Me and Jesus

Everyone knows it is very important to accept Jesus into your heart, because otherwise you won't be a Christian, and you can't go to Heaven. If you don't go to Heaven, you will go to Hell. You will burn in a lake of fire and be away from your family forever. If you do go to Heaven, you get to sing hymns and listen to Jesus' words for all of eternity. This sounds a lot like going to church for me, and it's not very interesting. But I sure don't want to go to Hell!

The way you accept Jesus into your heart, is you say this prayer. You don't have to learn the words, because the teachers go over it in Sunday School practically every week. All you have to do is bow your head and fold your hands, and say the words after them, and then you're a Christian.

I think I say that prayer with them, practically every time they say it. I forget whether I ever said it before, and then I just want to be sure, so I say it again. Then one day in Sunday School, the teacher tells us that it is very bad to say it more than once. It's like someone asks you to be their friend, and you say yes, but then the next day you come up to them and you say “can I be your friend” all over again. That's just going to make them mad, right? And you don't want Jesus mad at you.

This scares me, because I've said the prayer so many times. Is Jesus mad at me? Is it the kind of mad that he can forgive, or the bad kind, like Taking Communion With an Unclean Heart, or Committing the Sin of the Holy Ghost, that he won't forgive. I'm not even ten years old yet. Am I already doomed? I tell myself that can't possibly be true, but I'm never really sure. God does stuff like that sometimes, and who's to say this isn't one of those times?

What else bothers me, is witnessing: Our Sunday School teachers always tell us that Jesus wants us to share His Good News with other people. This means telling them that Jesus is their Savior too, and that they will go to Hell if they don't ask him into their hearts. I never do this. I already don't have very many friends at school, and I am not going to take a chance on kids not liking me because I tell them a lot of stuff about God. People don't do that. No one does, especially not the kids everyone makes fun of like me.

I'm afraid Jesus is mad about me for this. I'm also worried about the people I'm not telling. What if I'm the only person that could have told them about Jesus? Am I dooming my friends to Hell because I'm scared to witness? So every now and then I get my nerve up and I talk to one of my friends. I ask them if they're going to Heaven. They always say yes. I don't know what they mean by “yes”. Maybe they don't know about asking Jesus into your heart. Maybe they think just doing good things or just going to church is enough. I never ask them though. I'm worried that my friends might go to Hell if I don't talk to them some more, but I'm more worried that they'll stop being my friends if I do.

Then one day I meet a girl who says she doesn't know if she's going to Heaven. Her name is Shelly, and she's a foster-sister of my friend Trisha. Shelly's mentally retarded. She's older than me or Trisha, but she talks like she's younger than my sister Karen. One week we invite Trisha to come to Sunday School with us, and she asks if Shelly can come too. We say yes, because you get a prize if you're the one who brings the most visitors to Sunday School. Two at a time is the most visitors we've ever brought.

When we're driving over to church, Linda and I ask Shelly if she's going to Heaven. She says she doesn't know. – We've already asked Trisha, and she's already said yes. And we know she goes to her own church when she isn't coming with us. – Linda and I witness to Shelly. We tell her that to go to Heaven, she has to confess her sins and ask Jesus into her heart. We tell her what sins are, and that everyone's committed them, even tiny little kids. We tell her that if she doesn't let Jesus into her heart, she's going to go to Hell, and burn in a lake of fire forever. We are very happy when Shelly says the prayer and asks Jesus into her heart before we get to Sunday School.

After church, Mama takes Linda and me aside. She tells us we can't talk to Shelly about stuff like that any more. It's mean to tell her things that she doesn't understand and will only scare her. I don't understand, because if everyone sins, doesn't that mean Shelly does too? And doesn't that mean she'll go to Hell if she doesn't ask Jesus to forgive her? But I do what Mama tells me to anyway. I know I'll get in trouble if I don't.