In Over My Head
I'm hypmotized, even strangely obsessed, with the doings of a disgraced televangelist whom I considered unique in his apologizing for his wrongdoing (something so foreign to the culture: eighty-eight Duke professors signed a 'rush to judgment' statement but none had the uncommon decency to apologize, but then looking for humilty among professors is like looking for acid freaks among Star Wars groupies), but who actually was not unique - now that I think about it - given that we did see Swaggertian tears, but the fellow I write of now seemed so sincerely reverted that I've followed his career since in much greater (infinitely greater?) interest than had he not fallen.
So I was channel-surfing the other day and caught part of what looked to be an hour long infomercial urging us to support his building a "refuge", a flock of buildings with commercial frontage (personally, I see commercialism as the sine qua non of restlessness and the very antithesis of refuge; even on my retreats to the St. Therese's Shrine the least restful times are in the bookshop). Our evangelist speaks of a coming disaster, predicting that bird flu will kill eighty-million of us and, as far as natural disasters go, a plague always seems the most likely to me. He gets points there. No meteor stories or nuclear war scenerios.
Near tears, he tells us he's over his head, in tremendous debt, and I just shake my head at the wonder of history repeating itself. But he says, rightly in a way, that we all should feel over our head. A sense of control is generally a sense that we aren't letting God take control since He has ways of upsetting the apple cart. But this all seemed too familiar, too deja vu, and I wondered what God thought of this. Was this not a case of the woman of ill repute returning to the scene of temptation? It also reminded me of how Cardinal Law went not to a monastery, but travels in higher circles these days than in olden times. Everyone, self included, seems to be assuming grace is cheap.
And here, now, as I judge and weigh, I find myself in over my head in the negative sense, and the reading from James comes to mind: "Do not complain, brothers, about one another, that you may not be judged. Behold, the Judge is standing before the gates."
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