Forgiveness in Hollywood? by Joel Pelsue

Joel Pelsue
Founder/ Pres. Arts & Entertainment Ministries
Los Angeles, CA.
www.A-E-M.org

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How do you ask a room full of executives, actors, writers and producers expecting humor to forgive someone of an offense? That was exactly what happened recently at the Cinematheque Award Ceremony when Robert Downey Jr. received the prestigious honor.Read more

In the dimly light room, a man still sweating from his long bike ride said, “Hi, my name is David, and I am an alcoholic.” The others responded with “Hi David.” We continued around the circle in the same manner until it was my turn, when I said, “Hi. My name is Amy, and I’m visiting tonight.” In their friendly, if not curious manner, the group responded with their staple, “Hi, Amy.”

For the next hour, I quietly sat in amazement as I witnessed the most broken and honest group of people I’ve ever encountered share their fears, failures, and measured triumphs with each other. They grew strength from their common struggle with alcohol. Eliciting a mixture of tears and laughter, story after story revealed a daily fight with temptation, the tragedy of broken relationships and unfulfilled dreams, and yet a hope for a brighter tomorrow. Read more

A few months ago, Rick Riley wrote an article titled “Hope” that was about a high-school football game Rick Riley wrote about recently. It was the Grapevine Faith “Lions” versus the Gainesville State “Tornadoes” and everything about it was upside down. 

When Tornadoes took the field, the Lions fans made a 40-yard “spirit line” for them to run through. They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" 

As if that was not weird enough, more than 200 Lions fans sat on the Tornado side and cheered them on…by name. Tornado QB, Isaiah said, "I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us."

Even though the Lions clobbered them, the Tornado kids were so happy that after the game they gave their head coach a Gatorade shower like they’d just won a championship. But then as soon as the game was over, uniformed officers escorting the Tornado players handcuffed to the team bus. The Gainesville Tornados were from a maximum-security correctional facility.

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If you’ve read the Bible a bit you are likely familiar with the theme that the Lord pulls off some splendid feats while working with some very messed up people. This theme comforts, because many of us are keenly aware of how messed up we are. If you are someone outside the Christian faith who doubts the goodness of God because of self-righteous, angry Christians that you know; if you are a believer so deeply aware of your failures that you ‘know’ that God is displeased with you and could never use you, take a sip of the elixir that is the account of Jacob and his family and the Lord who loves them. 

Jacob’s mom, Rebekah, had been childless, and the Lord answered her prayers for children by telling her that she would have children, and that the older would serve the younger. Jacob was the younger, marked by God’s prophecy that his older brother Esau would serve him. In a culture of primogeniture, how was God’s prophecy accomplished? Years later, Jacob seduced a weary, hungry Esau to sell his birthright to Jacob for a pot of stew. Still later, Rebekah conspired with Jacob to deceive blind, dying father Isaac to steal “the blessing” that would have been Esau’s as first born son.

 Thus, the two key elements of actualizing primogeniture—the birthright and the blessing—were acquired by the younger son Jacob through seduction and deceit. That’s how God’s prophecy of the older serving the younger was accomplished. You thought God’s plans were accomplished only through holiness, sweetness and light? Read more

Two of my favorite public Christians...Steve Brown, a professor of mine at RTS, and Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, talking on the radio.

Check it out here.

The level of rage shocked us.  One moment we were having dinner as couples, celebrating their recent wedding which I had officiated (we had done pre-marital counseling the previous six months with them) and the next moment the husband laid into me and my wife with such vitriol, we were leveled by it.  We had stumbled by accident upon a sacred cow that would not budge and paid a very real price for doing so—attempts to work through the conflict with the couple were stymied.

Initially, I was angry and hopeful.  Angry for being wronged by sinful anger but hopeful that through the Gospel, reconciliation would come about but as weeks became months, my heart grew more callous towards this man.  Some days I wished only God’s justice without mercy upon him.  I “dealt” with him through “fantasy role play,” putting him in his place, making him see the error of his ways.  Prayers for mercy for him became more and more infrequent.

Living in the Gospel regularly some days seems as difficult for me as was trying to balance on the thin ice skate blades I put on as a kid from time to time.  I am much more inclined towards calling down justice from the heavens than mercy.

That is why I like what Jesus has to say in Luke 4:13-30 about mercy. Read more

Radical grace is hard to believe. Many of us think there must be some breaking point where God would give up on us. And if we don’t believe that, there are always a few religious people who will do their best to convince you that there is. Certainly there must be some sin or amount of sin that is just too much.

