If they had put up a marquee in front of the Boy’s Home that said: Double Feature! Now Showing Love and Compassion starring Steve Robinson as Counselor of Children I might have been a little embarrassed at the barefaced egotism of it. But if it was also in lights I wouldn’t have been that much more embarrassed.

The boys home was a treatment facility where the state placed severely emotionally-disturbed kids that could not make it in foster homes or other institutions. My wife and I lived with eight of them in a large, old, turquoise green house set in the middle of twenty-four isolated desert acres that had dead, rusted-out farm machinery lying about it. I had just graduated with my bachelor’s degree in ministry and needed a mission to fulfill. Salvaging the home physically and programmatically, and the boys emotionally and spiritually, was perfect. It was taking on a hopeless cause (which I always enjoy doing), and it was St. James’ “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father . . .: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (1:27). We turned down a lucrative job offer and accepted the “mission” job with the home after much sincere prayer . . . well, as sincere as I could muster. We found a “home,” and, as usual, my pride found a home too.

Yes, as it turned out, there were unlimited opportunities for my ego in these unwanted children. I would want them, I would love them, I would find a way through the love of Christ to take care of them, get through to them, and change their hearts and minds. Yes, I would do that for them. But also for me. You see, the thing I liked most about being at the home was that it fit my image of myself: patient, wise, spiritual, kind, compassionate, and selfless. In brazen shorthand: Savior. I enjoyed—no, I arrogantly delighted in—the idea that we took on the job and were taking kids that no one else wanted or could handle. And I took liberties to set up opportunities to let people know that’s just what we did. Then when people were duly impressed, I smiled and accepted their praise as humbly as I could appear.

We had only been there for three weeks, and already I loved all the boys. Every one of them. Except John Gaston. John was a small, wiry kid who came from an abusive family. He had hair like shredded wheat and looked mean and dirty even in Mickey Mouse PJs at bedtime. Johnny’s face had a perpetual look that, if he were in the group of kids brought to Jesus, even Jesus would want to slap it off. People who met Johnny hated him in seconds flat. He set land speed records for setting distance between himself and other human beings. All the kids hated him. The other staff people hated him. But I, on the other hand, I hated the sin but loved the sinner. Or so I said. Actually, I hated him too.

I knew all the psychologically correct ways to view his behavior: the cry for help behind the foul abusive attacks, the “I’ll get you to reject me so I won’t get involved and get hurt again” syndrome, the frightened child inside the macho bravado, the tender heart beneath the crusty scabs and scars of abuse. And I knew the correct way to view myself: I was the expert, the one with knowledge, wisdom, maturity, and all the answers. But I was also, on top of all that, the one with the compassion of Christ in my heart. I had agape love for him, the love for the undeserving, unlovely, the outcast, and the hopeless case. I was spiritual, and so much more so than those before me who had given up on him. I would break through to this child with love—tough love!—unrelenting, spiritual love. I knew I would; I knew I must. For him. And for me. Johnny would not have it. Actually, it was more like he would not let me have it—that is, my precious view of myself. With him I could not be who I believed I was. And I think I hated him for that more than anything else. He would bait me, and I could not be compassionate. I could not be patient and wise. I could not even be objective, detached and professional. I wanted to slap him. I wanted to take him to the woodshed and thrash him. But the state laws said no woodshed thrashings. But he needed it. For his own good. And for mine.

The seven who came to the office door were missing only a rope to qualify as a lynch mob. Johnny had gone into their rooms and deliberately and precisely trashed the favorite possessions of each boy. Posters, toys, clothing, and sports equipment all cut up, smashed, defaced. They demanded retribution in the form of blood (specifically Johnny’s, and quarts of it). I calmed the group by assuring them that I would deal with the offense appropriately to the severest extent of the home’s policy and the law.

I put on my finest therapist hat and called Johnny to the office for a heart to-heart. I was compassionately Rogerian, I was directively Glasserian, analytically Freudian, Adlerian, Ellisian. I tried to help him understand the social consequences of his actions. I tried to get to the bottom of this rage and the rottenness in him. I tried to get him to connect with his feelings—or, really, with anything meaningful within him. I wanted to break through his steel resolve to shun healing, human involvement. I fished with every piece of bait I knew for his misery and pain. But he never bit the hook. He was a shark, and he went after me. Every word of compassion I uttered was matched by epithets, curses, or suggestions and recommendations regarding my sexual conduct and familial relationships. Those I’d heard plenty of times; I got used to them. It was not his words that finally brought up the gorge of rage within me; rather, it was his absolute refusal to let me be competent, adequate, professional, spiritual, and, yes, his savior. I finally gave up. In a stoically controlled monotone voice that was calculated to mask my rage, I banished him to his room “to think about what we had talked about.” I would not give him the victory, the pleasure of knowing that he had me nailed down. He went out of the office and immediately began beating the walls and the doors, screaming hatred and vengeance on me and the entire household.

