Holy Fire

Mom and I were driving to lunch several years ago, when she casually dropped into her conversation that she was pretty sure her granddaughter’s fiancé thought she was going to Hell if she didn’t believe in Jesus. A long pause ensued.

I squirmed.

Many years before I was doing a concert at a very small church and Mom decided to come. After the concert I opened it up for questions about being Jewish and believing in Jesus. I remember a woman raised her hand and asked, would Jewish people go to Hell if they didn’t believe in Jesus. I didn’t ever really answer her question, because all I could see in front of me was my mom, and I didn’t want it to be true.

Many years before then Mom had sent me back to college to find the “something” that she had never found. And when I came to faith on Yom Kippur in 1984, I told her I had finally “found it!” But Jesus wasn’t her idea of what “it” should be.

So, there we were, heading to a very nice place for a leisurely lunch on a sunny day, and I did not want to have this kind of conversation. I would have much rather talked about the love of God and prayed He would draw her by His love. But I had already shared everything I knew in that direction for the last ten years, and my mother would have none of it. She loved our songs and our “art,” as she put it. But she didn’t need Jesus.

Five minutes or more passed in dead silence. I felt the Lord was calling me to answer and not duck the question this time. So, finally I said, “He’s right.” And all the human argument for our broken idea of righteousness and fairness reared its head in bitter protest. There was a lot of pain and anger behind her words, but I couldn’t forsake what I knew to be true.

I thought for sure, lunch was over before we even arrived. But, to my great surprise we did end up having a very nice meal together. And, over the next 3 hours I shared God’s story of humankind, our sin, and the powerful deliverance and redemption that came through God’s Son. She listened—deeply. My mom was always a thinker.

I would like to tell you that she opened her heart to Jesus, but the truth is, I don’t know. She went home from our lunch that day, and decided it was a terrible thing that her favorite daughter, who she was very close to, would think that she was going to Hell if she didn’t accept Jesus.

She was very angry for about a year, and she brought it up almost every time I saw her for a long time after. I thought it interesting she never mentioned God previous to this particular conversation, but afterward, when she would express her bitterness over my belief, God figured into our conversations pretty prominently.

It struck me, over time, that some people come to the Lord because of His lavish love, and others begin their journey out of fear. In fact, Scripture admonishes us,

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverbs 9:10)

I am a person who tends to major on the love and mercy of God, but He is also holy, as I explained to Mom during our lunch. And our righteousness on a human level is like filthy rags compared to the pure, uncompromising holiness of God. There is just no possible comparison. But so many of us want to soften the edges of God and make him just a little more palatable, especially to the people we love. But that is a form of idol worship.

Sometimes we just have to stand naked in the truth—no frills, no soft-pedal, no worship music in the background, no pretty pictures—and declare God is holy, and there is no other God. There is no middle ground. We are either moving toward Him—or away from Him.

And all our perceived righteousness is nothing compared to the hot fire of His holiness. He is pure. We are not. And what is impure will be consumed and what will remain is that which has been made holy. And we are made holy through the blood of the Lamb—His Son, Jesus the Messiah.

"And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!' " (Revelation 4:8)

-Sally Klein O'Connor

2/26/24