“Do you really think people can change?” the judge asked the pastor pointedly one more time. The two were engaged in their ongoing debate about the possibility of personal transformation, a friendly argument that they had begun shortly after the pastor had come to the congregation where the judge attended. An elected county judge, he heard cases daily ranging from family disputes and drunk driving to murder.
“Yes,” the pastor replied exasperatedly. He knew the judge had good reason to be skeptical about the possibility of genuine repentance and redirection in a person. Day after day he made decisions about largely the same people from the same troubled families, often extending to grandparents and great-grandparents, people who made the same mistakes and committed the same crimes. Always promising to do better, they far too often reappeared only months later to plead not guilty once again to similar charges. The young pastor had visited the judge’s courtroom and watched him treat each of the accused persons brought before him with respect, courtesy and, not infrequently, friendly familiarity. Few people ever escaped the system over which he presided; and those who did, he once explained, had either “moved, died, or just wore out!”
“How can you believe in significant change?” he pushed. “Name one person, not in the Bible, that we both know personally who has really changed - I mean were genuinely transformed from immoral to moral, bad to good, complete nonbeliever to believer.” The pastor was silent for a moment as he thought through his list of candidates. Most of the changes in human life he saw were incremental
