Selling The Souls of Others

In the shadows of a blurry bronze mirror in his dim office, the medieval professor adjusted his moth-chewed turban. The office was crammed by piles of ancient books in stacks, bookmarks protruding, many laying cracked open. Buried beneath the paraphernalia of Magick and Alchemy, various pieces of massive old funiture supported 13 huge flickering candles. A dried bat was stretched out on one wall, a human skull sat on the edge of his writing desk, many blown-glass flasks and beakers lined the shelves, filled with herbs, mushrooms, and writhing swamp things.

Gazing into a particularly battered volume cradled in his left arm, absorbed with an illustration of a man standing in a circled star, Doctor Faust felt for an apple in a bowl, bit into it, then set it aside absent mindedly. Just such a circled star was meticulousy chalked full-size on the floor of Fausts' study. Still chewing, Doctor Faust casually grabbed his finely-wrought silver sceptre by it's head of pitted green crystal, and still cradling the massive volume, stepped with finality into the chalk circle.

In the 1600's most people believed Faust was a historical figure and that one really could sell one's eternal soul to the devil. Temporal success in exchange for eternity in hell. Nowadays of course thinking people don't believe this kind of silliness anymore. God's book also does not support it. Everyone is already destined to hell for their own sins already, no deals with the devil necessary. And Jesus "paying our debt" is of course just a metaphor for something indescribably wonderful: we don't owe anything to the devil and Jesus never paid him a cent.

Nevertheless, many Christians are like Doctor Faustus in a way, but playing with the souls of others. When I walk away from God's loving presence in exhange for a moment indulging my ego and my senses, how many souls do I blindly lose for eternity?

You Are Clean!

The leper, in dirty rags, stares at the ground in shame, despised and abhorred by the crowd. The crowd holds its breath, all eyes riveted on Jesus' inviolable hand - reaching, stretching suspensefully closer towards the untouchable. The crowd gasps as He gently lays His hand on the leper's shoulder- and amazingly speaks total healing into being! The crowd laughs and cheers with joy as the white flakes disappear, nose and fingers re-grow right before their eyes.

Jesus does the same for social and moral lepers, the shame-tortured, the self-loathed. He speaks innocence, purity and shining reputation into being. God spoke the universe into being: He has spoken your good reputation and flawless track record into being too.

Woe to him who dares deny or defy God's declaration, the purity God has spoken into being. If God is for us, who can be against us? Rom. 8:31