This is another message inspired by the 17 day road trip Patricia and I took across America.

This road trip that Patricia and I are taking is a spiritual journey as well as a physical one. We’ve already experienced fervent prayer answered in mountains and valleys of Utah. We encountered a vivid part of my family’s history along a remote stretch of Wyoming Route 220 filling my heart with deep gratitude for the courage of ancestors who made the arduous journey to California by wagon in 1845. Earlier today, we were refreshed by the golden aspen and waterfalls of Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills.

Now with the afternoon sun uncharacteristically at our back, we drive the straight line of Interstate 70 east across South Dakota. The rambling homes and out buildings of cattle ranches are turning to the well-ordered farm yards, barns and cornfields as we approach the Missouri River and enter the central time zone.

We have been blessed in our forty years of marriage with a shared and growing faith. As Scripture advises, we sharpen and focus the faith of each other in reading and conversation. We never run out of things to talk about.

Forgiveness is our topic as we drive toward the night. A friend has proven weak in a situation where nothing but strength is expected. Confession was promptly made, accountability was obtained, and pardon extended. Yet, those who will sit in final judgment are divided between punitive action and forgiveness.

There was a time when I believed, naively, but autocratically, that everyone would make the same choices when given the same facts and operative principles. I was an associate dean of students at an Christian university, while in my late 20s, working with students almost my age. I had power, but had not yet attained the credibility of authority. I had a handbook full of policies and rules that I applied with a strict and unwavering vigor.

Because, I was a recent law school graduate with a license to practice law, I was given deference by my colleagues and faculty.  In a legalistic Christian subculture, the law is the law, whether taken from the pages of Scripture or from the state codes. The law was my hammer and every offense looked like a nail.

One summer, my boss was traveling in Asia. He left me in charge. There was run of student disciplinary cases late in the session. Within a space of three days, I had twelve students in trouble for various offenses, most involving alcohol and sex, but varying in gravity.  I interviewed each student and suspended them pending a review by the Student Affairs Committee.

Immediately, I began receiving phone calls from parents arguing the circumstances and asking for leniency. Faculty came by the office to ask for exceptions to be made for favorite students. I made it clear that the process would be followed and the rules applied. There would be consequences.

Colleagues questioned whether or not every student deserved the same penalty of expulsion. I responded, “There must be consistency if the process and the rules are to be respected.”

The pressure continued to build. I went home for lunch the day before the hearing feeling the stress. I asked Patricia, “Why can’t everyone see that the rules were straightforward, choices were made, the violations are not in doubt, the necessary result is clear.”

She said, “Kent, you know you were born old. You tend to set your own standards. These students are young. They come from all kinds of homes, some with little to no moral guidance or knowledge of God. How could they make the same choices, with the same clarity that you would have made? They can’t.

“People are not all the same. They don’t know the same things and they may make bad choices before they figure things out. Most of them won’t have your strength. Do the weak and the ignorant deserve the same punishment as the strong who know what they are doing?”

It was hard for me to get off of my “high-horse” of rectitude. I spluttered on a bit, but the truth spoken with obvious love could not be ignored. I’ve always loved Patricia for looking me in the eye and saying what needed to be said without hesitation or judgment. Someone who deeply cares will do that kind of thing for you — tell you the truth instead of what you want to hear. She has toughened my thinking even as she has softened my heart.

Our friend had told me about his failing. He wanted to set things right. I reviewed the possible consequences with him and asked him for some actions of accountability. I prayed with him. He complied with my requests. We’d moved on.

I have no problem standing with my friend. In fact, it is the only option that will give me peace.

As I have come to know Christ’s love for me and have grown in love for him and others, I have watched lives transformed for great good within the fellowship of Christians. There are amazing resources of competence, compassion, and mercy within that fellowship. There is also a righteousness that is born of a belief that only God is good, his love for us is sure, and we are righteous as he is righteous when our thoughts and feelings are surrendered into his possession.

The Apostle Paul says God’s grace is what saves us, teaches us, and purifies us. He wrote to Titus–

In my experience, few verses are more disobeyed than this one within the company of Christians. There is an overwhelming temptation to distrust grace, and instead seek to manufacture obedience and righteousness by establishing rules and making judgments, indiscriminately digging up weeds and losing a fair amount of wheat in the process.

But to obey is to love, and accountability in the Body of Christ always points to what will it take to bring the erring one back (Luke 15). It’s messy, it takes time, and failure is always possible, but when Jesus set the number for events of forgiveness at seventy times seven, he took that into account (Matt 18:21-22). We are the ones who don’t want to deal with the mess and insist on a quick clean-up. “Haste makes waste,” as they say. If there are to be losses from the kingdom of God, let it be from the choices of the lost souls, not our haste to slam the door.

“I am getting soft in my old age,” I tell Patty. “But you started me on the long view of salvation all those years ago, and from that perspective you hate to write-off people for one or two things if you can salvage them. I never want to be one of those persons who say ‘I want to be redemptive’ as an excuse for not facing the problem. It’s not OK to be trigger-happy, though.”

We talk and pray all the way into Mitchell, S.D., where we will stay for the night. We are spending twelve hours and more a day together as we drive and explore.

There are things one would never know about marriage unless they lived together long enough to experience them. The strength of a marriage is in two hearts focused on Christ. Over time that focus creates a sanctuary where it’s peaceful and safe to share, and even change. One of the blessings of this road trip is discovering new dimensions of the sanctuary.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent