The old man and me

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a blog by a cop in Texas who could make a great living as a writer if he ever gets tired of catching bad guys. The post that was up at the time really set me to thinking.

Go read it now. Go ahead; I'll wait. The rest of this post won't make much sense if you don't.

All done? Excellent. Now, think about the rainbow of emotions that that story evokes. First, you feel for the old man, and you're even a little angry at his family, and at the wider world that abandons old men like that. Then, as you read about his life, you're horrified and finally resentful that he's got as much life left as he has. First he's an object of sympathy, then he becomes incurably evil, as you learn about a single episode of his life twenty-odd years earlier.

Did it occur to you to wonder what brought about the change? Why you felt sorry for the man at the beginning and hated him at the end? More to the point, why did you treat him differently upon learning the sins of his past?

Don't try to tell me you didn't. I know you did, because I did too. I was hurting badly for him, wondering why his family had abandoned him and how he had come to be so alone. I hurt to think of him sitting in a dark, silent apartment, losing track of time, even his ability to perform basic bodily functions falling apart. I hurt to think of his kids living God-knew-where, his siblings maybe alive or maybe dead; who knew? I hurt because he was suffering.

Then I read how he had come to be where he was. His retreat into the bottle. His wife. His daughter. His time in prison. Suddenly it seemed right that he should be miserable. For as long as there was breath in his lungs, he should be miserable. You want him to suffer.

But why is that? Because his sins have found him out? Because his sins are particularly disgusting? Or is it because our sins, thank God, are not like his?

I think that's the root of it. My sins are peccadillos, lapses in judgment, brief anomalies. His sins are crimes against God, man and nature.

But are my sins so innocent? I never drank my life away, but I went through a time after my divorce when I owed my liver a heck of an apology. I never raped my daughter, but I've had encounters with women (long ago) that I'm deeply ashamed of. I never killed my wife, but I can think of one or two people even now that I wouldn't cry too hard if they stepped in front of a bus. In short, I haven't committed his sins, but I've committed others. Mortal ones. Ones deserving of Hell.

Like the fictional old man, I've damned myself. Like him, I was the reason that Jesus came to earth, suffered and died. I've been pardoned and the eternal punishment remitted, but I still have some time to spend on earth before it's all over. Should I be despised by others for the sins God no longer holds against me?

Ever wonder what happened to the Prodigal Son after the last of the fatted calf had been finished off? Did the elder brother toss him out in the cold after their father was dead? Did he have to go back to the hog pens? Did he live out his life alone and broke? I hope not. He sinned, he repented, he was welcomed back. End of story.

It's hard to tell how repentant the old man in the story is, but for our purposes it doesn't really matter. It's not our place to determine the state of his soul. He suffers, and that's what counts. That's why there are prison ministries and shelters for drug addicts on the street. If we are to call ourselves Christians without choking on the word, then it's for us to pity his sufferings just as much at the end of the story as we did at the beginning. To do otherwise is to cheapen our own salvation.

The old man felt the tears on his cheeks and let them fall. His chest heaved and his breath came in short gasps. He hadn't thought about that in a long time. He wouldn't have thought he had it in him to cry anymore. He sat in front of the dancing blue light of the television and let the tears slide down his face. He sobbed without knowing he made a sound. He tried to decide if he was sorry for what he done to his wife and to his daughter and to his son too even though he never touched him like that, he tried to figure out if he was sorry for the wasted years he spent in prison or the years he wasted after he got out, or if he was sorry that his life had come to this, waiting alone for death in this ugly little room. The old man cried without knowing why.

I know why, and I could cry for the same reason. And God hurts as well, to see the misery that sin can cause. He hurt so much he died for it.