I Think It’s Possible

Sometimes I like to write about my experiences as I pursue my faith, to see how they compare to what happens to others. This is one of those times.

Aaron is an Orthodox Jew. He doesn’t allow broadcast or cable television in his house. And he has…boy, I hope I get the number right…six well-mannered kids with wonderful personalities. He’s glad he kept TV out of their lives. He says there is no way to restore lost innocence.

I think what he has done is smart. Feeding your mind television is like giving your body a diet of Skittles and vodka, and his kids lost nothing of value. But I suspect that innocence can be restored.

Over the course of my life, I’ve become jaded and cynical to shut out the pain of feeling things. It’s a defense I worked at deliberately. The world is a challenging place when you let yourself feel, and growing a thick skin can save you a lot of suffering. On the other hand, you lose the ability to gauge the effects of the things you say and do. Your empathy becomes masked. You find yourself saying and doing things which, on reflection, seem hard or trashy or cruel. It becomes hard to avoid offending people, and you find that you’re often embarrassed by the memory of your actions. How many times have I crossed the line here? More than I can remember.

It’s perverse. You develop the defense because you’re innately sensitive, and therefore vulnerable. compared to other people. You do it in response to behavior which you perceive as wrong. Then what happens? You find yourself behaving like the people you wanted to protect yourself from. Your sense of humor turns dark. You laugh at suffering. And people reward you for it. They laugh, too. They approve. The unspoken excuse is that everyone knows you’re joking. But sometimes you may find that you’re not joking. Or you’re not sure whether you’re joking.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Since the late Seventies, American humor has been very cruel. It seems like there was a turning point in that era. Maybe it happened with Kentucky Fried Movie or The Groove Tube, or maybe it came later, with Animal House. I was a pretty nice kid, but after I was exposed to cruel humor on TV and at the movies, I developed the ability to make people laugh by saying things that were extremely vile. Worse than anything I’ve put in my writing. And even while I’ve been blogging and thinking of myself as a Christian, in private, I’ve said things that would curl your hair. And as I’ve said before, I’ve gotten tired of myself. And it wasn’t something I could quit on my own. It’s one of the things I ask God for help with. It may not seem important, but it is. If you can become convinced that everything you do or say is okay, because deep inside you don’t mean it, you may sink deeper and deeper into the behavior, until you reach a point where you do mean it, and you still think it’s okay. Then you’re a jerk. A bad person.

You may think I’m a nice person, even after all the things you’ve read here, but before you say it in a comment, ask yourself if you might have the same problem I do. You’ve been exposed to our sick culture, too. I may be nice by current standards, but that’s not a high bar to clear. Especially on the Internet.

Since I’ve been trying to correct my backslidden ways, I’ve noticed some changes in myself. I feel as if my emotions are being brought back to life. I think more about other people’s feelings. Things that wouldn’t have stirred me at all three years ago make my eyes mist up. I get much more pleasure out of doing things for people. And I become more and more aware of the things I’ve been doing wrong. I was trying to be a moral person already, but my compass was rusty.

I feel lighter. I feel less comfortable watching and reading things I know are bad for me. I’m not reformed, but I’ve improved a lot. Sometimes I’m a little shocked, when I think about the things I thought were acceptable. I was crazy.

My hope is that this is what is referred to in the Bible as “the fruit of the Spirit.” When I was a churchgoer, we heard a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, which means things like prophecy and discerning of spirits and so on. But those things don’t make you a good person. They don’t bring happiness or repair your life. The fruit are more important. Things like love and patience and generosity. And empathy. How can you have love, if you don’t empathize?

I think this is a good thing to write about. It’s easy to feel that the world is a certain way now, and that you have to conform to it or go live in a cave. It may seem that the baseness of modern life is inescapable. But it’s not. A lot of people manage to live on this planet without getting too dirty. A lot of them are actually successful and popular. The fear that tells you you have to fit in is an illusion. Maybe someone who reads this blog will read this and be encouraged. It’s good to change your behavior, but it’s better to be re-made, so the behavior isn’t natural to you any more. That’s what I think.

We’ll see how I do in the long run. If it works out, you’ll have no excuse not to try it yourself.