We sinful folk and our tigers

  • tigervictim_sm.jpgYesterday’s read­ing in “Wounded by Love” gave me some­thing to think about, which isn’t unusual. But it made me to do car­toons with tigers in them, which doesn’t hap­pen very often. (Well, not nearly as often as I’d like, any­way.) I wish the sub­ject was a cute one. But it’s actu­ally some­thing that goes to the heart of what being Ortho­dox is all about.

    Elder Por­phyrios was talk­ing about the need to love oth­ers even when they treat you spite­fully. He wrote:

    Let’s sup­pose some­one is all alone in the desert. Sud­denly he hears a voice cry­ing out in dis­tress in the dis­tance. He fol­lows the sounds and is con­fronted by a hor­ren­dous sight: a tiger has grabbed hold of a man and is sav­aging him with its claws. The man is des­per­ately shout­ing for help. In a few min­utes he will be torn to pieces. What can the per­son do to help? Can he run to his side? How? It’s impos­si­ble. Can he shout for help? Who will hear him? There is no one within earshot. Should he per­haps pick up a stone and throw it at the man to fin­ish him off? “Cer­tainly not!” we would say.

    But that’s exactly what can hap­pen if we don’t real­ize that the other per­son who is act­ing badly towards us has been taken hold of by a tiger, the devil. We fail to real­ize that when we react to such a per­son with­out love, it is as if we are throw­ing stones at his wounds and accord­ingly we are doing him great harm. And the tiger leaps onto us and we do the same as the first man, and worse. What kind of love do we have then for our neigh­bor and, even more impor­tantly, for God?

    The image is a com­pelling one. I found my mind stray­ing to the print of an old Vic­to­rian ad that hangs in our bath­room. It’s for a patent med­i­cine called “Nervine” that promises, in the won­der­ful blar­ney of the age, to be a “pos­i­tive rem­edy for ner­vous pros­tra­tion caused by exces­sive pains, drink­ing, men­tal shocks, over­work, etc.” And to under­score the point, the ad shows an Olympian-proportioned female hold­ing a tiger by the neck in one hand and plung­ing a sword into its heart with the other (HERE). By golly, that’s when peo­ple knew how to advertise!

    I real­ize that I’ve always fan­cied myself a bit of a tiger-killer, in Elder Por­phyrios’ sense of the word. To my sor­row, I’ve had to real­ize as I get older that mostly I’m just an arro­gant, med­dle­some prat who does more harm than good. That cer­tainly owes quite a bit to hav­ing a “log in my own eye,” which impacts my aim con­sid­er­ably. There’s some­thing about hav­ing a half-blind, half-mad sin­ful woman pick­ing up sharp objects to hurl that makes most peo­ple decide they’re bet­ter off with­out my assistance.

    tigervictim_ill-save-you.jpg

    tigervictim_special-love.jpgBut then, I can cut myself a small break. People’s behav­ior isn’t log­i­cal when the demon-tigers are attack­ing. (Mine isn’t either, for that mat­ter.) We … pro­cras­ti­nate. We vac­il­late. We sud­denly go a lit­tle squishy. I mean, it’s com­pli­cated to be a whole and sane per­son. It’s not at all com­pli­cated to be a tragic vic­tim, and it lets you off the hook in a lot of ways. Healthy peo­ple have to live; they have to actu­ally DO things. Per­pet­ual vic­tims of tiger attack only have to hurt a lot and bleed and pos­si­bly die — for some peo­ple, it’s a bit of a toss-up.

    In short, we start to won­der whose side we’re on. Maybe life in the tiger’s jaws just sort of suits us. We know that we’re such inter­est­ing peo­ple — cre­ative types, rebels, dream­ers — and that tiger … well, it just looks GOOD on us some­how. (Although, tech­ni­cally, is us that look good on the tiger, since it’s the one in con­trol of things. But never mind.)

    tigervictim_lookin-good.jpg

    We can’t help but notice that we look kind of badass hang­ing out of that big tiger’s mouth, wear­ing just the per­fect tor­tured genius expres­sion and our coolest ‘No Fear’ shirt. (Have you won­dered what ‘fear’ they’re talk­ing about in those shirts? I have.)

    With all of that going on, it can be tempt­ing just to ignore people’s cries for help (when they DO cry for help). Who wants to take a chance on help­ing some­one when it may not do any good and you prob­a­bly won’t get thanked for your efforts? Depend­ing on the per­son, you may even be despised. I’ve had that hap­pen, and it hurts.

    But we try any­way. I think most of us do. At least I hope we do. Per­son­ally, I know I’ve still got a lot of demon-tigers myself. And I’d really like a hand with them.


    Related posts:

    1. Keep­ing offenses in perspective
    2. The elec­tion of ’08 in a week
    3. Begin­nings and The Big Finale
    4. Com­fort and haste
    5. The ghost of For­give­ness Ves­pers long past

    August 7th, 2010 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • s-p 08.07.2010

    This should be in the anno­tated ver­sion of “Wounded by Love”. :)

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