My team sat in the nursing home, silently communicating with the residents through eye contact and holding hands. Around us, the Bulgarian church members chattered away in their native language. The tiny room grew stuffy as over 20 people crammed themselves inside. I turned in place, looking for a resident to pray with and pour into. My eyes landed on a smartly dressed man on the couch.
His gnarled hands gripped a wooden cane as his head bowed down low. His cap was pulled down far on his white-haired head, creating a barrier from curious eyes as he sat in the noisy room. Dressed all in black, he wrapped an aura of extreme sadness around himself like a blanket. “This one, Beloved.” God whispered.
I squatted down so that I could look into his face. Staring back at me was a man who was a dead ringer for Ian McKellan! This man reminded me of Magneto in X-Men. A church member crouched down next to me and began asking him questions in Bulgarian as I held his hand. As she spoke to him, tears started leaking out of his blue eyes and he clutched my hand like a lifeline. I had no clue what was going on, but I began praying for this man. It was so clear he needed healing from something, something that was tearing him up inside and weighed heavily on him. The church member could only explain in broken English that this man was very sad, that he cried every day, that he had no one who loved him. She called over one of the translators to explain the situation to me further.
While we waited for Sara to free herself from conversation, I thought about this man’s similarities to Magneto. In the movie, Magneto’s family was sent to Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He was ripped away from his parents, and they were sent off to the gas chambers. As he’s screaming and struggling against the Nazis preventing him from running towards his parents, his magnetic powers are revealed as he bends the gates of the concentration camp. He spends the rest of the series a bitter man, weighed down by hatred of a world who does not accept him for who he is. At first, the world did not accept him because he is Jewish, then he was rejected and abused for being a mutant. This outlook shapes every choice he makes, and he allows his bitterness and anger to guide him into making horrible choices. Like any great super villain, Magneto clings to events from his past and allows them to determine his identity.
The man in black sniffled into his handkerchief as Sara explained what the other woman had learned. This man’s daughters disowned him and took away almost all his money. They tell people they have no father, and no one comes to visit him in the nursing home. He is utterly alone. But what is truly sad about his situation is the fact that he harbors hatred towards his daughters. He wants bad things to happen to them, and he prays to God that they would be cursed. Sara and I gently told him the Good News, that Jesus loves him and wants to take away this burden, wants to give him joy. But he refused. He cannot see past the wrongs he has suffered, and will not accept Jesus, because he knows Jesus would want him to forgive his daughters. And that he absolutely cannot do. So he sits in misery every day, cursing the women who have wronged him. We prayed with him, spoke truth to him, and eventually had to leave him cloaked in his anger and sadness.
On the ride home, I reflected on what this man had taught me. I know he’s likely far from innocent himself (after all, daughters don’t generally disown their fathers for no reason), but he is so focused on his identity as the victim that he can’t see past his own perceptions. Like Magneto, he has allowed things that have happened to him to define who he is. He has been hurt, and he has allowed those wounds to fester until they have taken over and clouded his decisions. He cannot accept the love and healing from the One who could give him a new identity, because he knows, deep down, that if he can be forgiven, so can his daughters. And he wants them to suffer. I was incredibly sad on the ride home. I grieve for this man, who has allowed himself to be defined by his past. I pray that he would come to know the freedom of forgiveness before it’s too late.
What things in your past have you let define you? When we are in Christ, He gives us a new identity as sons and daughters of Him. We are shaped by our past, and we learn deep lessons from it. But it does not have to define us. Our stories are powerful things, but only when we allow them to be written by Jesus.
