The Everyday Club

6/7/10 Alvin, about 25
I was at the grocery store to pick up a few items and used a "million dollar bill" tract to start a conversation with a young man named Alvin. He seemed normal enough until I asked how he believes God would judge him. "I think he would say I'm a nut case." I didn't quite know what he meant by that, but as we talked Alvin turned out to be somewhat simple minded, judging from the difficult time he had understanding the analogies I used and his inability to hold a concept in his mind long enough to relate it to the next idea. He told me he grew up Catholic but participated a lot as a kid in an evangelistic busing ministry that reaches kids in Chicago neighborhoods around us, so I am fairly certain he has heard Bible stories and the Gospel message, yet he knew little about it. Alvin isn't innocent - he knows right from wrong and has clearly broken God's commandments in many ways that he described to me, yet I think that intellectually it is very hard for him to understand the Gospel. Luke 12:48 says that "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded" and I trust that the opposite is also true. Jesus never said that one must intellectually understand the Gospel - only to receive it with a childlike faith, which Alvin is clearly capable of.