The hottest part of this message isn’t political

My Ash Wednesday message for 2026 comes with an assist from the recently deceased Jesse Jackson.

In 1977 — just four years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling — he wrote:

Even if one does take life by aborting the baby, as a minister of Jesus Christ I must also inform and/or remind you that there is a doctrine of forgiveness. The God I serve is a forgiving God. The men who killed President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. can be forgiven. Everyone can come to the mercy seat and find forgiveness and acceptance. But — and this may be the essence of my argument — suppose one is so hard-hearted and so indifferent to life that he assumes there is nothing for which to be forgiven. What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society, will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question — the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mindset with regard to the nature and worth of life itself — that is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth.

Obviously, I can’t know where Jackson’s heart finally landed when his Maker came for him. But if you’re shocked that he ever wrote something like that — given his later career as a Democrat presidential candidate — take it as a cautionary tale about cutting deals with the spiritual forces of this world.

Unlike Jackson — who, by all appearances, grew less bold as he chased worldly gain — we must become bolder, no matter the cost.

Jackson went from writing one of the strongest arguments you’ll ever read against casual abortion to serving, in effect, as a son of Moloch. That turn required choices: the old temptation to “be like God,” to treat gifts and platforms as personal property, to barter them for worldly influence. And after making that bargain, he ended up with an affair, a child out of wedlock, and a political career that finished in disgrace.

We love to play God. We love to fancy ourselves “the people we’ve been waiting for,” as Barack Obama once put it. And in the process, many start to believe — through misplaced worship and inflated self-regard — that no God exists at all.

Believe me, I know. I’ve stood on the edge of that same abyss. I’ve asked myself the stupid question: Is the stove really too hot to touch?

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But hell is hotter.

By God’s grace, I remembered — in my own season of spiritual dying — that I am a sinner who needs mercy before I became too proud to believe God and His truth didn’t exist. So the things of heaven are on my horizon as I prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Israel and await the birth of my second grandchild.

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Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

I chose Easter in the end. But all of us, at some point, play Good Friday roulette with our salvation because we know God is merciful and mercy triumphs over judgment. True — but mercy does not cancel judgment.

Christians have argued for 2,000 years about whether a person can lose salvation. Fine. But the goal of the faithful should include this: Stop living like we exist to keep that argument going. Do you even narrow road, bro?

Finish your race, my friends. The consequences of not doing so are eternal.

So unlike Jackson — who, by all appearances, grew less bold as he chased worldly gain — we must become bolder, no matter the cost. That leap of faith is the toll for walking the narrow road. That is discipleship.

Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Thus saith the Lord.

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