A Pastor and His Pen

Out of the kindness of my heart, I will refrain from using the name of this particular pastor in Gracepoint Fellowship Church. But as his daughter Corrie, Naomi and his wife Sunny can testify, what I'm about to say is true.

Have you noticed this particular pastor's pens or pencils? They are all chewed up.

He has a bad habit of chewing on pens until they are completely mangled. They are so mangled that they start losing their identities as pens. I had tried to help him kick this habit many times. I have tried making fun of him. I have tried snatching his pens away and displaying their mangled knots in a room full of people. But there was one time in a meeting where I was scratching my toes with one of my pens. Well, I was wearing socks, of course, but I was still scratching in between my toes with the pen. Then he asked to borrow my pen for a moment.

You can guess what happened next. After the meeting, I got the pen back, and the end of my pen had teeth marks all over them.

I asked him, "Do you remember what I was doing with this pen in the beginning of the meeting?"

I know he saw me, because I was scratching my toes with my pen for a while. His looked at me with a puzzled look in his eyes, which transitioned to a look of remembrance, and then to a look of incredulity and horror. Before he could say anything, I said, "That was the pen that was in my toes."

He said, "No, Daniel Kim, no, Daniel Kim, don't tell me that. No." There was this refusal to believe in his eyes - a denial of truth that he must cling to. But no matter how many times he said no, he knew the truth.

To this day, this anonymous pastor's pens get punished. But I can have a clear conscience, because I've done my part in trying to help him kick the habit.