Everyone will let you down
(Disappointment is what humans do best)
“Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes.” (Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic)
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
In the early 2000’s MTV had a popular show called Jackass that my sister was a fan of. The premise was fairly straightforward. Every week, half a dozen college-aged gentlemen would beat the snot out of themselves and each other in the oddest ways possible purely for the entertainment of millions.
Steve-O (Stephen Glover) is one of the performers that arose out of the infamy created by Jackass, most notable for swallowing and then puking up a goldfish as well as kicking an unholy number of excited young men in the nards. Along with the rest of the cast, he became a kind of anti-hero for a new generation of kids to whom corporate America and nine-to-five cubicle dwelling didn’t appeal. Here was a guy who made a living – and a good one at that – doing what every twelve to twenty-two year old guy did in his basement, garage or Circle K parking lot. For a half-hour every week, Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O & Co tested homemade human slingshots, pierced butt cheeks together and wrestled alligators while I frequently found myself wondering, “…are they on something?”
As it turns out, they were. Or Steve-O was at least.
May of 2009 premiered Steve-O: Demise and Rise, a candid look at the life he lived when the Jackass cameras weren’t rolling. Steve-O documented his own day-to-day activities, including the voluminous consumption of drugs like nitrous oxide, cocaine, amphetamines and alcohol (just to name a few), the frequent run-ins with the law and the eventual intervention Knoxville led after Steve-O threatened suicide with the disturbing declaration, “I’m ready to fucking die.”
What followed was a 14-day stint that started at Cedars-Sinai for observation and culminated in a transfer to rehab. Now more than thirteen months clean and sober, Steve-O is taking a possibly humiliating (and definitely humbling) path by broadcasting his coked-out, drunken shenanigans in an hour-long documentary that pulls no punches. “The abusive behavior that I feel will haunt me for the rest of my life can be summed up by the words "verbal and emotional attacks on my loved ones,”” he wrote in a blog post while still in the hospital last year. “At this point in my life I find myself hoping that I will be able to forgive myself for similarly selfish acts that my own addiction led me to commit.”
I don’t think many people would have ever set Steve-O or Johnny Knoxville or any of the other members of the Jackass cast up as role-models – at least not many adults. I know plenty of teenagers and college students who touted the show as an inspiration to their weekend activities and held it as an example to emulate, many times with painful results. Steve-O has even admitted to not being an ideal figure to follow, especially now that the truth is out about his problems. He messed up and he knows it and unlike most busted celebrities who wind up caught with their hands in the cookie jar, he’s admitting he did a lot of damage to himself and those he loves – willingly. And while I still can’t watch the show, I have an immense amount of respect for him and the rest of the Jackass crew. Major fuck-ups are a malady that strikes everyone; because of the fall, none are immune. But they aren’t what define us. The greatest test of our human and spiritual mettle comes when we have to make a decision about how we’ll respond when mistakes are made by us and to us.
Failure: The Great Equalizer
I’m going to admit something that I found shocking, even unbelievable, when it was first brought to my attention:
I’m not perfect.
Now take a moment and let that simmer for a bit before you say anything. I’d guess that on some level everyone believes they know what they’re doing all the time but it becomes the most pronounced between the ages of 13 and 20. There’s a kind of naïve arrogance that’s nourished by hormones and reluctant to acknowledge the existence of anything other than sex, grades, friends, music and money. Most are self-aware enough to refrain from saying it out loud but somewhere buried deep, there’s a smug little voice repeating, “Yeah, I know” over and over and over again.
This is one of the juicy nuggets I’ve come to terms with in the past seven years that I doubt would have made any difference had someone slapped me upside the head with it whilst I was a young lass. I don’t know how or when I came to such a disappointing conclusion; it seems to have been gradual rather than instantaneous. And while it cracked the very foundation my world was built on, my world itself didn’t crumble along with it. Of course I had no idea I’d been so self-absorbed until, suddenly, inexplicably, I wasn’t anymore. While I could comfort myself with the fact that I no longer had my head up my ass, I also had to face the reality that I’d been a self-righteous turd for a very long time.
