Note: this was intended to be a response to a blog post by Nick Lannon (who has a great blog, by the way, www.nicklannon.com) shoved carelessly into Facebook. Then I decided to blog it instead. Of course, with the exception of Nick's website, none of this is recommended.
Lots to say (that I probably won't get to):
First: someone else
read "How To Be Good"?! I guess I shouldn't be surprised--it is Nick
Hornby, after all, which is why I read it. But I didn't like it, in
part because I don't think I got it. It was easy enough to walk away
with something--that the protagonist kinda sorta figured out how her
career fits in with "being good"--but even this part is sort of murky.
And I'm not willing to reread it to try and figure out what I missed.
I'm going to go out on
a limb and say that a lot of people read "How To Be Good" but no one
talks about it because it wasn't as good as "High Fidelity," "About a
Boy" or "Fever Pitch." But maybe I just travel in the wrong circles.
OK, now about Ray
Lewis and redemption. People see that Ray "got off", that he took a
plea deal (hating plea agreements is ridiculous, by the way) and didn't get what he
deserved. And his redemption story is exactly the kind of story that
inspires me to do my job, both from a professional and spiritual
standpoint.
Let's assume that Ray
Lewis is guilty in the involvement of the death of these two men. Let's
say that Lewis deserved to be convicted and punished for his
involvement, and that he absolutely did not deserve the success and
attention he received that followed this incident.
And yet, that's not
what happened. Lewis was not convicted, was not punished, and is
incredibly successful (and as Nick pointed out, on the cusp of starting
another incredibly successful career).
So what did happen?
Did justice fail us by letting a man go? Or did something else happen,
perhaps as big as divine intervention, that gave Ray Lewis a second
chance (that neither he nor anyone else deserves)?
Was Ray Lewis shown forgiveness? Isn't one measure of a man what he does with forgiveness?
If you assume Ray
Lewis is guilty, and you believe in a merciful, loving God but reject
Ray Lewis because he "got off" ... why? Why can't we celebrate in his
redemption? Is this attitude not unlike the son who stayed, who was
angry when the Prodical Son returned and the father put on a feast?
Being a part of the
process where someone who doesn't deserve forgiveness (which is all of
us, by the way) gets it and has the chance to turn things around...
that's a huge part of why I do my job.
In my job, I will never actually know if a client gets a good result because God wants to do something with that. I will never actually know if they use that opportunity--God given or not--to make change for good. Similarly, I never actually know if someone I perceive as a nice or good person is supposed to go to prison for a non-violent offense for way too long. I don't know God's plan (I talked about this before in another post).
But what I've seen at least some evidence of is that, despite what happened with the case against Ray Lewis--divine intervention, bumbling prosecutors, or actually honest-to-goodness innocence--Mr. Lewis appears to have turned his life around, and dramatically. Is this merely a ruse? I will never know. But it is hard to deny that, if Ray received forgiveness, a second chance to do something different, he grabbed the opportunity with both hands and never let go. And I think that should mean something, especially to followers of Christ. As Nick pointed out in his blog, Ray's story is one of redemption.
