Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  “Anyone knows it’s wrong to hate people and discriminate against them. If people think you’re a bigot, maybe it’s because you make gays sound like they’re garbage.”

  Sue stared at him, hurt and confused. “I’ve never thought or said anything like that. Doc committed adultery and I believe it was morally wrong. But I still loved him, and I saw a lot of good in him. A person can engage in homosexual acts and I think it’s wrong. But I still love him, and I know in many areas he may be a fine person. I believe homosexual acts are terribly destructive to him, that he should live by the right standard, and that’s in his best interest. I honestly want what’s best for him. When people steal or lie you tell them it’s wrong. It isn’t loving to tell them whatever they want to do is okay. It’ll just destroy them. And hurt our whole society, our children and theirs.”

  “Sexual orientation is like race. You can’t expect people to deny what they are.”

  “I can introduce you to a half dozen former homosexuals. Four of them go to our church. Want their names? You could write a column on them. No? I didn’t think so. There are thousands of them around—people who used to practice homosexual acts and no longer do. But there’s no former whites and former blacks and former Hispanics. Race and sexual practice aren’t the same thing, Jake. People need hope. They need to hear there’s right and wrong. And I believe God can change people and give them the strength to live by what’s right.”

  “You make it sound so easy, your nice neat little Christian world. It’s just not that easy, Sue.”

  “It’s not easy at all. It never has been. But it’s still true.”

  “You know how I felt about Finney—and about you. Forgive me if I’m blunt.”

  “Be blunt, Jake. I’ve always found it refreshing.”

  “All right. Don’t you think you people do an awful lot of whining about media bias? You act like we’re picking on you just because we don’t share your beliefs. Like we sit around in smoke-filled rooms plotting your destruction. And the fact is, the Trib carries two syndicated conservatives, George Will and William F. Buckley. These guys make Ronald Reagan look like Chairman Mao. I mean, they probably thought Barry Goldwater was a communist. They’re just as conservative as…well, as you are.”

  Sue laughed. “That bad, are they? Jake, you point to a couple of columns that run a few times a week in a paper so thick I can barely lift it with one hand anymore.” She laughed, looking over her five foot even, barely one-hundred-pound frame. “I guess I’m a wimp, but you know what I mean.”

  “One thing you’re not is a wimp, Sue.”

  “Anyway, my point is, where’s the rest of the story? If you’ve got time, I can show you a half dozen other examples in today’s paper alone.”

  “Sorry, Sue. I don’t have time. And even if I did, we’ve got some basic philosophical differences that just aren’t going to change. To you, it’s all black and white. Well, the world has a lot of gray, and I’m just trying to do my job the best I can. I’m afraid the Trib is never going to suit your tastes no matter what we do.”

  “I don’t expect you to agree with me, Jake. I was just hoping you’d understand. I’m afraid I’ve done a poor job communicating. I can come on pretty strong when I’m upset. Anyway, I hope you know I love you. I didn’t mean anything personal.”

  Jake nodded. “I’ve really got to go.”

  “Jake, Little Finn asked me to give you something for him. Actually, it’s a loan. But he wanted you to have it awhile.” Sue handed Jake an old, well-worn leather covered book.

  “Finney’s Bible?” Jake had seen it on hunting trips, on the coffee table, at Finney’s office. It was Finney’s shadow. He never went far without it. Until a week ago Sunday.

  “Yeah. Little Finn just loves to thumb through it. He reads all the notes Finney wrote in the margin. And he thought maybe you’d like to look at it. You know Little Finn.”

  “Yeah, I know Little Finn. Always trying to convert me, isn’t he?”

  “He thinks you’re a worthy cause, Jake. That’s another way he’s like his dad. And mom.”

  “Well, okay. Tell him I’ll take good care of it. I don’t promise to read it, but I appreciate the thought.”

  Jake edged toward the door, feeling strangely awkward with a Bible in his hand.

  “One more thing, Jake. You know how Finney was interviewed in that Trib article a few weeks ago? The one that quoted maybe half a dozen prolifers? I assume you read it?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, he felt he’d really been misquoted, and the most important things he’d said weren’t reported at all.”

  I thought this discussion was over. “That’s a common complaint. The interviewer can only use so much, and it’s rarely what the person wants.”

  “I know. Finney understood that. But he wrote a letter to the editor. He stayed up late two nights in a row banging it out on his computer. He finished it early Sunday morning—the day of the accident…or whatever it was. It’s been sitting on his dresser since then. I couldn’t mail it. But since it was the last thing he ever wrote, and since it was going to the Tribune, I thought he’d want me to give it to you.”

  Sue stretched out her hand and gave the envelope to Jake. The Trib’s address was neatly printed by Finney’s laser printer. Palatino, fourteen point, Jake thought.

  “Thanks, Sue. I’ve really got to run.”

  Jake, Bible and envelope in hand, walked out the door toward his car. He glanced around subconsciously, wondering if there was a proper way to carry a Bible. Like a brief case, a hunting rifle, or an infant? Oh, well. No one was watching him. At least, he didn’t think so. As he walked out Sue’s front door he heard the phone ring inside. They both waved a quick good-bye.

  As Jake approached the door to his car, Sue picked up the kitchen phone. The woman on the other end was in tears. “Linda,” Sue recognized the voice. “Are you all right? Yes, I read the column. Yeah, he’s the one I know, one of our good friends. No, I’m sure it wasn’t fair. In fact, I told him that just a few minutes ago.”

  Sue listened as Linda Mahoney told her of two angry phone calls they’d already received, one from a new next door neighbor, a school teacher deeply offended by Carl’s “arrogant and nitpicky” attitude. Sue shook her head, wondering if Jake had any clue how his words affected people’s lives.

  Zyor, a master tutor, continued to guide Finney into a fuller understanding of heaven. Zyor explained he would later learn the skill of stepping across time as one steps across stones on a stream.

  “One day you and I will not merely view the past, the great moments of history I was there to witness. But I will take you for a walk through those times. You will experience them as they actually happened.”

  To his surprise, the major object of Finney’s study so far had been the events of his life on earth. When he would have been expecting to learn about the unknown, he was instead engaged in reinterpreting the known. The events that had flashed before him at death were not merely a summary of what had been, but an overview of a course of study he would need to master in heaven. Finney went back, reviewing his life, evaluating his choices, listening again to his words and seeing the powerful effects they had on people, for better and for worse. It was encouraging to see some of the previously unknown effects, but when he saw how he’d failed, sometimes even with Doc and Jake, it sobered him. Too often he’d been pigheaded and pushy, defensive when someone questioned his opinions.

  He found himself looking at his life with a wholly new objectivity. It was almost as if he were watching Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, understanding things from the outside that the characters in the town could not see from the inside. How strange, he thought, to be on the outside of his own life looking in. While he was moved by what he saw in his life’s review, the passions within him were free of the whims of conditioning and biology. His emotions were now a trustworthy part of his mind, no longer a sometimes unreliable and manipulative propagandist trying to hold sway over it. />
  “I feel as if I were an artist, Zyor, and I painted my self-portrait, which was my life. At death I stepped off the canvas, and now for the first time I can see it, the whole picture. I can see it not as I saw it then, but as Elyon saw it. I don’t like everything I see, but I can now see it as it truly was.”

  Zyor nodded his approval, as if this was the whole point—to see through God’s eyes, the eyes of eternity.

  “I’m eager to finish my orientation and move on to the greater wonders of Elyon’s world. Yet I’m beginning to better understand the value of this reviewing process. When David was confronted by the prophet Nathan, he saw the point of the story only because he thought it was about someone else. It’s much easier to see our lives, and learn from them, when we can see them from the outside.”

