The Practices of Being a Christian

Being a Christian involves, among other things, living as Jesus wants us to. And because the Jesus Way is so much against the grain of our or any culture, really living as Jesus wants us to live can be extraordinarily difficult. I recently came across the following story about Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter, Julie, was killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

“The first 4 or 5 weeks after the bombing, I had so much anger, pain, hatred and revenge, that I realized why, when someone is charged with a violent crime, they transport him in a bullet-proof vest. It’s because people like me would try to kill him. By the end of 1995, I was in such bad shape, I was drinking heavily and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day.  I was stuck, emotionally, on April 19. I just couldn’t get over it. But I knew I had to do something about it. That’s when I went down to the bombing site.

“It was a cold January afternoon, and I stood there watching hundreds of people walking where the Murrah building had stood. I was thinking about how I wanted to see nothing more than Timothy McVeigh, and anyone else responsible for the bombing, fried. But I was also beginning to wonder whether I would really feel any better once they were executed. Every time I asked myself that question, I got the same answer: No. Nothing positive would come from it. It wouldn’t bring Julie back. After all, it was hatred and revenge that made me want to see them dead, and those 2 things were the very reason that Julie and 167 others had died.

“Forgiveness is a struggle, but it’s one I needed to wage. Forgiving is not something you just wake up one morning and decide to do. You have to work through your anger and your hatred as long as it’s there. You try to live each day a little better than the one before.”

Bud Welch met Timothy McVeigh’s father and sister and they talked about the losses they were all experiencing. Welch says he was finally able to forgive Timothy McVeigh about a year before McVeigh was executed in 2001. It other words, it took him 5 years of hard, personal work to release himself (that’s how he describes it) from the hatred and revenge he felt. Is he still sad about the loss of his daughter? Of course. He misses her every day. But he has given up the hatred and in its place there is forgiveness and a willingness for reconciliation.

Forgiving someone who has committed a horrendous crime or act against you, being incredibly generous financially, befriending and helping people who are poor and hurting and needy in a variety of ways – these kinds of actions are difficult. They don’t happen overnight. We don’t just decide to do them and that’s all there is to it. They take hard, personal work to accomplish – prayer, talking to friends/family, reading, prayer, tentative starting, practice, more prayer. But they are possible.

When we start on the journey, whatever we have decided to do, the destination can seem a tremendous distance away. There is no way to cover it quickly. One has to take a step at a time, evaluate ones progress regularly, make corrections, keep working; and finally the goal starts getting closer.

Many Biblical passages express our hope as we stare toward the distant goal. One of them is Psalm 139:12 – Even the darkness is not dark to you, O God. The night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Curt Anderson