Letter from Susan about Chuck Swindoll Causing Pain and Suffering
Letters From All-Creatures.org and The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation

Letter from Susan about Chuck Swindoll Causing Pain and Suffering
- 4 Feb 2010

Hello Reverend Frank and Mary!

One of my very favorite pastors is Chuck Swindoll. He just admitted in a recent radio sermon that he loves to hunt. My feelings and sincere regard for this man of God have been dashed.

How can you love God, respect and reverence his whole creation, and turn around and say you LOVE killing? How does one do that, Reverend Hoffman?

I’m afraid I lack the ability to understand such thinking or, perhaps, maybe I’m blessed to NOT be able to understand it. Why can’t people of faith fully embrace the tenant that though we live in a fallen world, God still hopes we will always seek the high road, the most compassionate path and have mercy and empathy for the tiniest of creatures?

I’m so grateful for you and Mary.

Your sermons, website, and thought-provoking articles are an oasis of love and compassion in a searing desert of indifference, arrogance, and misunderstanding.

I thank God for you!

With the love of Christ,

--Susan

Reply from Frank and Mary Hoffman

Dear Susan:

Thank you very much for your continued support and encouragement.

Your comments about Chuck Swindoll are very telling and the kind of thing we should publish, because he needs to know the pain he is causing others (the animals he kills, and people who feel like you do).

Like you, we also question how and why a person who claims to love God, particularly the clergy who teach others, can hunt and kill another living being, and even enjoy it.  Our only conclusion is that such people really don't know Jesus, and being to mind two Bible passages:

Matthew 7:21-23

21. "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

22. "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'

23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.' NAS

And Mark 9:42

42 "And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. NAS

In the Love of the Lord,

Frank and Mary

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