But the Greatest Is Love

His name is Adam* and he’s more than just a regular member at our church. Yes, he’s much more. The 22-year old’s larger-than-life testimony about the power of God precedes him everywhere he goes, and he practically lives in the sanctuary of the church (his small room is actually behind the baptismal, past the hallway). He’s always around, inviting everyone to church with big hugs and enthusiastic “hah-lay-lou-yahhs.” The kids from the school and community all know him well, and he often takes the time to play with and look after some of the younger ones.

Adam became an official part of the church a couple years ago when he was released from prison after spending most of his adolescent years behind bars. He was a hardened criminal back then, raised by thieves and mentored by murderers. His life was marked by constant danger, his experiences shaped by hardship and hatred. Today, his lower torso bears a foot-long scar from the time he was slit open from behind with a crude knife. The weapon pierced him completely from one side to the other and, if you ask him, he’ll show you where it nearly missed his kidneys. He can also show you how he used to defend himself from attackers with kung-fu like moves, probably learned from bad American movies. While in jail he became a master at Jackie-Chan knifework and Churck Norris karate, spending all of his time refining and refining even more his precise skills. He must have been pretty dedicated and learned pretty well, because he managed to kill two other inmates with his own hands before he left.

Also before he left prison, though, he came to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior through a prison ministry. His soul was changed by the encounter, and finally he was given a hope and vision for his life. He learned how to be a Christian and, in the carefully-structured and closely-guided environment of the jail ministry, grew much in his faith and new way of life. He became a new man with a new religion and a new reason to live. His was the type of miraculous turn-around and tremendous testimony of faith that has the power to lead many others to the healing and cleansing streams of blood flowing from Christ’s own pierced side.

A year and a half after leaving prison, however, things have become more complicated for Adam. The fire-like vibrancy of new-found faith has left him, and he now faces the shadows and coldness of his past along with all the spirits of substance abuse that have returned full-force to haunt him.

Adam hasn’t been Adam the past few weeks. He’s been inhaling terrible things to send him on short trips of self-destructive pleasure. He’s become an ashamed introvert, shying away from human community and real life for the false high of a chemical-induced state. And everyone at the church can see it, too. Just as before when his testimony of faith was in the spotlight, so now his great fall and serious sin, too, is apparent to all. He always has a dazed look on his face, and his breath smells like industrial-strength solvents. The church yard, too, testifies to his problem -- used emapanada bags smeared with shoe polish litter the ground outside. It’s a real problem, and people are really scared.

So far, the pastors haven’t been able to do much. They’ve tried to exhort Adam and pray with when he’s in his right mind, but the power of addiction holds strong and his times of clarity are fewer and fewer in between. They’ve talked, too, with the more-qualified head of the prison ministry about the situation, but even he says that sometimes saved criminals have to fall really far before they finally come back to the church and Christ again. There is also a certain fear among the church in general of kicking Adam out his room in the church. He might, they think, come back some time for revenge in a much worse state of mind and with many bad intentions.
Perhaps most importantly, though, the church’s sense of Christian charity recognizes that, were he forced to leave, Adam has no where else to go in the world; he has no family or any community except for this body of believers in Lambare (and it’s a good thing that he has them, too). The church here is committed to caring for and loving Adam, even to the point of putting in dangerous jeopardy its Christian testimony before the community and putting in danger, too, those around this young man with judgment clouded by so many unnatural and unhealthy chemicals.

The situation is exceedingly difficult. It certainly raises far more questions than anyone here is capable of answering, and it’s showing in great relief just how human a church and its leadership can be. No one knows what to do, least of all the pastors and those in authority who ought to be doing something.

And yet, through it all, it seems that something very important remains. This Paraguayan church, rooted and established in Christ’s own love, desires to love and reach out to Adam, too. The church can see that he is a broken man, ruined by his own sin and hopelessly lost in his own self-destruction. Where he is unable to have the faith that he can change, though, the church does for him. Where he can’t see the hope in his situation, there are many praying for and trusting in his redemption. Where he hates himself and can only see the evil in his soul, the church loves him with Christ-like compassion and welcomes him even as he is. So we see now in this church that “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest is love.”

Finally, I can see here a church that really is being Jesus Christ to someone who represents the lost and dying world; even to someone who, though now causing great hurt and shame to the congregation, is still considered, cherished, and also grieved over as one of their own. It is painful and tiring and dangerous work for the congregation, yet it is work that incarnates and demonstrates the power of a living God. It is no easy fix, magic remedy, or quick conversion, but it is good and ultimately will abide, like the God upon which the work is founded, forever.

*I changed the fellow´s name, but it´s close enough