Familiarity

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

I said to myself, “I will watch what I do and not sin in what I say. I will hold my tongue when the ungodly are around me.” But as I stood there in silence — not even speaking of good things — the turmoil within me grew worse. The more I thought about it, the hotter I got, igniting a fire of words: “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered — how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” (Psalm 39:1-5)

Abraham Lincoln once listened to the pleas of the mother of a soldier who’d been sentenced to hang for the crime of desertion. She begged the President to grant him a pardon. Lincoln eventually agreed, but he left the lady with the following words: “If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.” I think I know what the old rail-splitter had in mind. I’ve had a little hangin’ over the years myself.

It was a beautiful Saturday mountain morning, on a cold, crisp January. I was with a church youth group, and we had gone to the San Bernardino mountains to play in the snow. Now, when you’re a teen there’s nothing better than leaving all your energy out on a field of snow – especially snow on a mountain slope with a toboggan. And we had found the perfect spot to race my sled down the hill: a gradually descending slope exiting onto a little-used road, and then on to another steeper slope that ended in a long flat area to slide to a stop.

So, there I was on my toboggan, holding a kindergartner in my lap, ready for the thrill of a lifetime. Well, it almost was. You see, that little-used road that separated one slope from the next was the end of a blind curve and, because of the previous night’s temperatures, had been reduced to an asphalt slick. Compounding matters, it had snowed the night before. And although great for skiing, powder is not the best surface for bracing yourself when you need to come to a quick stop.

But there we were – me and my friend’s younger brother. We had a lookout posted on the road, but I guess he was drinking hot chocolate and not paying very close attention. Because when I asked if the coast was clear, I got the green light and off we went. But it wasn’t seconds later that I heard the lookout screaming that a car was coming around the corner on that not-so-often-used road. Well, at that point, the only thing I could think of was stopping the toboggan and trudging up the hill to have another go at it. But there was just one problem: I couldn’t stop. The previous night’s powder prevented me from getting the traction I needed to stop. Panicked, I shoved the kindergartner of the sled and hoped for the best.

Well the best got me because when I hit the asphalt, I came to an abrupt stop. The problem was that the car didn’t; it didn’t even see me. And as I was wiping the snow from my eyes, lying on the icy pavement, I saw the car’s rear tire – chains and all – roll over my leg. Now, the good news is that, when you’re a teenager, you’re bullet-proof. So, I hopped up from the near-tragic calamity none the worse for wear. But then came the following morning.

I awoke that next morning to the sight of chain-link bruises tattooed on my then-swollen knee, including the accompanying pain that goes along with a 1 ton car stretching every ligament and tendon within reach of its tread. Teenagers.

And then it hit me. What if I’d slid just a little further? What if I hadn’t shoved that kindergartner off the sled? What if I’d left just a moment sooner and taken the brunt of a front-end collision. I began to sweat. And despite being a bullet-proof teen, I couldn’t thank God enough. I still can’t. It was only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. And yet, to this day, I’ve thought, “I could’ve been seriously hurt. Or worse yet, my friend’s brother might not have made out so well.” The thought was numbing like the snow that cold, January day, and equally convicting.

It was a little hangin’.

The stool had been kicked out from under my feet and the rope jerked around my neck just long enough to remind me of what really matters. It was a divine slap, a gracious knock up the side of my head, a severe mercy. Because of it I came face to face with one of the underground’s slyest agents — the agent of familiarity. And his commission from the black throne room is clear: “Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted.”

He’d been on my trail for years and I never knew it. But I know it now. I’ve come to recognize his tactics, and detect his presence. And I’m doing my best to keep him out. His aim is deadly. His goal is nothing less than to take what is most precious to us and make it appear most common.

For instance, he won’t steal your salvation; he’ll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. You’ll grow so accustomed to prayer you’ll forget to pray. Worship will become commonplace, and study optional. With the passing of time he’ll infiltrate your heart with boredom, and cover the cross with dust so you’ll be safely out of the reach of change. Score one for the agent of familiarity.

He won’t steal your home from you, either; he’ll do something worse. He’ll paint it with a familiar coat of drabness. He’ll replace evening gowns with bathrobes, nights on the town with evenings in the recliner, and romance with routine. He’ll scatter the dust of yesterday over the wedding pictures in the hallway until they become a memory of just another couple in another time. He won’t take your children, he’ll just make you too busy to notice them. His whispers to procrastinate are seductive: there’s always next summer to coach the team, next month to go to the lake, and next week to teach Johnny how to pray.

