DaRicous is smarter than me...

So Ive been going to this housing project to hang out with some younger guys for about 6 or 7 months now. I go with other folks from my church and try to learn how to love people that I normally don't spend time with (trying to change that) that are right here in my community. (The project is like three blocks from where I live)

I love my church, and Im beginning to be more tolerant of some of the people there. There are a lot of folks, including myself, at church who seem to be searching for some peace, some healing from being burnned by the church in the past. So there's a great deal of cynicism...and Im a part of that. Along with the cynicism comes a lack of sincerity, I feel. And along with that comes a relaxed attitude about sin, and really, a misunderstanding of grace. Now I know not all people at my church are in the same boat as me (a good thing). Some are serious about their sin and others are perhaps even more cynical than I am. And really the cynics of my church probably are in the minority, we're just louder...it actually seems the further one tends toward cynicism, the louder one gets.

But last night at SouthTown I saw a completely different point of view. We had a speaker talk to the kids, then we broke up into smaller groups. One guy, DaRicous, said he didn't want to be in the group with the speaker, where I thought he would be because that's where all his friends were, but wanted to talk with me instead. (Another guy that comes from the church had said that he asked DaRicous some tough questions a few weeks earlier and said that DaRisous really had been thinking about them) So I asked him, "What do you think it means to walk with God?" He said, "Believe Him. Belieive Jesus died for your sins." But then I asked if he actually knew what was taking place when Jesus died for a persons sins. He said, "Not really." So we talked about what sin deserved, death, and what Jesus did, the fulfillment of justice. Then it came..."Man, I think everybody should go to hell....I mean we all sinners it don't make sense that someone shouldn't go to hell"
And at that point I knew that DaRicous understood something that I don't. We really are an awful group of people, and don't deserve anything but hell. We got to talk a little more about justice, and then a higher concept than justice....grace. But DaRicous didn't seem to understand grace. But then again maybe he's one of the few people I know that actually does.