Answering the call of the north, you find yourself driving up I-75 on a cool day….clear day…. dry day….during the middle of the day. No traffic tie-ups. No orange cones. Just clear sailing…. smooth sailing….it-may-never-be-this-good-again sailing. You find yourself doing a little top-of-the-head calculating. If you maintain your present pace….don’t stop for gas….don’t stop for coffee….and hit the traffic lights in Grayling just right, you can eclipse your personal-best time to Elk Rapids by at least 45 seconds. Maybe even a minute. Just think, three hours and 24 minutes portal to portal.
Your present pace is a good pace, albeit a fast pace. You are clocking in at 78 miles per hour. Sure, the speed limit is 70. But everybody knows they’ll give you seven over. How “everybody” seems to know that, you don’t know. But that’s what they say. And who has ever known “they” to be wrong? So if they’ll give you 77, they’ll probably have better things to do than come after you for 78. Besides, as you tell your wife, this is the fast lane….and you are barely keeping up with traffic.
Suddenly you notice a car gaining on you. Not a trooper, but a speeder. A real speeder. Who is that lady, anyway? And what in the world does she think she’s doing? As you watch her weave in and out of traffic (circling the slow, passing the fast), she barrels down on you. Then she actually zips around you….on the right….at what has to be 90. But ten seconds later she’s out of sight. And 20 seconds later she’s out of mind.
But 15 minutes later, when you see her car on the shoulder with a trooper behind her, you permit yourself the very slightest of smiles (punctuated by your tight-fisted exclamation point as you utter the word “yes”). Once again, all is right with the world. There is authority on the highway. And there is justice in the universe. Seven over, they owe you. Eight over, they’ll give you. But twenty over, we can’t have that.
Not that you want the flagrant violators to crash and burn. You’re not bloodthirsty when it comes to the “justice thing.” Sure, some are. But you aren’t. Were you to happen upon the same speeder after she kissed a bridge abutment, with two ambulances, three squad cars, one helicopter and the jaws of life already on the scene, you would feel more sickened than vindicated. And your triumphant “yes” would be converted into a barely audible “oh no.” While you wanted her to “get hers,” you meant a summons to appear before a judge, not a summons to meet her maker.
You’re probably just like the rest of us. And what the rest of us want is reason to believe that the others of us aren’t getting away with more than we are. Sure, we all take a few liberties here and there. But some people take far too many, effectively ruining it for everybody. I remember thinking in junior high that it wouldn’t alter the moral structure of the universe all that much if once, every third Friday, I sneaked a peak at Dwinna Howard’s paper to see if she had put her “x” beside the “T” or the “F” on number 13. But I remember thinking that if somebody didn’t catch Rudy Czekovicz, who stole answers from everybody, it would mess with the curve and we would all be the poorer.
The world doesn’t lack for folks who wonder why bad things happen to good people. But close behind them are those of us who can’t figure out why good things happen to bad people and nobody does anything about it. It can drive you nuts. Or keep you awake at night. Just thinking about all those people getting away with all that stuff. Mercy!
And that’s another thing that sticks in our craw. Mercy. That’s right, mercy. Especially when it is offered too automatically, too uncritically, too completely and too easily, to far too many. It’s bad enough that people get away with things temporarily. But it’s unthinkable….maybe even unconscionable….that they should get away with them eternally. True, we sing about “his blood making the foulest clean” and grace that saves “wretches like”….how does that go?….like “the people next door”? But shouldn’t the “foulest” and the “wretches” at least have bamboo shoots shoved under their fingernails first, just to make sure that everybody suffers a little and nobody gets off scot-free?
I feel that way sometimes. Which makes me a walking paradox. For more than any preacher you ever heard, I am as bullish on mercy as any preacher there has ever been. My favorite lines from my favorite creed read:
I believe in God the Father
Infinite in wisdom, power and love,
Whose mercy is over all his works
And whose will is ever directed to his children’s good.
Roll those last two lines around again:
Whose mercy is over all his works
And whose will is ever directed to his children’s good.
How many times can I say it? How many different ways have I said it? At the end of the day, I believe there will be more mercy in God than there is sin in me.
