No Condemnations

Yesterday morning, I received a text from one of my best friends. He let me know that Anthony Bourdain had killed himself. My buddy was incredulous, I was incredulous. Both of us love travel, ethnic food, and adventure. I think it fair to say that Anthony Bourdain was an inspiration to us. We both knew that his life was one in a billion but we could all aspire to be more daring like him. To see and taste the world in all of its resplendent and jagged beauty. A lovely bowl of Vietnamese goodness.  

Around this time every year, I binge on the most recent episodes of Bourdain's gastronomic and increasingly politically-angled travels. This year I will do so with tears in my eyes. If at all. Not sure I can watch it with the shadows of suicide.  In every scene, every word, every gesture.  

It was not pure voyeurism. Both of us travel a lot. My buddy for business and pleasure, me just for pleasure (and occasional displeasure when things don't go my way).  Travel is a reminder that life cannot be controlled. Instead it must be surfed like a wave. The bigger and badder the wave, the more fun the ride. And the more jarring the wipe-outs. And no one rode that wave better than Bourdain. 

Most of my good friends share this dual love of food and travel. It is part of what we have in common.  The Wanderlust Club, a loose-federation of like-mindedness. 

Who know what finally snapped. Something had been obviously fraying for years. Along with the designer Kate Spade committing suicide this week, both men and women, have seen their icons falter and succumb to the final act of desperation and ending it all here on this broken planet. 

When I write this blog, I often have a topic in my mind for weeks. I keep a little list of ideas that I have, usually spurned and sparked by a physical experience--either positive or negative--which informs a reality with spiritual applications.  That's my M.O. One of the most popular topics were my losing battles with nefarious groundhogs and my home gardens. I hope these battles are in the past as I have a better fencing around my current plot.   

I had been kicking around the idea of "no condemnation" recently. That came to me when I did a dumb act when painting the trim around my front porch door. What started as a touch-up operation became a full painting project of the entire screen door and accompany wood. I had to drag the ladder out from out back to paint the wood above the door--an unforeseen task at the start. A wood triangle that sits above the door structure. Although tall, I couldn't reach all of the spots.

All the while, I was wearing my Nike flip-flops. I considered that it wasn't a great idea to be climbing a ladder several rungs in flip-flops. A friend of mine recently snapped his wrist in a ladder and cleaning exercise of gutters while wearing flip-flops. So, I was extra careful and got the job done. Yet in order to climb the ladder and paint, I had to transfer the paint from the can to a small jar. Then, I could climb the ladder and hold the small jar in one hand with the brush and use the other hand to hold on.  

The whole door structure became a shimmering white--a veritable New Jerusalem coming down from the skies. The oil-based white paint covered up the previous paint job and weathered wood really nicely. All systems go. During the clean-up however, I knocked over that small jar of oil-based paint onto my Nike flip-flops, the welcome mat, and the porch itself. I let out a tirade of self-abusive language. In disgust, I winged my paint-covered Nike flip-flops onto the yard. Hide the children...a mad-man on the loose. 

Although oil-based paint is better for weather-proofing wood and the like, it is really nasty when attempting to clean up spills. The good with the bad. 

I had to get out the charcoal lighter fluid and douse my porch with it to wash off the paint with soap and water while it was still wet. For once it dries, getting it off is nearly impossible. I had to cover my body in select locations with the lighter fluid to remove the paint. Haunting memories of being a college painter desperate to make some cash for college and breathing in paint fumes and related distillates all day and sometimes long into the night, came flooding back.  Brain damage for sure. Like I need more.  

I wasn't sure if I could save one of the Nike flip-flops. Paint was all over it and in the bottom tread. Then, I realized that in my wrath, I had snapped the strap, rendering the flip-flop as inoperable. I was even more disgusted with myself and then hurled additional invective my way.  I mean, I really hurt my self-esteem. It is possible that the strap had snapped while I was up on the ladder. And if that was the case, I narrowly avoided losing my footing. 

That got me thinking about John the Baptist, the greatest of all the prophets according to Jesus, saying something along the lines that he (John) was not worthy to even untie the strap of Jesus's sandal. That saying just has the ring of authenticity. Both common (the sandal) and specific (not worthy to loosen) has the peculiar ring of truth to it. 

