Friday, December 10, 2010

Late

It's late and I'm dressed like a hobo, trying to stay warm against the creeping cold. I dropped the furnace an hour ago, expecting to head to bed, but I finished a book and a thought popped into my head--both things that act like an electric jolt and keep slumber at bay.

I watched "Kick Ass" this week. It's not a great movie--mostly good popcorn fun peppered with buckets of gratuitous violence. There's a scene early in the movie, though, where the protagonist is subjected to an act of petty crime--he looks up and sees a man watching from his window, a man who closes his blinds against the attack and retreats into the comfort of his home, leaving the victim to sort it out for himself.

I couldn't help but identify with the kid in that scene.

This has been a hard year for my little family. We lost one of us, one who was to be and then, without warning, wasn't. It was swift, sudden, and it hurt like hell--still does, in fact. We were victims of cruel fate, and this blog is dedicated to me convincing myself that it was a random act of violence rather than something that one who claims to be love let happen.

We lost some friends. They called us "bitter," closed their blinds against us, and retreated into the comfort of their own home--in this case, their "home" was a religious community that encouraged their congregants to cut loose acquaintances that were "negative" or "bitter" in order to better foster their own spiritual selves. And I'm sure their daily lives are actually much more comfortable without having to see us out their window, lying in the street in a pool of blood. But, you know, an email would have been nice.

This month, I watched another friend--a man who did not close his blinds against us, who ignored my half-hearted request to leave us alone in our time of pain, who called morticians for us, spoke at the funeral, and hurt so damn bad with us--tell me that he, a pastor, had decided to close his church because there wasn't enough money to keep it going. This was the last church I attended, will probably ever attend, and my history with that community stretches back ten years. But this was the year my friend stood up and told the people that the church's sole purpose from that point on was to take care of the poor--not to be "fed," not to be a comfortable hangout place for friends to chat. This wasn't more than 12 months ago--and the sign will come down in 3 weeks.

I don't take care of the poor, and I really struggle with knowing how to be there for friends who are hurting. But, then, I don't believe that Jesus was God, and I don't profess to live a life dedicated to reflecting the virtues of God-become-man. (But I really do want to help the poor, and it kills me to see my friends hurt and I do what I can and try to do better the next time.)

I'm hearing from Christians more and more that the secret to spiritual fulfillment is to do what my former friends did--cut loose their bitter acquaintances and surround themselves with positive people who share their faith. And I'm sure it works great--I have a hard time picturing these people lying in bed at night, wringing their hands in torment over the loss of a messy friendship.

If it helps, then okay. Whatever. Carpe diem and all that, I hope you find the secret and all your wishes are manifested on your doorstep tomorrow morning. I just wish that this practice of rooting bitterness out of a person's life wasn't repeatedly couched in Christian ideology, because a bitter person is almost always a person experiencing a lot of pain. And while I don't believe the Bible is inerrant and the ultimate truth, I have read it a number of times and I don't remember the carpenter telling his followers to turn their backs on a person who was in need, in pain, or inconvenient.  

No comments:

Post a Comment