Luckily, I’m in some good company. History is littered with self-righteous turds who made some seriously awful decisions and still wound up as fan favorites.
Samson: Meathead listens to his loins and not God
The period in Israel’s past that precedes the reign of the kings is documented in the book of Judges. In it, God chose several men to be judges (hence the name) prior to getting an official monarchy, one of whom was Samson.
An angel of the Lord gives Manoah, Samson’s pappy, the heads-up that his wife will be birthing a son who’s to be set aside for God. The boy grows up to be quite the drama queen (after taking down a thousand men he whines, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”) and finds his way into a lot of troubling situations that follow a simple pattern – weakness toward the lady bits.
Samson’s impressive (and superhuman) strength becomes a source of tension among the neighboring Philistines but he manages to evade their earliest attempts at defeating him, only pissing them off further. But after witnessing his soft spot for the fairer sex (or, rather, sex in general), they throw a bombshell named Delilah in his path and poor Sammy’s brain goes soft (while more southern regions become noticeably less so). He succeeds in craftily thwarting his double-agent lover a couple of times before she finally weasels the pertinent information out of him – namely, the source of his strength – and uses it to make him “weak as any other man”.
David: Chosen king listens to his loins and not God
Most remembered for the defeat of Goliath while still an awkward kid, David also wrote some of the most passionate and beautiful psalms in the Bible, hinting at an intense and intimate relationship with his Creator. When hand-picked to succeed Saul as king, Samuel even calls him “a man after God’s own heart”.
So it’s totally understandable that this righteous and God-fearing ruler spent his free time as a leering creeper. And honestly, who wouldn’t plot to murder the husband of the woman they impregnated? After all, it’s not adultery if she isn’t married and she can’t be married if she’s widowed after her husband is slaughtered on the battlefield. No harm, no foul.
Peter: First head of Christ’s church pusses out at the worst possible moment
Everyone knows someone like Peter: excitable, eager to please and willing to commit to something – anything – before having all the facts. These are the kids who wind up in the hospital after someone suggests trying to parachute off the roof with a bed sheet or seeing how many Barbie shoes would fit up one nostril.
Peter’s the disciple who scampers out of boat to follow Jesus’ steps on the water and promptly begins sinking. He also argues with Jesus only to wind up with the unfortunate nickname “Satan”. While enthusiastic in his devotion, his track record is already pretty pathetic when Passover begins and he’s told he’s going to deny Christ not once but three times in the span of less than 24 hours. And surprisingly this foresight does nothing to hold his tongue when the time comes.
But hey, at least he’s not Judas.
Michelle: Naïve twenty-two year old listens to her loins and not God
I’ve already given you the low-down on Dave and the bitch-slapping God gave me during the fiasco. What I haven’t talked about, however, are the consequences of my selfishness and the effects it had on my relationships, namely with two people I cared very much about.
While the decision to engage in some pre-marital nookie was mine alone to make, that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect those close to me. I mentioned that just a few months prior to the hookup I’d been in my first long-term serious relationship. The guy was (and still is) a phenomenal person and played a major role in making me who I am today. We didn’t split out of anger, so I didn’t put a pox on his house or burn all his pictures once we broke up; there wasn’t and never has been any animosity harbored on my end.
So why did I feel the need to broadcast my sexy antics where I knew he was likely to see them? I justified the unnecessary TMI by saying that I wasn’t doing anything wrong – we weren’t together and I was free to do whatever I wanted, with whomever I wanted. Which is true; it’s just not very nice. Some insecure part of my brain felt compelled to testify that I wasn’t doing anything wrong or going against my personal beliefs. So what if I was a free agent – I hurt someone dear to me. And that makes me a pretty heartless bitch.
Everyone else: (insert witty clipping here)
Does any of this sound familiar? When was the last time one of your posse talked smack about you behind your back? When did your father choose the NBA finals over Tuesday Night Tacos? Has your boyfriend ever ditched you for XBox just after your dog died from drinking anti-freeze?