  “Exactly. You learn from the lives of others as you contemplate their stories. Now you are studying your own story, as you once studied The Odyssey in school. This time the story is real, not invented. You lived it. And now by reliving it you learn the lessons uniquely designed for you by Elyon. You rejoice in those you learned, complete those you began to learn but left unfinished, and now undertake for the first time those you never learned at all.”

  “I never realized how many of those there were.”

  “No man dies finished. Your first duty here is not to forget your life on earth but to understand it. You must milk it for all its meaning. Lessons not learned there must be learned now. Lessons learned there must be built upon now, as advanced mathematics must build on the simple. Inaccurate understandings must be cleared up. Elyon does not ignore such things, neither does he simply reverse their effects. Sin is gone, your mind is pure, but your understanding is not complete. Many lessons remain unlearned, and to share in heaven’s wonder all must learn them. Elyon does not force feed. He teaches only the willing and the ready. That which you were unwilling to learn on earth you must now be willing to learn. As you’ve seen, it is not all easy. It will take time. But here you have time, and you do not have the hindrances of sin and blindness. You will not like everything you see about the past, but you will see, and that is what matters.”

  “Heaven is much more wonderful than I imagined. But this part is much more difficult than I would expect.”

  “Joy and ease are not the same. As you scanned your computer disk for viruses and removed damaged and obsolete files, so here your mind must be purged to free you for all this place offers. On earth there were things held to be true that were not, and things held not to be true that were. You wrote your life on earth. Now for the first time you are reading it. Those who lived it carefully will find more joy in their readings, as one finds more joy in good literature than in bad. Those who crafted their lives according to plan and purpose wrote books of enduring quality and depth. Those who did not have nothing to review but a hastily written first draft. They will see its flaws and weaknesses and superficiality, and wish they had written it more carefully. Of course, it is too late to edit it now. The deadline is past, and the edition is final. But it is not too late to learn from it. And learning the truth is central to heaven.”

  “The joy here is beyond description, Zyor. But I never thought of it as involving review and reflection. I thought we would look forever forward without ever looking back.”

  “But ‘back’ is where Elyon began his work in you. He will not give up on his creatures by abandoning the process he began. He will bring it to completion. As for joy, you cannot separate joy from truth. There is no joy in ignoring or denying truth. The rejection of truth is the rejection of joy. And by embracing truth, even truth that is difficult and unpleasant, we are made ready to fully embrace joy. Elyon’s Book says you will yet stand before the judgment seat of Christ, giving an account for what you did while on earth.

  “You come from a world where truth is obscured, shrouded, reinterpreted. The father of lies dominates, and the world order has become built around lies, which are mistaken for truths because the majority believe them, as if the universe were a democracy and truth subject to a vote. Men choose to believe certain things because they find them flattering, comfortable, and popular. But truth is seldom any of these. They choose to disbelieve other things because they are unflattering, uncomfortable, and unpopular. But none of these have any relevance to the question of truth.”

  “I suppose hell is the ultimate example of that?”

  “Yes. No one wants it to be true, therefore men declare it is not. They might just as well vote on the law of gravity. Their confident consensus there is no law of gravity will be no consolation to the man who walks off the tenth story of a building. There is a hell. All roads cannot and do not lead to the same place. The heights of heaven’s mountains are measured against the depth of hell’s valleys. The joys of salvation are in contrast to the horrors of damnation that you and every one of your kind deserved, and but for Elyon’s grace, would be doomed to experience for eternity.

  “Men take their favorite lies and make them sound grand and noble by calling them ‘truths.’ But they cannot be truths, because they have been invented by men, and men have no power over truth. Truth by its nature prevails, and lies by their nature wither in truth’s eternal fire. Every untruth, every half-truth, every pretense—no matter how fashionable and widely believed—shall be shown for what it is, declared a lie in the sight of all men for all time.

  “High stakes give meaning to war, courtship, even to games. Heaven and hell are the high stakes that give meaning to life on earth. Man denies the stakes are real. He says all life’s roads lead to the same place, and that therefore it makes no difference which road men choose. But the truth remains the truth, unimpeded by the lie. The roads lead to very different places, opposite places, to infinite joy or infinite misery, to unimaginable glory or unimaginable tragedy. That is why a man’s choice of roads could not be more important.”

  “The stakes are high,” Finney responded. “And not only in the difference between heaven and hell, but of a Christian life well lived and poorly lived.”

  “You are learning, my master. It is time to return now to the study of your life on earth. As you relive it, as you listen again to the things the world told you, consider this. In the darkness, men can shine flashlights on a sundial and make it tell any time they want. But only the sun tells the true time. The flashlights are the changing and fleeting opinions of men. The sun is the eternal Word of God. Only God makes truth. Men either discover it or fail to discover it. They either interpret it rightly or interpret it wrongly. But they have no power to make truth or change it. For truth is no man’s servant. Ultimately, the truth must become each person’s friend or his enemy, his master or his judge.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jake walked restlessly around the Trib newsroom again, looking for insight. His feelings about his profession ran deep but contradicted each other. He knew Sue’s perception of journalists was inaccurate and unfair. Certainly the conscious journalistic bias she believed in didn’t exist. The bordering-onsatanic conspiracy to hide or warp the truth, to silence or discredit Christians was a myth, one journalists could only laugh at or deeply resent, usually both.

  He looked around him at Sandy and Jerry and others like them. They were good decent people, with lives and families and hopes and dreams of their own. The last thing they wanted to do was subvert or destroy their society. On the contrary, they’d become journalists because they believed society was worth preserving and improving, and they felt their values and ideas and skills could help. No less than Sue and her friends, they wanted their children to grow up in a better world.

  Yet Jake knew some of what Sue had said was true. For the last few years he’d become increasingly cynical about his profession, much more than he dared let on to Sue. There was a great deal of politics in this newsroom, and a lot of it made its way into news stories. Most of it, he was convinced, was unconscious and incidental, but it was nonetheless real.

  As he leaned against the wall near National desk�
�s coffee pot, emptying his packet of cream and swirling it with a swizzle stick, his eyes landed on Debbie Sawyer. He remembered Debbie’s feature stories years ago on the Clarence Thomas hearings. She’d painted it as a clear-cut issue of male sexism and harassment. Never mind fatal flaws in Hill’s testimony. Never mind that virtually every person who knew both Hill and Thomas believed Thomas. Jake still wasn’t sure who told the truth, but he remembered as if it was yesterday that anyone at the Trib who even raised the possibility that Hill rather than Thomas might be lying was labeled sexist. Accordingly, virtually every Trib article had been a Hill puff piece, leaving Thomas the unmistakable chauvinist villain.

  Much as he eschewed Thomas’s political views, Jake found it hard to swallow the presumption a conservative man was incapable of telling the truth and a liberal woman was incapable of lying. He’d started a column raising the possibility that it was Hill who had lied. He worked on it for several days, looking over his shoulder to be sure no one saw. Finally, he tore it up. It wasn’t worth it. In the years since, he’d been ashamed of himself for not going through with that column. What the Trib did back then, Jake had to admit, wasn’t journalism, it was advocacy, pure and simple. And by holding back, he’d become a silent partner in the travesty. That fact ate at him, even now.

  As he read the Trib, he’d been seeing more and more of the reporter’s presence in a story—once considered the ultimate no-no. Just last week Marty Hawes, a political reporter, had gone into a bar on 27th Street to ask what the common man thought of the former mayor who was considering running for governor. Jake happened to know Marty despised this man. He had a personal vendetta going back to some story they’d fought about years ago. So here was an article getting the opinion of the common man, and Hawes said something to the effect, “one man seemed to capture the consensus here when he said this candidate is a thief and a fraud, and you can’t trust him any farther than you can throw him.”