Christianity's Heart Disease: "Christians need to identify and remove an infection of thought, a distortion of belief, and a corruption of ideas that have taken root in the hearts of far too many good people...."(RELIGION)

• Author: Jennings, Timothy R.

SHE was terrified. Dust caked her mouth, and the tears that made trails through the dirt on her face could not flow fast enough to keep the painful grit out of her eyes. Her knees bled from being dragged through the rough streets as she desperately clung to the torn sheet barely covering her body. She frantically looked for escape, but in every direction there was only the impenetrable wall of hate. She could feel their malice building, their hunger for her blood, the dam holding back their pent-up savagery about to break upon her.

She knew she deserved to die. She was taught from childhood that what she had just been caught doing was punishable by death, and she loathed who she had become. She remembered how her uncle had taken her innocence when she was only a child and then told her how wicked and filthy she was. He called her vile names, and those insults replayed in her mind in a nonstop cacophony of self-loathing. Some part of her longed for escape; perhaps death finally would free her from the years of guilt, shame, insecurity, fear of rejection, and chronic loneliness--yes, loneliness.

Though she had been with more men than anyone she knew, she always felt alone, unloved, worthless. Life was hard; perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps this was God's will for someone like her, someone who was not pure. Perhaps death was all she deserved. Let it come. Why fight it? She sank down in the dirt waiting for the stones to find her--but they never came.

One moment the vulgar taunts of the murderous mob were all she could hear, and the next--silence. Daring to open her eyes, she saw a pair of sandaled feet. Fearfully looking up, she thought she must be dreaming as she took in the kindest face she ever had seen, and he smiled at her.

How could he smile?--but he was smiling, and in his smile she saw peace, compassion, and real concern for her, and then she noticed his eyes. They were intense, and she knew instantly that he saw her--not the nearly naked body the mob looked upon nor the frightened girl groveling in guilt and shame. No, he saw her. He saw the little girl, the bruised, battered, betrayed, exploited, misunderstood, and vilified little girl hiding behind years of bad choices, broken promises, and self-hatred. He saw the little girl inside longing to be loved, desperate to be whole--he saw her.

She held her breath as he asked her where her accusers were. With a voice barely above a whisper, not wanting to shatter this fragile...