At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ve got to write one more day about the Blue Bloods episode on Unforgiveness. One issue was just that: the unwillingness of a young woman to forgive the man who murdered her family years before. The other issue was the debate about whether or not people can change.

I know it’s fiction, but it’s always disappointing that professing Christians such as these characters are get this wrong. Half of our New Testament was written by a terrorist:

But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. (Acts 8.3, ESV)

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (Acts 9.1, 2, ESV)

Then God decides he’d rather have Saul of Tarsus, later called Paul, on his side. (See Acts 9.1 – 9) But when God calls Ananias to tend to Saul’s needs, Ananias protests (sounds a bit like “bad people don’t change”):

But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” (Acts 9.13, 14, ESV)

Later, Saul tried to join the disciples in Jerusalem without success:

And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. (Acts 9.26, ESV)

But Barnabas came to the rescue then and again in Acts 11:

So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. (Acts 11.25, 26, ESV)

Reflecting on his experience, Paul wrote:

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief…The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. (1 Timothy 1.12, 13, 15 ESV)

Back to Blue Bloods, it’s just not true that if someone is bad, they stay bad. There is such a thing as transformation! And do you what the oldest church building in New York City is called? St Paul’s Chapel, a memorial to a “bad man who changed” by the grace of God.

One more thing, when St. Paul’s Chapel remained standing after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center less than 100 yards behind it, the chapel was subsequently nicknamed “The Little Chapel that Stood.”