Twins Separated at Birth?

One of these two gentlemen is a young huckster trying to pass himself off as a lawyer. The other guy is Leonardo DiCaprio, playing Frank Abagnale, Jr. in Catch Me If You Can. I had no idea this mockery stuff could be so much fun ... thanks, Josh, for showing me the way of righteousness!

I have no idea where the inspiration for that came from. I was out mowing the lawn Saturday morning, pondering how to respond to the comments I've received on the previous post, and suddenly this image just popped into my head. Could it be divine inspiration, or could it be ... saaaaaaaaatan?

You just never know with those kind of thoughts, do you? Kind of like the thoughts that rolled through my own head when I heard the news that Israel had assassinated Sheikh Yassin -- good ... sumbitch had it comin', immediately followed by -- that'll make things worse, followed by -- how could it POSSIBLY make it worse?

Of course, we can play Bible hopscotch all day long and point to scripture proofs for just about anything we want to justify. As long as we're on a roll, why don't we just decide that the solution is to kill'em all in the crib and be done with it? After all, there's biblical justification for that if you want to read it in that frame of mind. It would go right along well with the other examples of biblical commands to wipe out every Canaanite man, woman and child. AND their livestock.

But we're not supposed to read the Bible that way in the Christian faith. We believe that the Word of God must be read within the framework of its full witness. Thus the crying need we face in this post-modern age, every bit as much as in the modern age, is for discernment. That is a gift of the Spirit and available to anyone in whom God has placed his Spirit. That's different from good judgment, something one acquires (hopefully) with age.

Strange as it might seem to some of you, I actually like Josh, and I used to point to many of his posts here when I first started blogging. However, I began to wonder after awhile if he'd think I was just link-whoring to get him to put me on his blogroll. Don't laugh -- others have done it. I thought that would look a little pathetic at my age.

There's that age thing again ... do you suppose I have "issues" there? Perhaps so, and maybe that says a great deal about why I responded to Josh in the manner I did. Josh reminds me considerably of myself at his age, and a couple of days of reflection lead me to realize that it's not only Josh I'm chastising here. It's myself as well.

In my first D.Min. residence, focusing on rightly-related "being" (ortho-ontology) as the foundation of Christian leadership, one of our mentors shared this illustration with us. We begin life with faith as a little child, and over a period of years, that faith often declines like the parabola on the left. But if, by God's grace, we are able to arrest that decline and reframe our lives, redirect our trajectory so that we are able to finish well, we can end our lives with the type of faith we once had.

I put myself slightly on the right hand side of the vertex of that parabola lately. Not very far right, but making some progress nonetheless. However, like the old illustration of being in the middle of a tunnel and unable to see the light on either end, I have no idea what the right side holds. I know what the descent looks like, and it ain't pretty.

That vertex is where our midlife crises live. We look back with regret at the mistakes we've made and the people we've hurt. Usually for no good reason other than to protect our egos or to hide our own fears and vulnerabilities.

In my case, I look back at a guy who thought he had the world pretty well figured out in his twenties. Everyone told him he was intelligent and articulate, someone with great promise. But he was, and still can be, a self-serving, deeply flawed, broken individual, using that intelligence to dance around and outmaneuver anyone who gets too close to him, keeping them at arm's length.

Sheikh Yassin was such an easy target. Could we have asked for an easier, more cartoonish caricature of evil? Good grief, look at the guy -- a shriveled up, hateful, scowling old man in a wheelchair, dressed in robes and shrouds with an unkempt beard. A throwback to the 10^th century, somehow time-warped into the 21^st. What's not to hate about that? Are you looking for something to mock? It doesn't get much easier than that.

Want another easy caricature? Who's an easier target in the picture below, the slick young con artist, or the ridiculous middle-aged man with the gun he's playing for a fool? Sure, Carl Hanratty outsmarts Frank Abagbale, Jr. in the end, but not before we see the hash he's made of his own personal life. Who's the hero in that?

Anyone can look at a Sheikh Yassin and see evil. The real test of our character comes when we look in the mirror -- can we see the evil that resides in the person we're looking at? How, but for a slight difference in time and space, we could just as easily have been the person we despise?

You don't have to be a bleeding heart liberal to see that. But you do have to have a heart, and no matter how much I may think Sheikh Yassin was evil and received but a small measure of the retribution and justice he was due, I cannot bring myself to dance on his grave. To me it's sad that it inevitably had to come to that. He, like any of us, was created in the image of God, but, like any of us, he sullied that image with his own hatred. What destroyed him, in the end, was his inability to see himself in those Jews whose lives he was also destroying.

He lacked empathy, and that happens to all of us. Whether you're an old man in a wheelchair who's unable to see himself in those whom he despises, or whether you're just middle-aged and unable to recognize a guy half your age who's just trying to defend himself because he thought he was just making a joke.

My friend made some observations about a post Josh made that began in this spirit but were in some ways difficult to separate from pre-existing bad blood. I liked the observations and thought they reflected some of my own conflicted emotions on the subject, so I linked to that post as well as to Josh's post. Partly out of consideration to Josh because then he would know by the trackback that I'd picked up a related train to his post; partly out of consideration to my own readers so they wouldn't have to daisy-chain their way back there to figure out what got it all started.

I knew about the bad blood, but I didn't pay much attention to it. It wasn't my fight. I figured Josh had read enough of my stuff here to know where I was coming from. He would recognize that I come down in more or less the same political neighborhood where he lives. Assuming I gave it that much thought. Yup, sure is a good thing that our judgment improves with age.

Then I got lumped in with the larger group of people with whom Josh was arguing and effectively told I needed to get a clue. A good combination -- poor judgment mixed in with a little pridefulness. Who is this young punk, telling a person nearly twice his age to get a clue?

The rest is history. Since then, we've all been acquitting ourselves quite nicely around here. Someone suggested that they were glad not to be a member of the congregation I pastor. Fear not ... I don't pastor a congregation. But if I did, I'd be glad not to have a member like them. I don't object to disagreement, but at least have the guts to leave an e-mail address if you're going to "participate." Thanks to you, not leaving one is no longer a choice.

However, I did say, "Readers, decide for yourselves." Almost to a letter you told me it was stupid to bring age into this. I agree, and I apologize for doing such a poor job of trying to make the point that I hope I've made now.

Josh, I think I deserved better than the arrogant presumption I received from you. I know you deserved better than the arrogant presumption you received from me, and I apologize for not just staying out of it, or barring that, exercising a little forebearance. The opening comparison isn't meant to be hostile. I'm trying to make a point, and I hope you'll see it that way.

I think you are an articulate, bright person who will go far in life. Someday, I look forward to Senator Claybourn (R-IN) sponsoring the bill that will double his generation's Social Security taxes in order to pay for my retirement, assuming, of course, he doesn't choose instead to pull the plug on my life support! He'll probably face that choice because the politics of his day won't leave him much else for other choices. In either case, he'll long for the clarity of his youth.

Posted by Mike at March 29, 2004 10:04 AM | TrackBack