Osler's Razor

Back in April, I mentioned on the Razor that there was a very dark side to Lent for me this year, but that I wasn't yet ready to describe it.

Now I am ready to do so.

Much of the spring, for me, was consumed with putting together the trial of Christ, which we put on both in Minnesota and in Virginia. My job was to serve as the prosecutor in the sentencing phase-- that is, to convince people that Christ was dangerous enough to merit execution.

I began the process the way I always approached a case as a prosecutor. My goal was not to describe the defendant as a monster, but as an understandable, flawed human who posed a real danger to society. It was that step which took me to a dark place.

Once I saw Christ as an understandable, flawed human who posed a danger to society, he suddenly became something less than the son of Man. In fact, I began to feel for Christ something that I always felt for defendants once I knew their whole story: pity.

Pity is not a thought or a conclusion. Rather, like love and fear, it is an emotion. You can use reason to drive away a thought, but it does not work that way with an emotion-- as anyone who has tried to stop loving someone already knows.

Suddenly, I felt lost. In Terrance Malick's movie Tree of Life, a little boy observes tragedy all around him and asks God "Why should I be good if you are not?" It was thoughts like that which followed me, undermining the touchpoints of my life.

I lost confidence and felt inadequate in all that I did. Like that little boy, I began to silently observe tragedies all around me, and somehow each one of them made God seem smaller. I felt unloved and desperate at times, like one of our fishing boats poorly tied to a dock, suddenly adrift in the middle of the lake and heading away from everything and towards nothing.

I have felt many emotions in my life, but rarely despair; I have been too lucky to legitimately claim that sense. But now it crept in as I lay awake at night, imagining what it would be like to run away from my life or even just to shoot out street lights. I cried for no reason. At work, I felt like I was walking through my tasks at times, neither looking for or seeing what I should.

In the end, I did pull out of this. The first step, incomplete but affirmative, was the trial itself. As I made my arguments, I realized that I was playing a role, not becoming a different person. I am not and never have been an actor, and that transition is unnatural to me. When I prosecuted, I believed in every word that I said. I had to accept that this was different, and important too.

There was more, though. There was something deeper and more unnerving at play: the sense that tragedies (including the execution of Christ) made God seem small, uncaring, and amoral. I struggled with that for weeks.

In the end, I grew past that as well. I realized that God seems small in that way only if you start with the expectation that we deserve a perfect unblemished world, a life unmarked by challenge and hurt. That expectation is unwarranted. We, collectively and as individuals, expect perfection in our lives only through delusions of our own perfection. None of us have earned God's grace. I certainly haven't.

Yet we get it anyways. We may not get perfection in a way that is painless, but we do get unearned riches. I do not know why there are tragedies, because I am not God. I do know, though, that there is grace and abundance and love in this world.

When I bite a good strawberry and it gives way just so, releasing a burst of juice into my mouth, that is grace.

When I see a mother and her child laughing, that is grace.

When I am praised for doing what is simply my job, that is grace.

When someone I love touches my hand, the slightest grazing of fingertips, that is grace.

When I sleep, content, that is grace.

It is all grace.
It is all grace.

And all of it unearned.