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14.01.2018 Feature Article

Can God Transform You?

Can God Transform You?
14.01.2018 LISTEN

Our newspaper recently carried a story about a clergyman who was not only liberal theologically but sociologically as well. His sermons regularly carried the theme of the goodness of everyone. Only environments were evil. He sided against the police and often cried about their brutality. He supported laws that favored the rights of the criminal over the rights of the victim. He often cast his lots with the American Civil Liberties Union in their social action endeavors. Needless to say, his views were a source of consternation to the old-timers in his flock.

A week before this clergyman was scheduled to speak to his church’s senior citizens group, he was mugged by hoodlums, who robbed and beat him mercilessly. He was injured and shaken, both emotionally and philosophically. He nearly canceled the engagement but then thought better of it and showed up in bandages and a sling.

As he began his speech, he told how the mugging had caused him to rethink his social positions. He admitted that he had been shaken to the core. Yet to the group’s surprise, he said that, in spite of it, he had decided that he would not let that violent episode change his views or his theology. He will go on preaching as he always had. Shocked, a woman in the last row stood up and shouted, “Mug him again!”[1]

[1]Joseph M. Stowell, The Upside of Down, 119.

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