A Parking-Lot Conversation

Dear Gentle Reader,
One meets such diverse people in San Diego! This morning while in the check-out line at the grocery store an older man was talking about three stages to depression. I wondered if he was speaking from experience, so I engaged him in conversation as we walked to our cars. The first thing he said, very proudly, was that he had been a friend of Albert Einstein while living in Manhattan, but that he and his wife had moved to La Jolla because it’s a much healthier place to live.

At 82 he is working very hard to resist depression, stay healthy, and live a long time. His wife teaches at UCSD, and he belongs to some kind of a UCSD institute for learning. He dropped a lot of names of people who had successfully led long lives, but they’re all deceased now. So I asked him if he thought there is life beyond death.

However, his whole focus is on extending his life. Sadly, because of what he views as betrayal by the Catholic Church, he has never been able to get past the sins of that institution.

It seems that he was born in Italy to a Roman Catholic mother and a Jewish father. They thought they were safe from Hitler in the early 1940s, but when Mussolini capitulated, the Germans moved into Italy and hauled away his father and several of his brothers to concentration camps. He himself escaped but was seriously wounded while fighting in the resistance movement.

After the war, his mother--a devout woman who went often went to confession--told him that the local priest had asked her in the confession booth to tell him about her husband and sons. Trustingly, she had done so, and then the priest had passed along the information to the Gestapo with fatal results.

Putting one’s faith in an organization instead of in Jesus Christ makes Christianity easier because the clergy take the responsibility for searching the scriptures and exhorting the congregation. But in situations when there is failure on the part of the clergy to conduct themselves righteously, it is so very damaging to people who have misplaced their confidence.

Jesus was skeptical about the clergy establishment in his day. He called them hypocrites (Matt. 22:18) and robbers (Matt. 21:12) and exposed their efforts to defraud the common people. When he turned over the tables in the temple, he was objecting to the practice of priests taking advantage of pilgrims who were trying to perform their duty to God.

I feel very sad for people like the gentleman I met this morning. They have been so spiritually abused that, aside from the grace of God, they may always be deprived of the joy and blessings of a relationship with their Creator.

But guess what! Today is December 5, and in the Bible, five is the number that symbolizes grace. May God’s grace rescue this man from his bitterness.

It's important to note that I am in no way suggesting that all clergy are untrustworthy. I am well acquainted with some wonderful church leaders. The point is that all humanity is frail and subject to failure, whereas our God is all-knowing, all-powerful, ever open to our petitions, and always compassionate. In the Book of Revelation Jesus is called "faithful and true." We can trust him.