The prophetic role in the biblical narrative was almost always to warn the people of impending judgment. Sometimes, it was too late. The forces of destruction would not be abated. Other times, destruction could be avoided with true repentance. John's message was most definitely "Turn or Burn" the ax is at the root of the tree stuff. Most of his listeners treated him as a sideshow freak, a kook, a religious and amusing nutcase eating locusts and wearing a hair shirt out howling in the Judean Wilderness and River Jordan.

Josephus, the Jewish Historian of Antiquity, writes about John. He doesn't mention Jesus besides one citation that is questionable. For it probably didn't put his patron, the Roman Empire, in a particularly noble light. Pilate as Curator was cowardly, the worst insult one could tag a Roman with. Weakness.   

Jesus was also treated likewise harshly by his adversaries, despite being in many ways opposite in approach from John. Jesus points that out; the crowd is always a critic, no matter who they are considering.  

Luke 7:33-35 21st Century King James Version (KJ21)

33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, ‘He hath a devil.’34 The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!’35 But wisdom is justified by all her children.”  

"'We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn."  (Matthew 11:17)

The Bible sternly warns that those who do not believe in the redemptive role of Jesus are condemned already. It is not only a future event. It abides now on their head, shoulders, and souls. Yet, God offers succor from the impending and/eventual doom. It is to call upon His name in sackcloth and ashes. 

The world derides the Gospel but then goes about affirming it by negation. The rich and mighty are revealed to be just frail and broken human beings like the rest of us, despite the public persona of being a bad-ass or an innovative designer. Marx famously stated that "Religion is the opiate of the masses."  Well, Herr Marx, how about opiods being the opiate of the masses? Or vodka? Or illicit and expensive sexual trysts with porn stars? Or food? Or escapist entertainment? Or a hardened stoicism that refuses to weep? Or a weepiness that never leaves the mourner's bench? 

I had noticed that Bourdain's tweets recently in some instances had become very virulent and condemning. He was going all scorched-earth on Trumpers and their ilk who are all too ready to resort to awful rhetoric and demeaning verbiage, to go low, lower, and lowest, to worst someone. I was like "That is a battle that Bourdain can't win."  

One of A.B.'s recent responses noted that the critic would auto-asphyxiate himself in a public bathroom stall. Chilling. That gave me concern when I saw it and I regret not speaking up. Nietzsche correctly surmised that in fighting monsters we need to be most wary about becoming one. The abyss in human nature is infinitely low. Hard to hit bottom.  

At best, the give and take results in a bloody tie where both parties get worked up into a murderous rage, at least in their imaginations. It has happened to me also when one of these social media alley cats bare his claws and fangs inviting me to a scrap in the garbage heap. I haven't quite figured out how to respond without giving them the illusion that they bested me. My pride wants to use my intellect, knowledge, and verbal acumen to execute and administer a beat-down that will leave them crying for their mommy upstairs, them whimpering in their basement hovel.  I may not have a ton of mechanical ability, but I am very informed--and bring some serious cred to a fight. My opponents don't understand that I have spent decades building my intellectual arsenal. 

I am not a stupid evangelical Christian no-nothing who slavishly watches Fox News in other words.  

Occasionally, some know-it-all dismisses my Ph.D. as just a pile of useless information. Without knowing the first thing about my nearly decade-long delving into some of the most challenging and vexing topics in Educational Psychology. Show me your legit credentials and we can talk.  Or, if you are self-taught, reveal yourself to be ready to spar without punching below the belt.  Otherwise, you are spewing smack.   
     
I don't want to cast aspersions on Bourdain nor Spade. But, we have to realize that their deaths by their own hands are revealing a reality that we should not so easily dismiss. Suicide is on the rise here in the States because I think we have come to realize, that despite our unequaled material abundance (I mean really, have you been to Costco? We live like the Kings and Queens), the Crown of Creation sits heavily on our heads. 

There are a few people who I want to see in heaven who don't appear to have repented unto life. Instead, in attempting to escape pain, have entered eternity with even more complexity and complication. Jimi Hendrix, Robin Williams, David Foster Wallace, and now Anthony Bourdain (I am not going to mention Kate Spade to be fashionable...I was only vaguely familiar with her products and story). I don't presume to take God's place in judgment. 

But, in pondering my breaking of the Nike sandal strap, I have to face that I too am a mere broken mortal deserving of condemnation, yet as one who has been freed from the Law of Sin and Death by Jesus.  No condemnations.