Thankfully, God solved all his problems with sin through Jesus—and it’s done. And God is the one who takes away the indictment that was against you and tears up the death warrant because Jesus took the execution you deserved.

Some may think that this is taking grace too far. But, you can’t take grace “too far.” Isn’t grace already gratuitous? The point of Jesus’ ministry and parables is to drive home how secure you are in God’s promise of gratuitous mercy.* When this is the final word we hear from God, we just might encounter the freedom that comes in the gospel. Perhaps we can breathe a sigh of relief.

My understanding of “gratuitous grace” and the security that accompanies it came when I was ten years old and I flooded our next door neighbor’s home. Our neighbors had moved and they were trying to sell their house. One day I broke in through the back door and closed all the drains in all the sinks and tubs and turned on all the faucets. And then I just sat there and watched the water flood the entire house. I let the water run while I went home for dinner and finally returned a few hours later to turn it off.Read more

(photo, Esther and Kelly)

My good friend’s daughter, Esther, is the middle child of nine (yes, 9, same mother and father). Esther is a pure-hearted girl who loves good books, adventures, order in the home, and bunnies. I think she was born with her love for bunnies. I was there to witness Esther’s emergence ex utero and she may have been disappointed to find humans, rather than rabbits, as her siblings and parents.

She’s always had a stash of stuffed bunnies and began raising living bunnies before her first birthday — as soon as she proved she could toddle over to a cage with food and water. Her first 4-H project for the county fair? Raising bunnies.

At age four, while at a camp in northern Michigan, Esther lost one of her three stuffed bunnies with whom she slept every night as a somniferous necessity. The bunny’s disappearance was discovered at bedtime, begetting several hours of meltdown and sleeplessness. A “Missing Bunny Bulletin” was issued, naturally, and suddenly dozens of adults with flashlights and tick-repellent took to the wooded paths of the UP of Michigan until the bunny was found, quite miraculously, a mile from camp and returned to its four-year old mother and stuffed siblings. All was well on the earth.

At age seven Esther, three of her siblings, several bunnies and I sat in near-silence, for nearly an hour, in a paddle-boat on a pond, observing translucent powder-blue dragonflies all around us in the reeds. This fact doesn’t advance my story, but it might give you a memory or inkling of the joy of being with children in God's creation. It does for me. Back to the story.

Before long Esther (age 9) was working at a horse farm in Ohio where muckin’ stalls for a morning might get you a free trail ride that afternoon. But Esther’s favorite job was feeding and showing the bunnies in cages. She’d overseen the proliferation of about ten of them.

Last winter we made a fire, popcorn, and watched the inspiring film, Miss Potter, about Beatrix Potter, the English author and illustrator, botanist, and conservationist,who painted Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny into our lives.

Esther had been collecting Peter Rabbit china and books for all of her now eleven years. But last week her mother called to say that their house had caught fire, injuring neither child nor cow nor chicken nor bunny, but the fire and smoke appeared to have destroyed many things.Read more

In August, three friends and I journeyed to Rwanda in search of stories of forgiveness and reconciliation between survivors of the 1994 genocide and those who slaughtered their families. It was gritty, soul-wrenching work. If not for grace, it might have been too much. But, grace breathed its fragrance around every stomach-churning story, every mother’s anguished moan, every orphan’s lonely prayer. And so, I invite you to journey with me for a few minutes, to peak behind the bloodied machetes at a few tender shoots of grace.Read more

Not too long ago, a dream of hope died. A relationship unraveled and I was wrecked. Hope deferred makes the heart sick indeed. My heart was sick and broken. After some time of grieving, I got tired and sick of my sick and tired heart. Grief has contours and a bottom (and for that I am profoundly grateful), but what it doesn’t have is bite. And I was ready for a hard edge.

I wanted a posture that felt commanding, not soft and bowed. I tried crossing my arms. I even tried shifting my weight a bit onto a back leg, head tilted to the side, but looking up, as if to say, “Lord, You’re going to do what You want to anyway, so go right on ahead.”

For whatever reason, that arm-crossed stand seemed to stem my leaky eyes. And it even gave me some boldness: “Yeah, Lord, like I said, have at it. Clearly, my desires are not part of Your equation.” This worked surprisingly well. I liked the bite, the posture. It felt so much better than the soreness. It felt like strength. Read more