Out of sight, out of mind...

There was this television show I watched years ago entitled "Life Goes On."  In fact, I started watching it when I came back from Africa.  When I came back from Africa and was telling anyone and everyone I could about the war zone I left.

"What war zone?" I was asked.  
"Liberia!"  
"Where?"  
"West Africa." 
"Oh, there's always fighting over there."

No one even knew what I was talking about.
And no one cared.

I simply could not comprehend that.  I mean, a pair of British missionaries were murdered, strapped to a jeep, and driven around upcountry.  Ex-patriots were disemboweled in the streets of Monrovia.  I lived on a missionary compound that was relatively safe, but every time I left to teach or shop, I would encounter soldiers with machine guns.

Terrible things happened there.
Terrible things to me.
Terrible things to the students and the families and the friends and the neighbors of those at the school where I taught.
Terrible things across the country.

A couple of weeks ago, West, Texas opened a new middle school and a new high school to replace the ones destroyed in the devastating explosion at the fertilizer factory in April 2013.  Now that that terrible event is gone from the news cycle, I doubt few outside of the state even think about the explosion, the loss of life and overwhelming destruction to that city.  Out of sight, out of mind.

There is this ... controversial ... show that I have watched from beginning to end several times:  "Amazing Grace."  If you want to learn about the effects of sexual abuse, watch it.  It is not for the faint of heart.  And whilst the theology is all off, if you watch it, you might find yourself thinking about faith and belief and forgiveness.  Especially forgiveness.

But, if you watch it, you will be struck by how the Oklahoma City Bombing might be out of sight and out of mind for most of America, it is not ... over.  So delicately woven throughout the series is the ongoing battle of loss and grief.

The fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas is most certainly not over.  Even if the rest of America does not remember.

I was reading this article about the US Ebola Czar and it struck me that in my daily ... lengthy ... perusal of online news, I have stopped seeing stories about the Ebola Outbreak in Africa.  Today, after searching a bit, I found this really great timeline of the outbreak.  It is sad, really, to see how the World Health Organization downplayed the outbreak for so long, essentially calling Doctors Without Boarders alarmists.  As of November 14th, WHO has reported a total of 14,413 Ebola cases.  Some 5,177 people have died.

To my admittedly faulty recollection, the near hourly but at least daily updates of the death count fell off somewhere just below 4,000 deaths.  Some 1,200 more people have died without much notice by America media.  The scare on American soil is over.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Even without Googling, I would proffer that not much has changed with the egregious perfidy committed against patients in the VA system.  And I am fairly confident in saying that sexual abuse in the military, as well as suicide amongst servicemen, has not bettered.  I do know that, despite the so-called better job data, millions of Americans are still unemployed but are no longer looking for work or are being counted.  Just as, though the housing market has supposedly bettered, the number of children who are homeless are at an historic high.  All those problems, though, are not in the current news cycle.  Out of sight, out of mind.

A fallen world, a world rife with sin, full of broken and wounded people.

Another television show I have watch from beginning to end, several times, is "Battlestar Galactica."  I find it utterly fascinating to look at faith in that show.  Faith and forgiveness.  With humanity down to mere tens of thousands, folk are forced to forgive even the most egregious of sins committed against them, against others.  No matter how fiercely a person tries to hold on to hate and blame, almost all of the time, he or she is forced to forgive.  Literally, for life to go on, forgiveness must be given, shared, lived and breathed.  Fascinating.  Utterly.

Recently, I watched "Caprica," which is an uncompleted storyline set before the Cylons attacked.  Before the Cylons were created.  Now, I struggled with watching the only season available, because I cannot see how it fits with the history given in "Battlestar Galactica."  I cannot figure out the timeline.  I certainly cannot match up the young Bill Adama and his father with the same characters from "Battlestar Galactica."  But I decided I would shut the original history from my mind and try and watch the show again.

What struck me, working my way through the episodes, is how man believed in many gods, not a one true God.  When the theology of a one true God arose, the idea of such a God was seen as cruel.  What kind of God would want me not to do as I please?  What kind of love can come from absolutes, from right and wrong?  Ultimately, the only "folk" who receive the good news of this one true God are the Cylons, are the machines.  How ironic is that?

Wow.

What kind of God would want me not to do as I please?  What kind of love can come from absolutes, from right and wrong?  Those are the same questions being bruited about today by those who find Christianity a religion of intolerance and even hate.

I find it interesting that the two shows which wrestle with forgiveness in such depth are ones that are messy and brash and full of great sin.  I mean, forgiveness is not couched in the concept of a sinful race, but explored in the lives of broken, wounded people, in acts of atrocity, greed, deception, self-destruction, and murder.

I think I would be remiss, with all this talk of forgiveness in television shows, if I did not mention (again) "Doctor Who."  To me, the heart of that show is both the terrible burden the Doctor has placed upon himself and the terrible toll his 900 plus years of grief and loss has taken upon him.  But one of the major themes woven across the episodes is that no matter what sin, no matter what atrocity has been committed, no matter even the scale of it, before the Doctor ends up destroying the "sinning" person/alien/entity, he always offers forgiveness.  Few, if any, ever take it.  Pride, hubris, disbelief ... take your pick ... always manages to get in the way.

And, as I wrote most recently, there is the show "Flashpoint," in which the critical response unit, tasked with strategic and tactical response to active criminal and terrorists, the prevailing message to those miscreants is that no matter what they have done life is still worth living and their life can be redeemed.  Yes, you must face the consequence of your actions, but even if that means life in jail, the miscreants life can be something better, something more, something still ineffably valuable.  Forgiveness is not a word heard much on the show, but that is what the team members are saying.  Even the mass murderer can find his way to forgiveness and new life.

From where I stand—admittedly an extremely biased and perhaps even cynical position—it seems to me that the church would do well to teach about forgiveness not from a focus solely on concupiscence, but also from one on the effect of concupiscence in individuals, in wounds and scars, in proclivities and weaknesses, in doubt and struggle, and in shame.

When my pastor was here this past week, not only did he say that he has been thinking more deeply about faith, in part from my questions, but he also said that he was beginning to realize that he had not thought about shame enough.  Not just the shame of one's own sin, but also the shame of being sinned against.  I wanted ever so much to ask him what he meant, what he was thinking, but I did not.  I was too afraid.

But I thought his admission to be one of the most hopeful—to me—comments I have heard since I started going to that (seemingly strange) Lutheran bible study several years ago.

Yes, life goes on.  And the wounds and brokenness of those living in this fallen world may be out of sight, out of mind.  But they still exist.

One of the things that my pastor did when he was reading and singing and praying for me was to sing the Agnus Dei from Divine Setting Three (because he knows I prefer that setting).

O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.  O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.  O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, grant us Thy peace.  Amen.

[Note:  The pronoun that is correct here, because the antecedent of the pronoun is not the person, but the thing, meaning the lamb of God.  As I have written before,  it took me years to figure out why that was the correct pronoun, why it wasn't written "O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, who takest...."]

I was surprised that my pastor sang that bit of liturgy to me, but I was oddly comforted.  And I very nearly joined him in singing the amen.  Call me weird, but that is one of my all time favoritest of amens.  It has eight notes to it, notes that are—to me—full of wrestling with darkness and light with a pause before completion.  It is an amen of daring to hope.

When I heard him sing those words, I thought ... well ... I thought that despite the lonely, isolated, and ill life I am living, despite all the fears and struggles and questions, I might not exactly be out of sight, out of mind to God.

I wish I could hear that bit of liturgy again.