DENIAL
"You don't go look at where it happened," said Scott Goodyear, who starts
33rd [speaking of race-car drivers who have been killed in crashes at the Indianapolis
500]. "You don't watch the films of it on television. You don't deal with it. You
pretend it never happened." The Speedway operation itself encourages this approach.
As soon as the track closes the day of an accident, a crew heads out to paint over the
spot where the car hit the wall. Through the years, a driver has never been pronounced
dead at the race track. A trip to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Racing Museum, located
inside the 2.5-mile oval, has no memorial to the 40 drivers who have lost their lives
here. Nowhere is there even a mention.
Source Unknown.
I was once conducting a rap session with high school teenagers. I told them that they
could ask me any question on any subject, and I would try and answer it. Their questions
were typical of ones I had received in similar sessions scores of times before. As the
session drew to a close, one girl toward the back, who had not said anything, raised her
hand. I nodded, and she said, "The Bible says God loves everybody. Then it says that
God sends people to hell. How can a loving God do that?" I gave her my answer, and
she came back to me with arguments. I answered her arguments, and she answered my answers.
The conversation quickly degenerated into an argument. I did not convince her, nor did she
convince me. After a few more questions I dismissed the session. After the session I
approached her and said, "I owe you an apology. I really should not have allowed our
discussion to become so argumentative." Then I asked, "May I share something
with you?" She said, "Yes." So I took her through a basic presentation of
the gospel. When I got to Romans 3:23 and suggested that all of us were sinners she began
to cry. It was then that this high school senior admitted she had been having an affair
with a married man. The one thing she needed was forgiveness. When I finished the
presentation of the gospel, she trusted Christ. The reason she did not believe in hell was
because she was going there. In her heart she knew she had sinned. Her conscience
condemned her, but rather than face the fact of her guilt, she simply denied any future
judgment or future hell.
M. Cocoris, Evangelism, A Biblical Approach, Moody, 1984, p. 163.
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