'The rest of the story'

Every so often I’ll write a story about someone and then get an email or a phone call — or several — telling me “the rest of the story.”

Sometimes it’s about what the person meant to the caller or email sender, how the person changed their life or made the world better.

That’s the majority of the messages.

But other times, it’s someone telling me the rest of the story, the part that contains the unseemly, unethical, illegal, immoral, downright terrible things the person in the story has done.

Sometimes they’ll send proof: mugshots, arrest records, past news stories.

They’ll usually add, “I thought you should know.”

The truth is, people who are being interviewed generally don’t volunteer unsavory information about their past, although you’d be surprised at the number who do.

Of those, most, if not all, are Christians, people who have come to a point in their lives when they fully own that “In me dwells no good thing,” as the apostle Paul said in Romans 7:18.

Many are actually eager to tell of their depravity and their gratitude and awe at having their sins forgiven and being given a new life and a new nature.

In their own words they basically say: “Once I was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”

The Bible says once we’re forgiven, God chooses to not remember our sins anymore. However, people tend to remember and often choose not to let others forget either.

A pastor once wrote an article about a woman who was baptized during a church service and afterwards a group of “concerned women” informed the pastor that the woman who had been baptized had previously “led an immoral life.”

They told the pastor, “If she’s in our church, then we’re out.”

The pastor replied, “You don’t have to worry about having her in your church. Jesus already has her in his.”

In the article, the pastor went on to write about the ancient prophet, Jonah.

God tells Jonah to go preach to a group of people (whom Jonah hates), and when he refuses he gets swallowed by a fish.

After Jonah repents — while inside the fish — and the fish spits him out after three days, Jonah goes and preaches to the people (Jonah still hates).

They repent and turn to God, but instead of rejoicing over their repentance, Jonah fumes.

He had hoped to see God destroy them, but instead God forgives them. In his fury Jonah rages at God, “I knew you would do this! I knew you would be gracious and compassionate!”

Jonah stomps off, sits under the shade of a vine, secretly hoping God will destroy his enemies anyway.

God doesn’t and instead calls Jonah out on his hatred of God’s grace toward people Jonah thinks don’t deserve it.

(FYI: No one “deserves” grace.)

The book of Jonah ends with Jonah still stewing in his hatred, so we’re never told if he has a change of heart.

I tend to think he does, because what God starts in a person, he finishes (Philippians 1:6), which is true about everyone who is a true believer in Christ.

The rest of the story is this: The old is passed away, the new has come.

Once we were lost, now we’re found, blind but now we see, hearts of stone turned to hearts of flesh — no longer our mugshots.

Nancy Kennedy can be reached at 352-564-2927 or by email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.