But does that mean that my sin is of no consequence….that in the grand scheme of things it matters little….that, when all is said and done, God will brush it away (or Christ’s blood will wash it away) as if it were a mere flyspeck on the radar screen of goodness? Is mercy merely another name for “amnesty,” where the guards merely look away as the prisoners are released, or the librarian pretends not to notice as bagfuls of overdue books are being returned? Is nothing required of mercy’s recipient….like awareness, apology or remorse?
There are those who would say: “No. Nothing is required. Grace comes to those who know their sin. But grace also comes to those who do not know their sin.” John Wesley talked of prevenient grace….meaning grace before the fact of sin, or grace that precedes the facing of sin. Picture a child who has wandered off in a department store. Mother said not to. But the child did it anyway. Mother looks down to where the child used to be….ought to be….darned well better be….but where the child now isn’t. Panicked, she looks everywhere and enlists everyone. Pretty soon, half a hundred people are looking for one lost kid, including several who have been enlisted by the announcement over the loudspeaker. Everybody is panicked except the kid…. who, upon being found, wonders what all the fuss is about. It seems that the kid does not even know he is lost. He’s just looking around….checking stuff out….having a merry old time. God’s grace is like that, Wesley said (looking for us prior to our awareness of lostness….while we were just wandering around, checking things out and having a merry old time).
“Ah,” say the others. “That’s nice. But that’s not enough.” For there to be redemption, there must be contrition. Grace must make a connection….a connection with the sinner. So that the sinner (on the way to being forgiven for having been one) must be made aware that he has been one. He must also feel bad about having been one….must (out of his bad feeling) repent of having been one…..and, if the conversion of Zachaeus provides any paradigm, must repair the damage caused by having been one.
Somebody once made an appointment to see me in order to forgive me. Which was nice, except I couldn’t remember having done anything that required being forgiven. And they didn’t enlighten me. But it quickly became clear that they felt wronged by me, and any profession of innocence from me was going to make this sticky for me. So without making a specific confession, I voiced some genuine words of contrition. Which were received with appreciation. Thus completing (to my forgiver’s satisfaction) the equation of redemption. Making things okay.
So I do see the point of those who take issue with Wesley. Maybe we should have to face our sin on the way to being forgiven our sin. Some things do need to be dredged up and raked over in order to be gotten past. I did not learn that by taking theology. I learned that by living in a family. Some things do need to be dredged up and raked over in order to be gotten past. Like sin, I mean. Especially sin.
David Brooks agrees with that. And who is David Brooks? Well, he’s an Op Ed columnist for the New York Times….who doesn’t like Mitch Albom, and who probably doesn’t like preachers who like Mitch Albom, either.
Preferring a fire and brimstone universe, Brooks finds Mitch’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven to be a distasteful, dangerous and downright schmaltzy example of soft core spirituality. It’s the kind of spirituality he feels has taken over America, preparing its adherents for a heaven which is as “Lite” as the cuisine they eat and the beer they drink.
Talking about Eddie (Albom’s hero) who, feeling adrift and unimportant on his 83rd birthday, dies while trying to save a little girl from a broken carnival ride, Brooks vents:
Eddie goes to heaven and meets five people who tell him he is not alone, and that his life was not unimportant. They reconcile him with his father, who had been cruel to him. They remind him of what a good person he was. He gets to spend time with his wife, whom he’d neglected and who died young. He is forgiven for the hurts he accidentally committed while alive.
Then, warming to the real issue, Brooks continues:
All societies construct their own image of heaven. Most imagine a wondrous city or a verdant garden where human beings come face to face with God. But the heaven that is apparently popular with readers these days is nothing more than an excellent therapy session. In Albom’s book, God is sort of a genial Dr. Phil. When you go to his heaven, friends and helpers come and tell you how innately wonderful you are. Then they help you reach closure.
