Sins of our Fathers (and Mothers)
A few weeks ago, I watched a film on Netflix called “The End of the Tour.” Released in 2015, it “received widespread acclaim from critics,” according to Wikipedia, and in my view, with good reason.
It is the story of David Foster Wallace, an American writer. His novel Infinite Jest (1996) was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His last novel, The Pale King, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012.
I’ve read none of his books but was fascinated by the filmed story of his life. Wallace struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicidal tendencies. He was often depressed and was several times committed to psychiatric wards. In 2008, at age 46, Wallace wrote a suicide note, arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King and hanged himself from a rafter of his house.
Agonizingly Uncomfortable
I know, it doesn’t sound like a fun film, but it was well done and provided insights into the life of an extremely talented man who was agonizingly uncomfortable with his growing fame. Although he bathed in the attention he was given as a writer, he was unable to shake the idea that he was a fake, that his talent wasn’t all that great.
The film got me thinking of the subject of suicide and how society’s view of it has changed. Even a dozen years ago, a stigma was attached to the memory of a person who committed suicide. Now, I believe, people rightly focus on the personal challenges, known or unknown, with which the person struggled.
Still, “acceptance” of suicide is a dilemma. It’s a serious public health issue, exposing the lack of mental health services in many of our communities. And “assisted suicide,” allowing health care professionals to help end people’s lives, is another matter. It has the feel of a “slippery slope.” Still, suicide should remind us of Jesus’ command not to judge and to recall that the search for God requires compassion.
The subject of suicide got me thinking about how we may be judgmental about the people who only a generation or two ago would have condemned suicide. Religious people saw it as a rejection of the God’s gift of life. Catholics who committed suicide weren’t allowed burial in a Catholic cemetery.
Psychology and other social sciences have made us aware of what many people who take their own lives go through and we now understand that God’s mercy trumps other issues.
Being Judgmental
One of the principal accusations against religious people is that they’re judgmental. But I don’t think this trait is limited to them. And among the people who are most judged are our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers and people who have lived in the past. We often hold smug opinions about them, judging them by today’s standards.
Suicide is an example. I believe religious people, including members of my own Catholic Church, were wrong in condemning people who committed suicide. But most religious people, including those in my church, have changed their minds as they have begun to understand suicide’s causes.
Place yourself in the shoes of people who lived even a generation or two ago. Knowing next to nothing about depression and its causes, they knew only that life is a precious gift, not to be squandered, and that was often the basis of their opinions and judgments.
Colorful Language
The bottom line here for people searching for God is to avoid being judgmental at all. For Christians, that’s a directive from Jesus, who used colorful language to bid his followers:
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but don’t notice the log that is in your own eye?”
For people who have moral standards – even people of Jesus’ time – this is a problem. How do you maintain a sense of right and wrong and not judge? I believe the solution is provided by the adage, ascribed to St. Augustine, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” And history shows that understanding what constitutes sin may change as we grow in understanding ourselves and others.
