Sally

SALLY - ONE DESPERATE SEEKER

Retrieved from Competent Christian Counseling Book

"Sally was a bright, articulate, and severely depressed sixteen-year-old American high-school student brought in for counseling by her mother. It was immediately clear that she wanted nothing to do with being helped. She was angry with her divorcing parents-who were confessing Christians-and with her life situation. She was desperately searching, mostly hopeless, and borderline suicidal. During our time together in counseling, I was given a paper Sally had written for a class at her Christian high school. It was about Christ and the search for truth that we claim is found in Him. Following is a portion of Sally’s paper."

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"WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?"

"I say Jesus Christ was a man sent from God in a last-ditch attempt to save the troubled human race. He performed miracles, preached to the masses about the promised kingdom of heaven, and died on the cross for our sins. Unfortunately, I don’t believe He succeeded.

We and our fellow human beings are even more disgusting and self-destructive now than we were back then. We spend more money on nuclear weapons to destroy people than we do to feed people to save their lives. If we spent just one half of 1% of our military funding on food for the poor, every citizen of this country would have three well-balanced meals a day.

Don’t get me wrong. I give credit to Jesus. He tried to send out a good message and did willingly go and die on a cross for us –a really amazing waste when you think how we live as if it didn’t matter. It stuck with some of the people back then, but now His message only applies to us from ten to twelve on Sunday mornings.

On Monday morning, we’ll start screaming at our kids while we dress and put on plastic faces to look good to the world. We go to the office to climb over each other for money and bad-mouth our fellow employees. Then on Fridays we party, get drunk, and get behind the wheels of our cars and kill someone. But because of Sunday morning, we think we’re all going to heaven. What nonsense!

Jesus did what He could; He put His heart and soul into our salvation. But He didn’t succeed because we didn’t listen. We’re just a bunch of hypocrites who take Jesus for granted."

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"We hope you hear the cry of the heart here, for it is the cry to see real love come alive in this hardhearted age. We know some of you will note Sally’s theological errors, her disturbing cynicism, and the tendency shown by many depressives to selectively perceive only what is dark and failing. But if that is all you see, you have missed the point. Here is a young woman who has known a life full of heartache and disappointment, a life without genuine love. Here is someone who, at the deepest levels of her heart, is crying out to see Jesus succeed.

Sally is a desperate person who is begging to see love win out because she knows that all is lost if it doesn’t. Her story is evidence of a cold-hearted and hypocritical world that has rejected God’s way, even while it mouths His platitudes. Only a sacrificial love will heal this desperate condition. Only a life-changing encounter with the loving, risen Christ can reach a heart like Sally’s-and that’s exactly what Jesus said He would give us if we asked Him. Jesus Himself is the only true cure for such a condition.”