He’ll make you forget that the faces around your table will soon be at tables of their own. So, books will go unread, games will go un-played, hearts will go un-nurtured, and opportunities will go ignored. All because the poison of the ordinary has deadened our senses to the magic of the moment.

Before you know it, the little face that brought tears to your eyes in the delivery room has become — heaven forbid — common. A common kid sitting in the back seat of your SUV as you whiz down the fast lane of life. And unless something changes, unless someone wakes you up, that common kid will become a common stranger.

A little hangin’ might do us all a bit of good. Because, as the saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Maybe that’s what happened to Bernie Goetz.

Thirty-seven years old. Thin, almost frail. Balding and bespectacled. An electronics buff. Law-abiding and tired. Certainly not a description you would give a vigilante. But that didn’t bother the American public, because when Bernhard Hugo Goetz blasted away at four would-be muggers in a New York subway, he instantly became a hero. And it’s not hard to see why.

Bernhard Goetz was an American fantasy come true. He did what every citizen wants to do. He fought back. He punched the villain in the face; he clobbered evil over the head. This unassuming hero embodied a nationwide, even worldwide anger: a passion for revenge. People are mad. People are angry. There is a pent-up, boiling rage that causes us to praise a man who fearlessly (or fearfully) says, “I’m not going to take it anymore!” and then comes out with a hot pistol in each hand.

We’re tired. We’re tired of being bullied, harassed and intimidated. We’re weary of the serial murderers, rapists, and hired assassins. We’re angry at someone, but we don’t know who. We’re scared of something, but we don’t know what. We want to fight back, but we don’t know how. And then, when a modern-day Wyatt Earp walks onto the scene, we applaud him. He’s speaking for us! “Way to go, thug-buster; that’s the way to do it!” Or is it? Is that really the way to do it? Think about it for just a minute.

Anger. It’s a peculiar yet predictable emotion. It begins like a drop of water. An irritant. A frustration. Nothing big, really. Just an aggravation. Someone gets your parking place. Someone else pulls in front of you on the freeway. A waitress is slow and you’re in a hurry. The toast burns. Just little drops of water. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

But, accumulate enough of these seemingly innocent drops of anger and before long you’ve got a bucket full of rage. Raging revenge. Blind bitterness. Unharnessed hatred. We trust no one, and bare our teeth at anyone who dares get near. We become walking time bombs that, given just the right tension and fear, can explode – just like Bernie Goetz.

Now, is that any way to live? What good has hatred ever done? What hope has anger ever created? What problems have ever been resolved by revenge?

But what do we do? We can’t deny that our anger exists. So how do we harness it? A good option is found in Luke 23:34. There, Jesus speaks about the mob that eventually killed him. “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Have you ever wondered how Jesus kept from retaliating? Have you ever asked yourself how he kept his control? Here’s the answer. It’s the second part of his statement: “for they do not know what they’re doing.” Look at it again. Carefully. It’s as if Jesus considered this bloodthirsty, death-hungry crowd not as murderers, but as victims. It’s as if he regarded them not as a militant mob but, as he put it, “sheep without a shepherd.” “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

And when you think about it, they didn’t. They hadn’t the faintest idea what they were doing. They were a stir-crazy mob, mad at something they couldn’t see so they took it out on, of all people, God. But they didn’t know what they were doing. And for the most part, neither do we. We are still, as much as we hate to admit it, sheep without a shepherd at times. All we know is that we were born out of one eternity and are frighteningly close to another. We play tag with the fuzzy realities of life and death and pain. We can’t answer our own questions about love and hurt. We can’t keep ourselves out of war. We can’t even keep ourselves fed. Paul spoke for humanity when he confessed, “I don’t really understand myself ….” (Romans 7:15)

Now, I know that doesn’t justify anything. That doesn’t justify hit-and-run drivers, or kiddie-porn peddlers or heroin dealers. But it does help explain why they do the miserable things that they do. So my point is this: uncontrolled anger won’t better our world, but sympathetic understanding will. Once we see the world and ourselves for what we are, we can help. Once we understand ourselves we begin to operate not from a posture of anger but of compassion and concern. We look at the world not with bitter frowns but with extended hands. We realize that the lights are out and a lot of people are stumbling in the darkness. So we light candles.

As Michelangelo said, “We criticize by creating.” Instead of fighting back we help out. We go to the ghettos. We teach in the schools. We build hospitals and help orphans … and we put away our guns. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” There’s something about understanding the world that makes us want to save it, even die for it.

Anger? Anger never did anyone any good. Understanding? Well, the results aren’t as quick as the vigilante’s bullet, but they’re certainly more constructive, and a whole lot better than a little hangin’.

Grace,

Randy