Sunday, August 27, 2006

Kind Gestures From Simple Souls (August 27, 2006)

My son Peter works as a mentor for retarded kids at his school. (It is only partly a humanitarian gesture - he also does it to get out of gym.)

He told me yesterday that when he met the young black Down Syndrome girl that he would be working with, she looked at him and said, "You're sweaty." It was not an insult, just a statement of fact. He explained that he had had to run through the halls to get to class on time. She paused for a second, and then began furiously waving her hands in front of his face in order to create a fan to cool him down.

What a sweet act of grace on the part of this simple girl! Perceiving the discomfort of a boy she had just met, she waved him a sign language that said, "Let me make it better for you." In words my mother loved to quote from Mark 14:8, "She did what she could."

When my niece Rachel was two (yes, just two), she saw my mother weeping over the loss of her husband. Rachel ran to the couch where my mom lay and beat her tiny fists against the cushions, shouting, "Don't cry Nana! DON'T CRY!" Nana laughed through her tears, and enjoyed a moment's comic relief from sorrow. Just a year or so later, by which time Rachel understood that people weep when loved ones die, she went with her parents to the funeral of a man who had suddenly passed away. In the car she asked concerning the widow, "Did Judy cry?" "Yes," my sister answered, "Judy cried." When they got to the funeral parlor Rachel walked up to the woman, pulled a jelly bean out of her pocket and said, "Have a jelly bean, Judy." She did what she could.

Do what you can. It is a lesson I preach at myself when hitting walls of discouragement over problems I cannot solve, griefs I cannot alleviate, sicknesses I cannot cure, sinners I cannot set straight. "What's the use?" the devil whispers to me. "You can't fix this."

No, I probably can't - but that does not mean there won't be an opportunity somewhere to offer a "jelly bean” of grace. Thank God for simple souls and children who do what they can, heedless of the limits to what they can accomplish. When Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, it was, strictly speaking, a wasted effort. What exactly did it accomplish? I don’t know! I guess Jesus smelled really nice for a while. But that wasn't the point. Jesus said, "She did what she could," and "wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her" (Mark 14:9).

Do what you can, and though your deeds will not be recounted in an inspired Gospel or an uninspired Pastor’s Page, God will remember them. God delights to remember every cup of cold water that kindness ever poured.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Drunkenness And “The Real You” (August 20, 2006)

You're only yourself when sober.

Within days of Mel Gibson spewing drunken anti-Semitic comments at a police officer, a thousand newspaper columnists invoked the Latin proverb, In vino veritas (In wine there is truth). Their point was that when you're drunk the "real you" comes out, uninhibited by surface formalities and pleasantries that normally cover your core. In this view, Mel Gibson is, at heart, a Nazi - and only his deceptive sobriety kept us from knowing that.

Well I think that is stupid.

Every last one of us will say and do and think abominable things when our brains are disordered by alcohol or dementia or sudden impact. Do those disorders unveil the "real us"? Of course not. My saintly mother lived in fear that if she got Alzheimer's she would say bad words. She never did, but if she had - if in advanced age she began saying for the first time a word she dreaded, the scatological word beginning with "sh" - then I would have been a cruel idiot to conclude, "So THAT was my real mom! All this time I thought she was discreet and modest and gentle, but NOOO. 'In senility veritas'."

Everybody should take into account the fact that our brains can be impaired as easily as our bodies. For all I know, if you got Mother Theresa good and senile and she would start saying, "Screw the poor. They make me want to puke."

When I was in high school a friend of mine collapsed with a brain aneurysm and almost died. As he recovered in the hospital and I visited him there, a mutual friend warned me, "Don't let him talk about girls." This most gentlemanly young man had been saying lewd things to the nurses. Thankfully he got better and the "real" Keith came back. For that matter, "real" men come back every morning when their alarm clocks ring - for in uninhibited dreams of the night, chaste men fornicate.

The inhibitions that we associate with wakefulness and sobriety and health are good and they are real. Even if it is true that they merely "cover a corrupt core," then it is the duty of every good man to thicken that cover, and keep his inner corruptions from emerging as outward disgraces. If you will permit the bawdy analogy, we all stink when we fart, but the "real us" is not the internal gas but the discipline we exercise not to release it in a crowded elevator.

The real scandal with Mel Gibson is that he got drunk in the first place. There is no excuse for that. The biblical rule for Christians is that we may drink, but not to the point of inebriation. Drunkenness opens wide the window to a thousand sins, and either makes us bad or reveals a badness we should have stifled. Be inhibited. Be yourself. Be sober.

Sunday, August 6, 2006

Charity That Does Not Enable Sin (August 6, 2006)

Give to the worthy poor.

A recent Chicago Tribune story carries the headline "Church tells Katrina mom it's time to go." St. Paul United Church of Christ in Palatine provided a 23-year-old woman and her three fatherless children with a nice home to live in for a year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their house. They also provided her with a car, clothes, furniture, food, and thousands of dollars cash.

Now the year is up, and the church needs the house back for its intended use as a parsonage. But the woman doesn't want to go, and she has taken her case to the media. "I have three little kids," she says. "They don't deserve to be put out on their behinds."

She's right. The kids don't deserve to be put out on their behinds. They deserve to be adopted by loving parents and freed from the clutches of an irresponsible woman who fornicates, gets pregnant, expects others to shoulder the consequences, and responds to loving charity with a bitter "It's not enough - why are you being so mean to me?" Her expectation seems to be that the church will provide her with free everything forever. Poor kids. They need an adult for a mom. A dad would be nice too.

The church, despite its goodwill and sacrifice, is being made to look bad. It is not bad, of course. I applaud the good people of St. Paul UCC for their patience and kindness. They know what it is to do good and then get kicked in the teeth for it. An uncharitable church would never feel this pain.

Still, I believe there are biblical guidelines that can help good people avoid getting kicked in their charitable teeth - and also help them to alleviate suffering without enabling the kind of behavior that caused the suffering in the first place.

First, insist that the recipient of charity do whatever he can for himself. Israelite farmers were not commanded to bundle up food and deliver it to the poor. They were to leave the edges and corners of their fields unharvested so that the poor could go and pick up the grain themselves (Leviticus 19:9-10).

Second, take care to distinguish the more from the less needy. In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, St. Paul divides widows who should receive help from those who should not in part by gauging their relative need. Childless widows over 60 had it the worst, so the church needed to give them money. Younger widows had the resource of remarriage, and widows with grown children had the resource of relying on their offspring. The church was forbidden to help widows with capable sons because that would enable irresponsibility on the part of neglectful children.

Third (and oh how politically incorrect this is!), help the worthy poor. Paul told Timothy to give aid to aging, childless widows only if they had done good works and been faithful to their husbands (1 Timothy 5:9-10). Imagine that! The selfish, the fornicators, the lazy and the malicious would be turned away with a polite "No."

When a centurion's servant fell ill (Luke 7:1-5), Jewish elders begged Jesus to go help him, saying, "This man deserves to have you do this." Deserves! What a rare word that is becoming. It would be good to remember it, because character matters when it comes to determining whom to help. There are more needy people than you can count, and you cannot help them all. Try to help the deserving ones first.