The Everyday Club

8/30/10 Vido, about 65
The writer of Hebrews warns us against having an unbelieving heart lest we be "hardened by sin's deceitfulness" (Hebrews 3:13)   I met an older man named Vido at the park today, a tough Italian from Chicago's original Maxwell street neighborhood who prides himself in "telling it like it is", profanity and all. He told of growing up Catholic and searching for God as a young man. The problem is that he said "I did it my way" and he has been doing it his way ever since. Now he is a bitter old man, angry and judgmental at the world, beaten down by the devil, having a very shallow and obviously false sense of humility, taking his chances and betting that the God he doesn't know will somehow forgive him. He has never read the Bible and isn't about to start now. Yet he views himself as being a religious man - "I'm just religious in my own way". He appreciated that I "told it like it is" - what the Bible says - right back at him, but I don't think he believed me or really even heard me.