What to do?

A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through her sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter–two years old!–to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habbit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable–I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

Philip Yancey

Philip Yancey

A story is told about a group of English theologians discussing the Gospel.

They were trying to define what it was about Christianity that was different than all other religions. To begin they talked about resurrection but other religions also deal with this, they brought up the death of God but other religions have within them a god who dies, they were in the midst of trying to determine the attribute that made Christianity unique when C. S. Lewis entered the room. He asked what the discussion was about, they told him. Lewis answered, “That’s easy, it’s grace.”

Philip Yancey