Tract 1: Perfect or Broken?

This blog started off just for class assignments and practice.  However, now that this has become a true place of public discourse I feel it is time to take this project more seriously.  My professors and friends have been asking me to start a blog for years now.  Since you have all been so kind to join this blog why not start here.

The first assignment I am posting my evangelism professor asked me to post this summer.  Not only did she suggest posting it but actually getting these three postmodern tracts printed and distributing them in commercial areas.

Neither her nor I usually are the tract type--but we became curious if there would be away to write postmodern tracts and I was able to convince her to let me do this as one of my projects.  Feel free to pass them out or onto your friends if you find them helpful.

Perfect or Broken?

Written by Jonathan W. Barker

Have you ever felt like your life was too full of mistakes and pain for God to handle?  That somewhere along the misadventures of life you became damaged goods?

In high school I was lonely, depressed, attempted suicide twice, binge drank, partied, smoked pot several times, and was hooked on porn.  What could the God of the universe possibly want to do with me?

In my first week of college a strange Christian named Elizabeth claimed that God found her amidst bulimia, the bitter divorce of her parents, constant rejection, and even a suicide attempt.  She quoted Psalm 34:18 “The LORD is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

I decided to trust Elizabeth—certainly in part because I had a huge crush on her.  Over the next several years I learned how right she was.

Two thousand years ago, when Jesus walked among us, he was near all the wrong people.  Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes (Luke 15:1-2).  Jesus went to a graveyard to heal a man who was chained to a tomb and constantly cutting himself (Mark 5:1-20).  Jesus constantly touched those with leprosy—a contagious disease (Mark 1:40-45).

Jesus in fact spent so much time with the “wrong” people that the religious leaders of his day accused him of being a drunkard and a glutton (Luke 7:33-35).

One way Jesus responded to accusations by the religious leaders was by telling a story of a shepherd looking for one lost sheep while he departed from the other ninety-nine (Luke 15:3-7). 

Rather than write off one lost sheep as damaged goods Jesus chose to wander into the wilderness himself to be near and ultimately find that sheep.

Eventually, Jesus’ willingness to be near all the wrong people would cost him his life.  The political and religious institutions of Jesus’ day saw his actions as a threat and they put him to death on a cross.

Could it be that Jesus was present with me when I cried tears of loneliness?  Could it be that he watched anxiously the night I drank a fifth in thirty minutes?  Could it be that he was in my friend’s car as we hot boxed it?  Could it be that Jesus was even with me while I sat in a dark room looking at porn?