Tuesday, 07 July 2009

• Is it in you?

  Recently, a friend (thanks, Carrie) asked me a question that disturbed me a little bit.

  The question was, essentially this: if you had a friend that was charged with (even convicted of) some very heinous crimes, would you stand by him, through the trial, through the jail sentence, and when your friend was released from jail, would you still consider him a friend, and accept him back into your life?

  Obviously, the particular situation revolved around particular circumstances (I won't go into those), but use your imagination.

  I don't know all the psychology behind friendships, but I do know that people often make friends with their polar opposites. Mild-mannered, soft-spoken people form a connection with loud, live-dangerously people.

  Very secure people get attached to people with serious psychological issues. And sometimes very good people form friendships with very bad people.

  Without figuring I know too much about psychology - isn't friendship all about caring for someone else more than you care for yourself? That's what love is, isn't it? If you really love your friends, you're willing to sacrifice some of what makes you comfortable in order to help out someone else, right?

  So imagine you have one of those friends. You don't know how you formed a bond, but the bond's there, even though, in the back of your mind, you knew this day might come.

  Your friend has been charged criminally by the state. And not for something like DUI (maybe that's happened before). Not a minor drug charge, not assault stemming from a brawl at a ballgame.

  Something very serious - as I said, use your imagination.

  The trial hasn't been set yet, but you know deep down that your friend committed this crime, and that makes him ... what? A felon? A menace to society? A criminal? A sex offender? A murderer? The kind of guy only a mother could love.

  Or a friend.

  My question is this:

  Is it in you?

  Is it in you to love the unlovable? Is it in you to accept the unacceptable? To comfort the one who makes others (and yourself) uncomfortable?

  Is it in you to give any of your goodness as an undeserved gift to this person who has committed so much badness?

  I don't know all the details, but I have a relative who committed several crimes, and was spending time in jail.

  He approached my father (his cousin), and I don't know what the particulars of the conversation were.

  My dad offered him a place to stay. With the family. In our house. Living with myself, five brothers and two sisters.

  As a gift he didn't deserve. Now, I don't think any of his convictions were for violent crimes - he was just a person who had gotten involved with people who convinced him to follow a twisted path filled with passing pleasures.

  Isn't that capability in all of us?

  C.S. Lewis, in his book, "The Pilgrim's Regress," puts the following poem forward, and it may help with this perspective.

  Nearly they stood who fall; Themselves as they look back

  See always in the track

  The one false step, where all

  Even yet, by lightest swerve

  Of foot not yet enslaved,

  By smallest tremor of the smallest nerve,

  Might have been saved.

   

  Nearly they fell who stand,

  And with cold after fear

  Look back to mark how near

  They grazed the Sirens' land,

  Wondering that subtle fate,

  By threads so spidery fine,

  The choice of ways so small, the event so great,

  Should thus entwine.

   

  Therefore oh, man, have fear

  Lest oldest fears be true,

  Lest thou too far pursue

  The road that seems so clear,

  And step, secure, a hair's

  Breadth past the hair-breadth borne,

  Which, being once crossed forever unawares,

  Denies return.

  Is it in you to humble yourself, to admit that - there but for the grace of God go you?

  One misstep earlier in life could have produced the same result in me.

  I hope that I'm not so prideful that I would withhold possibly the only gift I would have to give to such a friend, when he needed it most.

  Is it in you?

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