I could tell you a bazillion stories of things I’ve done, had done to me or heard about being done. As quote above, Paul’s pretty clear in Romans who among us sucks: everyone. Whether it’s porn or gossip or cheating or murder, we’ve all got something going against us in the race for the purity crown. Left to our own devices, we’re all losers.
Alright, we’re all doucherockets. What now?
I’m not trying to depress you. My goal is not to drive a gun barrel in your mouth at the futility of it all. There’s a context to all our failure that so often gets overlooked or ignored when we’re drowning in our own pitiful tears and it’s quite possibly the only factor that makes any difference – at all – in life.
Forgiveness: What’s it to you?
“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24)
The above verses are the all-important context that our missteps need to be placed in. Verses fifteen in 1 Timothy and twenty-three in Romans are, on their own, discouraging. But in light of the very next verses that follow, all the weight caused by the despair of our miserable predicament is made moot. It doesn’t matter what your sin of choice is – they’re all made irrelevant in on the context of grace.
So what’s the point? In the Lord’s prayer it’s stated “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”; Jesus says in Matthew that, “in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”. But this isn’t about God giving us an eye for an eye; rather, it’s the other way around. Because I know what it’s like to be forgiven, I should be all the more ready to forgive others.
One of my very best friends, Carrie, also happens to be one of the people who have hurt me the most. We grew close after a few months of quiet dislike that were all but forgotten after one heavy dose of cough syrup and a ride to Applebee’s. We were inseparable for over a year from that moment on. She became the first person I’d call when I was worried about my boyfriend and when she got evicted from her apartment, my family opened up our home to her. She and I had one of those rare relationships where we could just sit in silence without the awkward need to entertain one another. Neither of us pulled any punches in the friendship – I knew I could trust her to be totally honest and vice versa. It’d been a long time since I’d felt so comfortable with another person and I would have put my life in her hands.
Then I found out that while she was staying with us, she’d stolen money from my mother.
I don’t think there are enough words to accurately convey the devastation I felt when confronted with the truth. I was angry, of course – and no one could begrudge me that. But looking back, the emotion that’s stirred up and the one that I’ll never be able to separate from these memories is overwhelming sadness. To begin with it’d been easy to believe that I’d simply been played but how could I reconcile that with the months and months of hysterical laughter and frightened tears that we’d spent together? I didn’t add up. Carrie was either a con artist who spent a year faking me out or she was the same girl I’d come to love… who’d made a mistake. A very large, very hurtful mistake – but still, just a mistake.
In the end I chose faith. I confronted her, she admitted to it and we both cried. I told her that my trust was shattered but that didn’t have to be permanent. She meant too much to me and I knew that something awful had to have happened to cause her to turn down that road. At that time she was losing everything because of the mistakes she’d been making and I wasn’t OK with jumping ship to let her tread water alone.
I don’t say this to convince you of my awesome powers of forgiveness or to prove that I’ve got this particular concept nailed. If anything, my motives were mostly selfish – giving her up as a poser would mean letting go of the strongest and closest friend I’d had since elementary school. This is the corniest way to put it but I value laughter too much to let that go. Aside from the contentment I found in earnestly trying to follow my faith, I got an even better reward – Carrie. It took years to repair the damage but now I can honestly say that there’s nothing our friendship can’t withstand. We both worked damn hard to hold onto what we had and the result has been something better than we ever had to begin with. If God can get us through all this shit, I now have faith that neither of us will let go anytime soon – if ever.
Get to the point
Samson, after being blinded due to his own gullibility (and libido) and losing his massive strength, still took down the Philistines. David became the man from whom Jesus would draw his lineage. Peter was the rock on which Christ built His church. I’ve managed not to kill anyone so far and have become relatively intelligent and content. God blessed them despite being ridiculous fuck-ups and, even more incredibly, used them. If I’m honest, I’ll admit He’s blessed me beyond deserving and though I can’t imagine what He sees of value in my pathetic abilities, He’s promised that He has plans to use my life too.
So the point is this: We can’t avoid hurting people – especially those we love and are close to – nor can we avoid being hurt by them. But God saw all of our shitty choices and still decided a relationship with us was worth fighting for.
You’re worth fighting for. And so are they.
0 comments:
Post a Comment