Sinners and Saints
"We are all villains and heroes. Every saint is a sinner and every sinner is a saint."
Earl Bridges, co-host of "The Good Road," said that as we heard gunshots close to Light of the Village, a Christian ministry in Prichard, AL. Bridges and his best friend, Craig Martin, search the world for people making a change; telling stories of global charity for their television series that will air in 2020 on PBS. It was their last day of shooting an episode about John and Delores Eads, founders of Light of the Village, and the kids who attend programs there. The crew returned several times to the Alabama Village neighborhood because they had grown attached to the teenagers who had lost friends and family members to gun violence but who dreamed of something more. There was a bigger story to tell.
"The one thing I know from listening to these stories is that life is not black or white," Bridges said. "People call Alabama Village one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country and we hear gunshots every time we come. We attended a prayer vigil for a teenager gunned down. We comforted a 17-year-old boy who was in the next room when his mother was shot and killed by her boyfriend. This neighborhood is dangerous, but there is good in these kids that most people don’t try to see. There is even good in the ones who pull the triggers. What do we do with all of that?”
Earl put into words what I knew about myself and what I am learning about everyone else. Humans are good and bad. Both. Not either or.
Self-reflection often comes with interviews for Our Southern Souls. People often say, "If you knew the things I have done, you wouldn't talk with me." But if they knew the things I have done, they wouldn’t talk to me. We are just different stories of imperfection.
This week it was a woman vaping and watching the sunset at Fairhope Pier. She was broke, and hated herself for going back to stripping, but it was the only way to support her kids.
"I keep to myself and don’t tell people what I do," she said. "I don't enjoy stripping, and some nights I do shots just to get up there. Right now there is nothing else I can do to make good money like that. My boyfriend says he will leave me if don’t quit, but he doesn't pay my bills."
She reminded me of a song I had heard a few hours before, "God Only Knows" by for King and Country.
You keep a cover over every single secret
So afraid if someone saw them, they would leave
But somebody, somebody, somebody sees you
Somebody, somebody will never leave you
God only knows what you've been through
God only knows what they say about you
But God only knows the real you
There's a kind of love that God only knows
During his recent sermon about the Lord's Prayer, Pastor Chris Wells at 3Circle Church preached that all of us need the love, grace, and mercy that only God knows.
"Every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," Wells explained. "None of us are Jesus. We break the commandments, but take pride in being good. Religion produces arrogance and makes us feel better than someone else. I may not be perfect, but I am better than you."
We are all sinning, mistake-making humans. So why does looking down on someone else make us feel better about ourselves? Why are we blind to our own flaws but see them so clearly in others? Why is it easier to judge than to understand?
The more people I interviewed with Our Southern Souls, the more I uncovered my undeserved sense of superiority. My unreasonable fear of people who didn’t look like me. I’ve interviewed 1377 strangers since December 2015. Each one still shows me how wrong I was.
"I look for the good in people," said Jack Bishop, who retired from the Mobile Police Department in May. "Anything can happen at any time, and I don't live in fear. I worked in robbery when crack was off the chain. Addicts robbed anyone. I sat them down to find out why they would go into Circle K with a gun to get 52 bucks. The high wears off, then what? I cared about the reasons as much as the actions so I could do more to help."
"There are two kinds of people in the world," Bishop said. "The ones who learn from mistakes and the others waiting to make mistakes. I would rather be with the ones who have made mistakes, because those who learn from mistakes are better off. That is how you grow and change."
Deangela applied for a job at the Mobile Metro Jail on a dare from her mother. That was 26 years ago. She was a corrections officer in the women's wing when she realized that some women were imprisoned for things she had done, too. "It could have been me behind bars,” she said. “That changed how I saw the women in my unit. We have all done wrong in our lives; some of us just don't get caught."
Heroes and villains. Saints and sinners. We all have secrets God only knows, and He loves us anyway. That should be the kind of love we all know. That should be the kind of love we all give.
For the lonely, for the ashamed
The misunderstood, and the ones to blame
What if we could start over
We could start over
We could start over
'Cause there's a kind of love that God only knows
Here is the video for “God Only Knows.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFiyEFmIXvA
