Do you remember the television game show entitled, “The $64,000 Question?” The first episode was broadcast on June 7, 1955 on CBS-TV. Contestants selected a category for their questions and when they answered correctly their money was doubled. Each time the questions became more difficult. At the $4,000 level the contestant stopped and came back the following week to be asked only one question. If they answered correctly, they were invited back the following week for another question. Each time the winnings doubled. The contestant was provided an opportunity to opt out of the show and keep their earnings. If they answered incorrectly, they lost everything. Richard S. McCutchen, a Marine, whose selected subject was cooking, was the first contestant to win the top prize money. He became an overnight celebrity.
I remember as a kid, I used to fantasize what it would be like to have the opportunity to be a contestant on “The $64,000 Question.” I guess, more truthfully, I used to fantasize what I could do with $64,000. That was a lot of money in 1955.
I’d like to think I have the ability to think of my feet, but the kinds of questions they asked on game shoes only have one right answer. Obviously, I am more in my element when there is “no right or wrong answer” and any answer provided is acceptable. I could excel in a quiz show like that. I generally have an opinion regarding any number of issues and when asked, have no difficulty expressing my point of view. Coincidentally, so does the General (aka – my wife). Did I mention that we occasionally have a very different answer?
The ringing of the telephone interrupted my train of thought. The caller gladly announced that I had been selected for a free trip to the Bahamas. That’s the second time since I’ve gotten home this evening that I’ve answered a telephone call. The other time, the rhetoric began, “Don’t hang up. This is not a sales call…” You guessed it. I immediately hung the telephone up both times.
Sometimes when I’m asked a question, I don’t have an immediate answer. Some questions require meditation and thought before I have a sense that I am even close to being on the right page. Someone recently told me on an airplane that I looked like a college professor. I thanked them and told them I was old enough to have made something out of myself, but that I wasn’t a college professor. I think the person meant it as a compliment, but maybe not. I recently got new glasses. The first time my daughter saw them she said, “With those glasses you look like a college professor. I don’t like them. She didn’t imply that I looked sinister, but she definitely saw me as someone who colors outside the lines. I thought it was cool. Could this be the same child who routinely stayed out past her curfew during her high school years more times that I’d like to remember?
When Craig says that my hair didn’t start to turn gray until his sister was born, I can’t refute the claim. It is true. On the other hand, Andrea has taught me a lot even if she and I are very much alike. Consequently, I now have better answers than I had previously. I guess at this stage in my pilgrimage, I’m pleased that she generally colors inside the lines and is concerned that maybe I don’t. Perhaps that supports the notion, “What goes around comes around.”
Someone recently asked if they could ask me a question. How do you say “No” to that? If I had been thinking, I would have said, “Not if you expect the right answer.” The way the question was phrased, I processed it as one of those questions where whatever I said would be correct. I can’t remember exactly how the question was expressed, but it was closely akin to, “What do you think is the worst or most grievous sin apart from murder?”
It was a question I could answer correctly because it included the phrase, “What do you think.” Yet, I suspected the person asking the question was looking for an answer that carried more weight than one thoughtlessly uttered from my lips. Consequently, before answering, I wanted time to pray, mediate and ponder my response.
I haven’t yet communicated my answer back to the person who asked the question, but I know what I think. You may disagree with my answer. In fact, I’ll ask the same question of you that was asked of me, “What do you think is the worst or most grievous sin apart from murder?”
To answer what I think correctly, I have to begin by refuting that murder is the worst or most grievous sin. I don’t think murder heads the list of things most grievous to God. This may surprise you, but I know people who have committed that sin and people who have been accused of that sin.
One of the older kids who lived next door to me during my childhood years was subsequently charged with the murder of his wife. In fact, according to the information shared by his two young sons, they were forced to assist him in butchering her body for disposal. Just to demonstrate that it is a very small world, years later a colleague who previously worked in children’s protective services, talked about one of the most difficult cases he was ever assigned. He didn’t provide the identity of the case, but the story he told was congruent with the story of the kid next door. Can you think of anything more horrendous? There was not a conviction. The charges were dropped because the body was never recovered. The only evidence was the testimony of two little boys who already had experienced enough trauma and pain for a lifetime. They emotionally were too fragile and vulnerable to go through court proceedings.
Later, I worked with an adolescent who in the midst of young adulthood, plotted with his girlfriend to kill their roommate. They executed their plan and were co-participants in a brutal murder. They both were convicted.
I don’t live in the 5th Ward in Houston – Never did. Never have. Another neighbor (my daughter’s age) was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He was involved in a car accident as the result of driving while being high on drugs. The woman in the other car was killed instantly. Tragic! While I concur that murder highlights the brokenness of our humanity, it doesn’t head the list of grievous sins.
It was Christ who said, “ If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Having worked in the child welfare arena over four decades, I have story after story of children who have been in harms way and who will carry the scars of childhood through their existence this side of eternity. Where does that make the list of grievous sins?
Earlier this week, a man was attacked in the DWF airport because the attacker thought he was gay. There a strong belief by many that homosexuality is the most grievous sin. The video made of the assault made national news. Hearing the news report, I thought back in time to another news report of a far more hideous crime based on the same mindset.
Matthew Shepard (December 1,1976-October 12, 1998) was a 22-year old college student at the University of Wyoming. He was beaten, tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998 and died six days later of severe head injuries. I remember the story of Matthew Shepard because I remember the written response made by the Chaplain of Trinity College, Hartford, CT on the death of Matthew Shepherd:
“I saw on the news today that Matthew Shepherd died. He was the 22-year old man from Wyoming who was beaten and tortured and left to die for no reason other than he was a homosexual…As a person of faith, I will listen, as we all will, to the many voices which will eulogize Matthew Shepard. I will carry that part of our national shame on my shoulders. But I will also listen to the silence which speaks much more eloquently still to the truth behind his death. I will listen and I will remember. And I will renew my resolve never to allow this silence to have the last word.”
I have a dear friend who has been disowned by her son. Years ago he wrote her a letter stating in essence, “I love you. I shall always love you, but I never want to see you again.” Consequently, she doesn’t know her grandchildren and she has not heard from her son in years. True to life, he kept his word, “I never want to see you again.” He called it love; I see it differently, but even that doesn’t top the most grievous sins. Did I mention it really makes me mad?
I don’t know if you caught it, but it is present. I said, “I see it differently.” Is that sin? Didn’t Christ say, “Judge not lest you be judged?” I didn’t save it until last to highlight the indiscretion as more grievous, because it is not. Yet the thing I find most bothersome is that we overlook it as sin. We don’t even acknowledge the brokenness of our humanity.
Too often, in our arrogance, self-righteousness, complacency and judgmental disregard for those we have identified as sinners, we forget that we, too, fall short of reaching the mark. I find it bothersome. God does too. Scripture supports it. Somehow in our mistaken mindset, the ability to establish a hierarchy of things more grievous than that which we ascribe to ourselves somehow attempts to placate our wrong by throwing stones at others.
Who among us would be reluctant to identify the total disregard a drug addict has for life? It is self-destructive behavior. Who can they blame but themselves? Drug addiction destroys one’s ability to have even the cognitive awareness of their need for that which only God can provide. It is easy for those of us who think we have it all together to throw stones?
If you think sin can be categorized, where would you put this one? From 1953 to 1964, the U.S. government secretly tested the effects of LSD on hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel. The information is now unclassified. If you want information, research the MK-ULTRA program. The Central Intelligence Agency slipped acid secretly to Americans – at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. For a decade, the CIA conducted completely uncontrolled tests in which they drugged people unknowingly, then followed and watch them without intervening. In some cases the agency used the drug to perform interrogations.
The list of indiscretions that highlight the brokenness of our humanity go on and on. Yet in my mind, the most grievous sin and the only sin that can be categorized in that regard is the sin of disbelief. God knew we needed that which only He could provide. He purposed to provide that for us through the gift of His Son. Christ was “the sacrificial lamb slain before the foundations of the earth.” Through His death, he paid the penalty for our sins in order that “through him, we pass from death until life.” “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”
The only sin that separates us from God is our refusal to accept through faith that which He has provided us through His Son. May we walk in Him.
All My Best!
Don