WHEN WILL GOD FINALLY HUMBLE MARTHA? (3/10/05)

God will have his way with Martha Stewart, or so I’ve been told. Her time in jail simply did not bring her enough public humiliation. We expect God to settle these kinds of scores.

Martha’s incarceration was a masterful PR conspiracy. Someone had to know that the schadenfreude, that prurient exhilaration we little people feel when arrogant bigshots are caught with their pants down, would be negligible. Making an example of her would not apparently prompt much contrition nor would it result in anyone learning to be more humble, not her fans, her toadies and certainly not Martha. The message was simply that her ordeal made Martha more Martha.

Perhaps this is where we wish God would step in: All we ask, God, is that You see to it that the haughty learn a little humility. But, what an arrogant, audacious expectation of God that would be, inferring that we were so un-humble as to instruct God who needed His humbling.

No, Martha does not give the public appearance of contrition. But, what we will never know are the nightmares that may, or may not, haunt her when she is surrounded by darkness, alone in the middle of the night, her head spinning with a cacophony of self-vilifying thoughts. You may say that she will never suffer those moments of humility, because she is too busy planning tomorrow’s financial coup. And you may be right. Only God and Martha know. Just as it should be.

We never know what awaits the seemingly unrepentant and even the repentant, when they are handed over to the demons of a dark, lonely room. I live a remarkably normal, even blessed life by day, thank God, but indiscretions decades old still haunt my sleep.

A number a years ago, I asked a young therapist, “Why am I any different from Jimmy Swaggart?”

His answer was deceptively simple. “Because you asked the question.”

Ten years ago, his answer satisfied me. Now, at best, I will give it a yes-and-no. From all outward appearances, Jimmy Swaggart seems as arrogant as ever. In the short run, he turned his public penitence into a cottage industry, a cash-cow. But, I do not know what happens to his spirit in the still of the night, what thoughts torment his soul when his yes-men and minions and well-greased bureaucracy fold their tents for the day. Only Jimmy knows. And God.

And so may it be of an entire laundry list of seemingly arrogant heavy hitters – from Bill Clinton to his moral counselor Jesse Jackson – who strut their stuff and acknowledge their indiscretions like burps along the road, if at all. We don’t know about the ghoulies and ghosties that haunt and humble them when silence replaces the intoxicating attention they receive by day. All we know is that we don’t get a public show of their humiliation for the sake of satisfying our own salacious viewing pleasure. Only they know. And God.

You’ll say that these egomaniacs don’t give a hoot about indiscretions once their spinmeisters get on top of damage control. Yet, I refuse to believe that they are all such malignant narcissists that somewhere deep inside the shame of wrongful behavior does not bring torment to their souls.

Once we get into the business of souls, that’s God’s turf, not ours. God sees. We don’t. God knows. We don’t. We look at God’s errant children by day and think that they have yet to get their comeuppance. We wish that God would do something to humble them, but what we really wish is that we could be in the audience to see it happen. Little do we realize that only God knows who among us has already been humbled by a taste of hell’s bitterness. Only God knows who has already been served more than his share of humility alone in the fearsome still of the night.