Napkin 4: To an Enemy

37,000 feet. 4:47 AM.

The pain is devouring me, and the pills don't work anymore. But the remorse hurts more than the cancer.

Dear Dr. Williams,

Nashville, November 2015. The conference that made me feel the most righteous pastor in America and the most wrong man in the world.

You spoke about "margins of grace." About how Jesus embraced those religion rejected. About the church as hospital instead of courthouse.

I stood up with my Bible, sharp as a sword. For twenty minutes, I demolished you in front of three hundred pastors. "Grace without truth is sentimentalism," I shouted with a confident voice. "Who doesn't preach repentance betrays the Gospel."**

The room exploded in applause. You remained seated head down. When they asked you to respond, you only whispered: "Maybe Brother Miller is right. Maybe I need to learn to love like Jesus loves."**

That night, I returned to my hotel convinced I had won. That I had defended God against compromise.

Instead, I had killed a brother with truth used as a club.

It took years to understand what I had really done. I hadn't defended doctrine: I had crucified grace. I hadn't protected the church: I had wounded the body of Christ.

You weren't the enemy of truth. You were the friend of those whom truth had wounded because it was wielded as a weapon instead of being offered as bread.

On this napkin that's crumbling between my trembling fingers, I write what I should have told you that evening in front of everyone:

You were right.

God is truly bigger than my definitions. Grace is truly wider than my boundaries. Christ's love is truly crazy enough to embrace those I rejected in the name of purity.

I confused my version of truth with Truth itself. I wielded Scripture as sword instead of breaking it as bread.

Dr. Williams, if I should die before seeing you again, know this: you understood something about Jesus that I'm learning only now that I'm dying.

That He didn't come to make us right. He came to give us life.

And life is always bigger than our explanations.

Forgive me, brother.

Your former enemy, who is learning the alphabet of grace

The ink has mixed with something that tastes like freedom.