Which would be a glorious critique, were it true to the book. But as I read Albom’s story (which I keep reminding you is only a story), Eddie is not greeted in heaven by fluffy pillows and a big brass band, let alone Dr. Phil. (Would you believe I have never even seen Dr. Phil?) Moreover, I read in Eddie’s experience precious little ego stroking and nothing resembling premature closure. Truth be told, virtually all of Eddie’s heavenly encounters make him less comfortable with himself, not more. Following each of them, he is able to see life in a bigger context than he could while he was living it. In short, Eddie’s heavenly encounters are far more mind-blowing than mind-numbing.
The Blue Man tells him that he never understood the degree to which we are all connected.
His old Army captain tells him that during all the years he felt sorry for himself, he never knew that sacrifice was expected.
Ruby (from the pier) tells him that he can go on wasting the rest of heaven nursing his anger with his father, but that eventually all hate has to be grounded and enmity, reconciled.
Marguerite….the lovely, albeit late Marguerite….tells him that love is the only thing which, by death, cannot be conquered.
Now comes his fifth encounter….and his fifth lesson….wherein Eddie learns that responsibility must be acknowledged. His teacher is a six-year-old little girl….a little Asian girl….who meets him at the edge of a river.
“You burn me,” she said.
“What did you say?” he questioned.
“You burn me. You make me fire,” she said.
Sixty years earlier, when he escaped as a prisoner of war in the Philippines, Eddie torched a bamboo supply hut (just to make certain there were no enemy soldiers in there who could re-arrest him, or no recoverable weapons in there which could be used against him). But there were no soldiers hiding there. There was just a little girl, placed there by her mother in the expectation she’d be safe there.
Eddie swallowed. His hands trembled. He looked into her deep, black eyes and he tried to smile, as if it were a medicine the little girl needed. She smiled back, but this only made him fall apart. His face collapsed, and he buried it in his palms. His shoulders and lungs gave way. The darkness that had shadowed him all those years was revealing itself at last. It was real, flesh and blood, this child, this lovely child. He had killed her, burned her to death. The bad dreams he’d suffered, he’d deserved every one. Death by his hand. By his own fiery hand. A flood of tears soaked through his fingers and his soul seemed to plummet.
He wailed then, and a howl rose within him in a voice he had never heard before, a howl from the very belly of his being, a howl that rumbled the river water and shook the misty air of heaven. His body convulsed, and his head jerked wildly, until the howling gave way to prayer-like utterances, every word expelled in a breathless surge of confession:
“I killed you,
I KILLED YOU.”
Then a whispered “Forgive me,”
then “FORGIVE ME, OH, GOD.”
And finally, “What have I done?
WHAT HAVE I DONE?”
There are sins that we remember and sins that we repress. There are sins that we explain and sins that we excuse. There are sins that we deny, just as there are sins that we do not even know. What have we done? Plenty! And then some. And I suspect that the hard part of heaven is that we will have to
Face it….the sum of it.
Feel it….the weight of it. Taste it…..the bitter gall of it. And eventually own it….the awful all of it.
The hard part of heaven will consist of the truth that it exposes and the truth that it requires.
Yes, I was there….yes, I did that….yes, I said that….yes, life was not safe in my hands….yes, love was not safe in my hands….yes, I screwed stuff up.
But once the truth has been extracted from us, other truth will be revealed to us.
About the good we did and did not even know.
About the people we helped and did not even see.
And about the grace of God we sing so robustly (“that saved a wretch like me”)….but believe so halfheartedly….trust so occasionally….and preach so narrowly.
* * * * *
Throughout his heavenly journey, there is but one burning question on Eddie’s mind: “That day at the carnival….when the ride plunged….and I lunged….because the little girl screamed….just before I died….did I save her? Did I save her?”
He finally learns that he did. Who tells him? The six-year-old who was burned to death by him. Meaning that where the security of little girls is concerned, Eddie’s batting one out of two. Which could be better. But could be worse.
So whose hands did he feel grasping his at the moment of his death?
The hands of the little girl he saved?
No, he pushed her.
The hands of the little girl he killed?
Yes, she pulled him.
Now I ask you, how schmaltzy is that ending? Being pulled into heaven by the one you violently (and prematurely) sent to heaven? Being saved by the one you killed? By the innocent one you killed? Who’s gonna buy that, Mitch? Nobody’s gonna buy that.
Unless, maybe a Christian.
