A King, a Whore, a Drunk, and a Dealer

“I come to Your Word because I need to hear a word from You.” My pastor from back home said this last semester about reading the Bible. For many people today, the Bible is just another holy book—much like the Qur’an, Bhagavad-Gita, or Book of Mormon. Or an old book collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. Or simply just a collection of fables and fairy tales with a good moral at the end.
 
And I understand that. Why in the world would someone believe that a book well over 2,000 years old would have any relevance to the ears and life of a 21 centurion and what makes it any different than the smorgasbord of other religious texts?
 
I’m not going to lie to you. I grew up in a Christian family. They read me the Bible from a young age and for most of my life I accepted it all with no question. Granted I didn’t really read it much for myself, much less understand or know how to apply it to my life.
 
But when I was 16, something changed. You see I once was this “moral police-woman.” I got mad if people cussed and was pretty outspoken about my beliefs in a condemning way. I wish I could apologize to all my friends from that little Downs school who got the wrong idea about who Jesus is because of the way I spoke and acted.
 
But after a hard breakup, I felt betrayed, used, and empty and it was in that moment that a mask was taken off my eyes, and my heart’s once cold chill was melted like spring after a long and bitter winter. It was then that God spoke to me in the midst of my pain. Through that book.
 
Please resist the urge to stop reading and tune me out. I want you to know that the Bible isn’t a list of things you aren’t allowed to do. It’s not about attaining enlightenment through the elimination of suffering, it’s not about a set of rituals one must do to gain favor from the divine being, in fact, it’s not even a book about being a good person at all. If that were the case, I don’t think I would like to read the Bible—because honestly it would make me feel bad about myself.
 
Lets be real: I have doubted that God exists, I have been depressed, I have tried to find fulfillment in men, knowledge, and good works. But I have come to find out through tangible experience that the way of Jesus is truly different and truly the most fulfilling of any framework in which one could live their life.
 
The reason is because I am a whore.
 
And a drunk. And a dealer. And no matter how hard I try not to be these things, I cannot pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I can’t get out of this pit of emptiness, bitterness, and envy. I can’t stop selling myself. I can’t stop going to parties and getting trashed. I just can’t no matter how hard I try. I just end up back in his bed, back at the bong, back on the floor with tears and regret and pain.
 
But here is where the story gets good.
 
It is here on the floor, when I’ve realized I cannot hold the weight of it all up anymore and cannot be good or whole or forgiven or free, that a King comes.
 
Here is the difference, my friend. Jesus did not come to enslave you under a laundry list of things you’ve got to get together, he has not come to curse you with pain, or nag you, or to tell you to be someone you’re not. He actually wants to show you that in fact, he is the opposite.
 
He wants to know you personally and closely. He wants to hold you when you cry, laugh with you in true joy, free you from the baggage and bitterness and anger that you cling to and give you whole life instead. He wants to speak to you. This is the message of the Bible. This is the message of Jesus in his dying on the cross. No longer are you a whore, a drunk, or a dealer. You are his son, his daughter, his friend, his beloved.
 
This is what God has been showing me this week as we minister on Bangla Road—that I am the no different than these people. It inspired me to write this song, which inspired me to write this blog for you.
 
“Be our king, oh God. We need no king but you.
We want to be after your heart. But our hearts are like prostitutes.
 
But you show love to a thousand generations.
You show love to a whore like me.
You show love to the drunk and the dealer.
You showed love when you died on a tree.”
 
So let it be.