Sunday Morning Meds--Mockers

January, Lake Michigan

“Blessed is the man. . .who does not. . .

sit in the seat of mockers.” Psalm 1:1

Somewhere in his work, the novelist John Gardner tells a story about his being the first to come on an accident, somewhere a long ways from anywhere. The driver, a woman, was alive but incapable of getting out of what was left of her pick-up.

The story he tells is not about the heroic efforts of the ambulance squad or the final dramatic moments of the woman’s life. The sad story he tells is about himself. What he confesses to is a certain species of intellectualism pandemic among people who, like me, write. He tells the story because he can’t forget his own pathetic realization, right then and there, that, for a moment at least, he found himself more interested in the details of the bloody scene—as material for his own writing—than he was in the woman’s own condition.

His heartlessness was a sin not of the flesh but of the head.

As a writer, I know his sin; but I also know that sin because I’m aging, and the older I become, the less “involved” I feel. I may feel more pain from people’s problems, but today I am far less driven by a sense of community than I once was. But then, it seems clear to me that I’m needed far less than I once was.

And I’m simply less passionate. Today, what excites me more than principles is trying to understand why people choose them—and who does. I feel more and more like John Gardner at the scene of that accident, a bystander, a rubberneck. Life is happening all around me, and I’m just fine on a Lay-Z-Boy. Maybe it’s safer—who knows? I even walk more cautiously, afraid of falling.

But I know this, too—that because it’s easier for me to sit back and watch other people’s windy passions, it’s also far easier to ridicule them. Snipers never march; they hide. I’m an armchair quarterback who knows all the right plays to call.

I would be more comfortable if Psalm 1:1 described the sinners we shouldn’t be seated beside as scoundrels rather than scoffers (KJV), or murderers rather than mockers (NIV)? I mean, here in the small town where I live, fleeing the company of serial killers is not hard work. Gangsters are, for me at least, far easier to avoid than scoffers, especially when I am one.

I’m a college prof and a writer, and I’m getting old, and that lethal combination—trumped by my own fallenness—makes scoffing far too easy, even in church, where it doesn’t take much for me to ascend some lonely point on the wings of own estimable wisdom and sneer at the silliness.

I wince to hear King David pick out scoffers and mockers as most unfit for the company of the righteous. Wish it weren’t so. I rather like poking fun of other people and their silly passions.

But then, maybe that’s the point.