Again the lynch mob assembled at the office door. They knew I had failed to control this volcano of human misery. James, a budding sociopath whom I feared would become, and truly to this day I think is, a serial killer somewhere, and was always the spokesman for the mob, looked at me accusingly.

“Well? What are you gonna do, huh? If it was me, I’d kick his butt.”

“You would, huh?” I listened to the pounding on the walls and I felt the pounding my ego had taken.

“Yes,” said James.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you, James?”

“Yeah, me and everyone else. Ain’t that right, guys? But you won’t let us fight him ‘cause it’s against the rules. And I ain’t getting grounded because of that jerk.” James always looked out for himself first.

“Well, James, you only get grounded if I catch you fighting. And if there aren’t any witnesses, well. . . .”

So what you saying? We can kick John’s butt, but we won’t get grounded?”

“Yes . . . so if that’s what you guys really want to do, I guess so. You wait outside by the dumpster after dinner, and I’ll have him take out the garbage for his chore. You guys will have two minutes. After two minutes, I’m going to come out. You guys take off, and I didn’t see anything. Got it?”

“Yeah! All right! We’re gonna kill him!”

And after dinner, a strangely quiet dinner in which everyone, especially James and I, were unusually polite to John (“More peas, John? Get you some more milk, John? Take your plate to the kitchen for you, John?”), the deed was done. I sent Johnny—a scowling, dirty, swaggering, sixty-pound human bag of hate and venom—out the door with a sack of garbage.

And I stood at the picture window and watched the ambush, the short dance of bravado that precedes every elementary schoolboy’s fight, and the beating. Expressionless, I watched. He brought it on himself. He must understand that there are consequences for antisocial behavior. He must understand that he cannot wantonly destroy other people’s things. Especially not their egos. Especially not my ego. When I thought he’d had enough, I opened the front door and turned on the porch light. The mob scattered into the orchard next to the house, leaving Johnny lying curled up in a ball on the dirt like a flicked potato bug. He took his dusty arm from over his head to look up and see why his assassins had fled and saw me strolling casually to where he lay. He uncurled and lifted himself from the ground, his sixty pound frame shaking uncontrollably. And when he stood up I saw a child. A small, scared, lonely, beaten child with furrows engraved by tears in the dirt on his face. A rejected child who raised a skinny arm and, sighting down his trembling finger, pointed at me as he cried through huge gasps of breath, “YOU! You are just like them! You don’t care! You don’t care!! See how you are?! See?! I thought you were different, but you’re just like them!!”

And he was right. I saw how I was. Clearly. Just like them. My piety, self righteousness, knowledge, wisdom, selflessness, spirituality, competence, and religion became my idols, and I destroyed a child who threatened to tear them down. I was a deviser of plots. I was a maker of unholy alliances. A betrayer. A murderer by proxy. I was just like them…., the crucifiers of Christ.

Yes, I am still like them. Expose my weaknesses, question my competence, doubt my integrity, prove me a fool, show my ignorance, discover my pretenses, unmask my hypocrisy, bring me down a notch or two, threaten my status, undermine my power, jeopardize my position—do any of these things to me, and I will save myself. I will preserve my ego, my proud images of myself, at any price. I will leave you, fire you, cast shadows of doubt on your competence and integrity to others, gossip about you, or I’ll quit. I will call you a fool, unbelieving, hardheaded, or ignorant. I will crucify you. Believe it, because I am just like them.

I am just like those who took The Child who would not allow us the pleasures of our proud delusions and hung Him on the Cross. I see the quivering hand that was once held out in healing and compassion now nailed to a piece of wood by the sins of proud humanity, and I understand what the Cross says about all of us, and, yes, even me: “See how you are? See how you really are?”

But He let us do it for our sakes. For the sake of the self-righteous, the betrayers, the devisers of plots, the makers of unholy alliances, the murderers by proxy, and the crucifers. I see His hands nailed down and His voice call out for forgiveness. And then I understand what God says about Himself through the Cross. “See how I am?” “See how I really am?”