kill her if she ever tells anyone. At 14 she has no idea what to do being both frightened and lonely.
Two years ago she began to secretly cut herself on her upper arms and it seemed to relieve some of the pain. So she crawls into a closet in her room and methodically wounds herself with a razor blade, leaving marks and bleeding cuts. She feels that it is the only thing that keeps her from taking her own life, she is all alone. Her pain is unbearable and some of the kids at school mock her because she dresses in black and keeps to herself with only a couple like minded girls as friends. She tries to avoid coming home as much as possible, so she endures the looks and disdain from people in the mall where she hangs out. She has no future and has almost given up. One day after her step dad had left visiting her again, she crawls into her closet with her best friend, the razor.
This time she can no longer bear it and with a final determination she deeply cuts her wrists and lays sobbing and dies. She will no longer be fodder for a discourse on methodology. She can no longer pose for a satirical poster. No one will have to roll their eyes in scorn when they see her. If anyone had shed any tears for her they may stop now. And yes, she went to hell so she can be placed into evidence on the orthodox side. And the tens of thousands of sisters who continue to walk the same excruciating path that she has now left will follow her one way or the other, it’s just a matter of time.
But there is One who allowed Himself to be cut for her and those like her. His cuts were not to relieve His pain and His sins, they were for her sins and the pain they brought. He desires someone to care enough to bring that news to her. Someone who is willing to disengage from the ministry of exposing sins long enough to take up the ministry of covering sins. Someone who would leave the well lit and self absorbed room of doctrinal badminton and enter the dark and dangerous room of sharing hope with the hopeless. Someone who is so enveloped with compassion that they could overlook her sins to get to her soul. Someone who would take a break from the truth war long enough to get that truth to her.

And so the truth war was won after many, many literary battles, but, in the midst of victory, many sinners were lost.

What kind of victory is that?