This witness was sent to me by letter in October of 1995. I typed it exactly as written into my computer as follows.
October 16, 1995
Dear Rob,
Here's that testimony I promised you. It's not very polished, but is as I recall from 1956, nearly forty years ago. In the church where I grew up in the thirties and forties, the theology was gloomy and pessimistic, Calvinism at its worst. We were taught to read the Bible literally, especially the parts describing a wrathful Creator wreaking cataclysmic vengeance upon a terrified creation. Of course, our preacher did teach that Christ died for the sins of the world, but there was a catch: only a few out of all the human beings ever born were actually destined for salvation, and to add to the desperateness of the human plight, we could not even choose salvation. The soul's destiny was decided before birth, and that was that. A few, the "remnant," had been destined for heaven; the majority, however, were headed for hell.
I grew up figuring I was one of that latter group. Of course I went through the ritual of answering altar call, getting "saved," and being baptized, just on the off chance that I was one of the elect, but secretly I figured that the odds were against me. Nevertheless, for a while I worked at having faith; finally I gave up and tried to forget about God. That worked, more or less, for five or six years, but soon after my second child was born. the whole thing came crashing down on me. I became very anxious and depressed, absolutely haunted by a sense of doom. I knew I was damned. All the theology I had ever been taught pointed in that direction. Further, I knew that passage in Hebrews that says that if you sin after being saved, there's no further possibility of salvation. I had sinned plenty. So the sense of damnation was a horror that I lived with day and night. I wished I could be obliterated from existence, not dead, for that meant hell, but simply erased, never to have been. I envied the innocent animals who could never know damnation. This state of mind was one long torment that went on and on, week after week. To add to my misery, I couldn't sleep. I was convinced that if I went to sleep I'd die, and of course, go instantly to hell. So 2:00 AM often found me frenetically cleaning house, wide awake, exhausted, and pretty close to crazy. No one, of course, knew about this, not my husband, not anybody. There was no one to talk with. Finally late one night during one of these insomnia bouts, I came to the breaking point. I couldn't bear my life as it was any more. I had to have help. The Lord had to speak to me. I had to pray. So I brought my Bible into the kitchen with me and sat down at the table. Then I prayed the most audacious prayer of my life: "Lord, I've got to know. I'm going to open this Bible and look. Whatever I see, that'll be your word to me. heaven or hell let me know." Then, literally in fear and trembling, I opened the Bible and looked. I looked and put my head down on the table, dizzy with relief. The words I saw spake to me with the absolute authority of a divine voice. Those words were: "Fear not." I had turned to the 54th chapter of Isaiah, and my eye had fallen on the fourth verse. I pulled myself together and read further:
Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth. . . . For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. . . . For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.
Those words had the effect, as you so accurately put it, of a great wind blowing away all that dead theology that had been torturing me. In that moment, I turned around. I may still have been sick with post-partum blues. I don't remember. But I never gave hell another thought. I knew it was not for me. I knew that God, in his exquisite kindness, had seen my torment and my terror and pitied me, had enfolded me in love and comforted me. I never doubted again. I won't say I never backslid. I did, plenty, but I never doubted God's mercy again. Now you know what I know about grace.
Yours, Carolyn Graham.
Comment
In another essay, I describe how God's triune nature implies miracle. That Carolyn was affected profoundly by what she read, that it seemed to be God's voice, that her eye fell upon just the right verse, can all be seen as relatively normal events within the causal nexus of the world. Simply put, it was the product of chance and desperation. But that is not the case from Carolyn's point of view. From her point of view, she was addressed by a transcendent God. "The words I saw spake to me with the absolute authority of a divine voice." This God held her destiny in his hands and was perfectly capable of sending her to hell. This God had effects on her. As she put it, "I never gave hell another thought. I knew it was not for me. I knew that God, in his exquisite kindness, had seen my torment and my tenor and pitied me, had enfolded me in love and comforted me." A dispassionate third party observer could ascribe these effects to natural causes, but that is not possible for Carolyn. Natural effects do not determine one's eternal destiny. She would consider it foolish to think that the Being which spoke to her was an effect of the created order. In other words, she was miraculously addressed from beyond. It was a miracle as in Jesus being raised from the dead. Nor, from the point of view of faith, could she adopt the two language theory and claim that the event can be seen as a result of natural causes which she then interprets as the voice of God. She did not interpret a natural sequence of events as a divine voice. Initially, there was no interpretation here. She was addressed by a divine voice and that voice changed her life. Interpretation implies distance, standing back and abstracting from a given reality. One does not hear a voice when one interprets, but interprets what was seen and heard after the voice has spoken. To say that the "divine voice" was the result of interpretation is to say that she decides the source of the words she heard, rather than recognizing that the Voice decided to address her. Of course, a decision is involved. But classical theology has always seen two factors, the Word and the subjective appropriation of the Word which is Spirit. The Spirit does not determine the Word as Word, but recognizes the priority of the Word already given as Word. Theologically, if Carolyn were to claim that she decides when the Word is the Divine Word, that is tantamount to placing her own word of decision above the Word which was received. And that, in a nutshell, is the whole of modernist theology, an attempt to step back from God and decide for the autonomy of the self over against God. That is the one thing that faith cannot do.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
