I’m a Grey’s Anatomy buff so I apologize in advance and promise to refrain from using too much of Shonda Rhimes’ material, but this one is too good to pass up.
April Kepner, in Season 8 (22), is a die hard virgin, although she’s old enough to have completed residency and is scheduled to take the medical board exam to become a fellow. The night before the exam, after a bar brawl that apparently excited her enzymes, hormones and a few other things in new ways; she abandons her vow of celibacy and jumps the bones of her best friend, Jackson Avery.
In an unusual morning-after diatribe of regret she opines that she’s been a virgin all these years because she made a promise to Jesus and now that she’s broken that promise, “Jesus hates me!”
Jesus hates her? Where is the scripture that substantiates such a declaration?
So my question to April was just what kind of relationship did you have with Jesus? [Yes, I was yelling at the TV] What was the understanding of the premise of the promise if a broken promise could elicit hate from a Savior who is credited with not only giving love without measure, but of being love itself. The very embodiment of love.
And that’s often the question I pose to folks who tell me they’ve apparently breached the salvation connection by committing what they deem to be an unpardonable sin. None of the ones I’ve encountered have committed the same sin. Each has her own threshold that she has exceeded and is convinced therefore that Jesus hates her or that Jesus has gotten off the cross and removed from his back the slash that bore her name and removed from his brow the wound the thorn impressed on her behalf. How absolutely absurd!
How magnificently naive! Who could imagine such a thing except those of us so completely filled with the pride of life as to think that with one fell swoop, we can undue the unimaginable, undeniable, overwhelmingly matchless grace of God.