At the end of What Jesus Meant, Garry Wills comes to Good Friday. He writes, “Dark and mysterious as is the whole matter of the Incarnation and the Passion, perhaps a single thing can help us think of them.” And then Wills relates a simple personal anecdote. His young son woke up one night crying. He had had a bad dream, a nightmare. When Wills asked what was troubling him, the little boy said that a nun in his school had told the children that they would end up in hell if they sinned. “Am I going to hell?” the little boy asked his father. Wills writes, “There is not an ounce of heroism in my nature, but I instantly announced what any father, any parent would: ‘All I can say is that if you’re going there, I’m going with you.’”
–John M. Buchanan, Fourth Presbyterian Church (126 E. Chestnut), “If You’re Going, I’m Going With You”
See also: “Good People” by David Foster Wallace.