Dear Andy Stanley
A Blog on Our Faith by Katie Hawkins
Dear Andy Stanley,
This is a thank you note. Well, a thank you letter is more descriptive because this won’t be short. You don’t know me, but I know you, which I’m sure you’ve heard a gazillion times. I was on a church staff that regularly attended the conferences your team at North Point Ministries put on. I am grateful for the wisdom I’ve gathered from you throughout the years, but I’m writing to you with a much more personal and passionate level of gratitude. I am deeply thankful to you for saving me from walking away from a certainty that I’d always felt about the character of God.
I had a period when I doubted, I knew God like I thought I did. I thought that perhaps I didn’t really know Him at all. Your book, Irresistible answered so many of my doubts and questions that I want to thank you for all the effort you poured into writing that, not to mention the courage it took to publish it. Let me explain.
A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with an aggressive, late-stage breast cancer. Ironically, I was attending the 2019 Drive Conference and standing in the hallway of your church when my doctor called with the results of a recent biopsy. I called my 29-year-old daughter to tell her the news and her immediate response was,
“This is God punishing me for not fully surrendering to Him. He’s going to kill you to get back at me because I’m bad.”
Molly lives in NYC and had been struggling with her faith. She’d recently come out as gay and had a girlfriend. She still tried to go to church on and off, but the sermons left her feeling empty. I responded to her gut reaction of my news with a vehement defense of God:
“Molly, God isn’t like that AT ALL!”
Through the next 18 months of treatments and then another year of COVID isolation, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I wrote a book. I wrote it to Molly and others of her generation who are struggling with their faith. The whole premise of the book is to show how God operates in an ordinary person’s life. I wanted to highlight how God consistently lavishing love and grace and mercy on us even though we are undeserving. I wrote with great confidence out of my own experience with the Lord.
Two things started to undermine that confidence.
One was an interview of a guest on the She Speaks Stories podcast I co-host. The interviewee was a young single adult living in NYC and struggling with her faith. She reminded me so much of Molly. She passionately told us she couldn’t pick up her Bible anymore because of all the violence and genocide depicted in the Old Testament. She couldn’t make sense of it, and it was causing her to doubt much of what she’d been taught growing up. My podcast partner gave some wisdom and I stumbled around with some defensive comments, but it stirred something in me.
The second thing that got me all riled up was actually reading through the whole Bible which I hadn’t done in a long time. I used The Bible Project’s reading plan which very cleverly illustrates and summarizes books, themes and sections of the Bible. I started studiously reading the Old Testament like I hadn’t done in a long time, and I noticed more than ever the numerous times God called down punishment on people.
Hence my panic.
More and more I started to think that maybe I was wrong in stating to Molly and anyone who might read my book that God never harms people. Maybe He does?
As I got deep into the Prophets, it seemed like God was heavily involved in killing all kinds of people. I knew this was the Old Testament, but I also knew Scripture says God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I felt I needed to shout, “STOP THE PRESSES!” My book can’t go forward as this author has been myopic when it comes to really knowing God.” I couldn’t help thinking that I just heard what I wanted to hear about God. How could I have gone all these years as a serious student of the Bible and not seen how many times God says things like…
“Therefore, (referring to all the bad stuff his people were doing) I will wound you! I will bring you to ruin for your sins.” Micah 7:13
So, Andy, this is the dilemma I found myself in when by the prompting of the Holy Spirit I finally picked up your book and read it. I’d purchased it years ago when it first came out because I’d heard it was controversial. Since I always appreciated your wisdom, I felt defensive of you and planned to read your book so I could counter anyone accusing you of not believing in the Bible. I guess I needed the added incentive to feel defensive for God, too!
When you so clearly explained the difference between the old and new covenants and how dangerous it is for us as Christians to mix the two, relief started flooding in. I knew Jesus had said that He didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, but I didn’t fully understand what He meant until you clarified it for me. He ushered in a whole NEW way for people to be in relationship with God. His Sermon on the Mount alone outlined this new way. No longer eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, but love your enemies. No longer outward acts of righteousness but a changed heart. All 617 laws of the old ways were reduced to two under the way Jesus called us to live: love God and love others.
In your words Andy, “less complicated but more demanding!” When you highlighted the Apostle Paul’s life and testimony as one who originally lived as a pharisee and advocated violence against any perceived enemy of God’s law to his becoming someone who lived as a Jesus follower who clearly and eloquently pleaded with Christians through his letters to embrace and understand what God has done for us through Christ, a huge light bulb lit up in my mind.
I could go on and on here, but I don’t need to keep recapping to you what you wrote! I just wanted to tell you that my confidence in the goodness of God to all people is fully restored as I’m better able to understand God’s actions in the Old Testament. I don’t have to defend Him.
Going forward Andy, I don’t need to stop the presses from printing my book where I boldly claim, “Molly, God ISN’T LIKE THAT!” Once more, I’m certain God is not a punishing, vindictive God. He is a God of justice, mercy and kindness. He is brilliant, mysterious, purposeful and His plan of redemption for mankind is perfect.
Thanks to the way God used your words in my life, I will continue to encourage my young friends to not give up on God just because they don’t understand parts of the Bible. Instead, fully embrace who Jesus Christ is and what He came to do.
Consider the testimonies of the people who walked with him.
Read Paul’s brilliant letters.
Start with the gospels, the New Testament, and then read the back story. The history of the Jewish people. The Old Testament.
But remember to keep it in context.
I’m rejoicing right now in the truth of the full title of your book. Our faith is simply IRRESISTIBLE when we can reclaim the New that Jesus unleashed for the world!
With sincere gratitude,
Katie Hawkins