God and the Stripper

The ABC News Magazine “20/20” featured a series of “Life After” vignettes recently. There was the life after being a child star, life after being a celebrity, life after eating disorders, life after football. The one that I found most intriguing, however, was titled: Life After Sin.

Prominently featured was a beautiful, Pam-Anderson-twin blonde named Heather Veitch. This former stripper, dubbed a “holy hottie” by the 700 Club, still goes to the clubs, but this time she’s the paying customer! “I buy a lap dance and instead of receiving the dance, I spend the time talking to the girls about God.”

Heather, a single mom, wanted a way out and did so by graduating from beauty school, marrying her boyfriend and going to church. “I became a judgmental jerk for Jesus... I was like, ‘That’s sin, and that’s a sin, and that’s a sin. . . I was no fun.”

A stripper friend’s death from alcoholism left Heather guilt ridden. “. . .I ran away from a burning building: I escaped it and all my friends are inside, and I didn’t care... I needed to go back because nobody cared.” Heather tells strippers to come to church and that they don’t need to give up their lifestyle to come to church.

I was taken aback by that line at first. Continue stripping while going to church?! Then I remembered what my childhood pastor said, “Church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.” We don’t expect a person with a terrible illness to get well before entering a hospital – how can we expect a sinner to “clean up” before treatment, as it were? If the Gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit will take care of the lifestyle. The person will either leave it or leave church.

Veitch sums it up: “It the glutton and the cheater and the liar can all walk into church and feel comfy and have a seat, well so can the stripper.”

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