He just called me.
"Hey David, what's up?" I said.
"That girl from work called me," said Mad Mix/David.
"Yeah?"
"Like a few times. Like three or four times. I think she's messed up, man. I think she's about to overdose or something."
"Oh wow."
"Yeah, she was saying all this stuff. Like, she was talking to me like I was actually there. I had to say, 'I'm on the phone,' cause, I think she thought I was there. Like, what's going on with her, man?"
"Uh...I have no idea...that's weird."
"She beeping in now."
I wait, assuming he may have to go so he can pick up her call. He doesn't.
"I don't know what to do, man. This is weird."
"Well, what does she want?"
"She wants me to come over there! She's saying all this stuff like, 'Don't do this, David!** You don't know how much this hurts!"
"Wow."
"And I know I should not go over. That's just dangerous."
"Yeah, man. I...wow...this is bizarre."
"What should I do, man?" he says.
"I have no idea, man." I say. And then it's silent for a bit. "This is way out of my realm of expertise."
"Yeah."
"I guess, you should pick up when she calls. In case you do need to call an ambulance or something if she is overdosing. Beyond that, I have no clue."
"I don't even know where she lives, man! Hell, I don't even know her last name!"
I offered to pray for him, and for her. I told him to call if anything happened or if he needed anything.
I love David. Or, well, if I love anybody, it is David. Of every relationship I have on the whole planet, this big, black rapper is the closest I may have ever come to loving someone. As a result, he has taught me a lot about the nature of love, and God's love for us. I say that he's probably the person I love the most in all the world because I don't want anything from him. He's not a girl (and I'm not gay) so I'm not looking to him for sex or validation like I might want from any girl I claim to love. We don't have all that much in common, to be perfectly honest, so I'm not really looking for a buddy to hang out with...for fun, or a party scene, or somebody to introduce me to the hot chicks from which I hope to receive sex or validation. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I expect anything from him...not in the sense that he's such a loser that I have no hope in him...but in the sense that if he fails in every single aspect of life, it wouldn't cause me to love him less.
Now, I am certainly not using myself here as an example of how you should love. I'm not saying that this is what God's love looks like -- it's just the closest that I have personally gotten. And to be honest, I've had a lot of extremely close relationships over the course of my life. I have told a lot of women that I was in love with them -- and yet, as it turns out, I love this big, black, pill-popping rapper more than I was ever capable of loving them. This is more than a little bit sad for me.
So, I just let the cat out of the bag, huh? He pops pills. Lots of them. One time, I asked him outright how many pills he takes. I was blown away. I am not kidding. I'm not sure how he's alive. Often, he washes them down with hard liquor.
We hung out for a few hours today. He'd had a hard week. He told me about it.
Now, I want to put things in to perspective for you. Chances are, if you're like me, you've lived a fairly normal life. You try to pretend like you've lived this tough life, and you're all hardened because of it, but the truth is...you're soft. It's okay, I'm soft too. I could tell you some horrible stories about my childhood. You could probably tell me some horrible stories about yours. We'd all gasp and talk about how screwed up the world is and be shocked about how awful our parents were and how cruelly we were mutually treated in high school. But the truth is, we're soft.
Mad Mix, being a rapper (and an extremely good one), has women throwing themselves at him constantly. He's probably slept with more women than you and I have ever met. It is at this point that you may notice yourself peering down at my rapper friend from your beautiful pedestal, wagging your finger all "tssk-tssk" style. Well, tssk-tssk yourself. You see, what the Bible tries so desperately to teach us is that sin is not some arbitrary set of rules. You don't need to wag your fingers at the sinners...they are already FEELING the repercussions of their actions, I promise. Nobody sleeps with tons of girls because they are happy. They sleep with tons of girls because they want to be happy, and they think that will make them happy.
Mad Mix knows this and he does it anyway. Does that sound like somebody you should wag your finger at, or somebody you should love? He's hurting. He takes pills so that he won't hurt. (well, truthfully, he takes them now because he's addicted to them...but once upon a time, he took them so that he wouldn't hurt.) Sin is almost always something that we do to try to escape reality. Reality is too painful, so we look to some idol to take away that pain. You do it, I do it...our idols are just different...maybe instead of sex and pills, you chose television and gossip. The only thing is -- sin has consequences.
There's a reason you shouldn't sleep with women you're not married to. David has told me that every time he makes the mistake of sleeping with some girl, he feels a deep connection to them, and can't get them out of his head for a long time. He falls instantly in love with them, and obsesses over their every action. They go from something he wants sex from to something he wants validation from. And when they eventually leave, it rips him apart -- they take a piece of his heart with them as they go.
If you've slept with someone you weren't married to, maybe you know what he's talking about. I imagine that stuff from Harry Potter, about Horcruxes (or at least that's what I think they were called) when Voldemort separates his own soul into several parts so that he will be harder to kill, and then hides them throughout the world.
But the cost is that he only bears a small bit of his own soul. The cavity where his soul belongs is mostly empty.
My guess is that is how David feels. That's the way he makes it sound. Each girl takes a bit more with them. Each bit that is gone makes him more desperate to find something to restore his shattered soul.
Oh, also, recently, David's mother killed herself. He's still getting over that. In addition, he got laid off from his day-job, and he's having a lot of money issues.
So when he says he's having an especially rough week, I take him seriously. You and I, we're soft. When you say you're having a tough week, I say, "Sorry to hear that, man." When Mad Mix says he's having a tough week, I come running.
We talked for a while about his problems, and then we talked about God a lot, and the Bible, and high school and popularity.
He has three different girls vying for his attention at the moment -- that was the heart of the issue. He knows he needs to stay away from all three women, but he's having a tough time. Self-control is hard for all of us to varying degrees. You can sit on your pedestal and tell me about what he should do, but maybe you're not a smoker.
I swear, I have learned more about God from smoking cigarettes than I have in 26 years of sitting in church -- here's one of the things I've learned:
Sin is like smoking. It's easy to NOT smoke. It's even pretty easy to have one cigarette, decide they're gross and never look back. It's still pretty easy to quit after you've had two cigarettes. It's less easy after three. After a few months of smoking, it gets pretty hard to quit...but no where near as hard as it is after a few years of smoking. The longer you've smoked, the more a part of your daily life smoking is, the harder it is to quit. And the longer you've been smoking, the less damaging each cigarette seems. It's just one freaking cigarette -- how much damage can it really do? I just smoked a whole pack yesterday!
You can apply the same principle to Doritos. It's fairly easy not to open the bag...even if it's reeeeeeaaaally tempting. I say to myself, just one handful...but it's always more than one handful...cuz they're sooooo guuuud.
So, you can sit up there on your pedestal and look down on David all you want, but you have probably never faced the level of temptation that he has...or at least not in that area. You probably experience that level of temptation in some other area -- you just give in to it. David, lately, isn't.
One of these three women is married. She told David how she still loves him and has thought about him a lot, and believes that he's the only person who's been through all the ups and all the downs with her. My rapper friend Mad Mix, is a little conflicted at the moment.
On top of that, she let him know that at one point she'd gotten pregnant and had an abortion. He would have been a father, and instead, his child was aborted...he's finding this out years later. I imagine that would hit anybody pretty hard.
And maybe you say, "He's made his bed, now he gets to sleep in it." And, you're right.
Or maybe you say, "Well, gosh, that sucks, poor guy. I feel bad for him...but, at the same time...you know, we all reap what we sow." And you're a little kinder, but you're just as right.
Let me tell you something else about Mad Mix. He loves God more than I do. Probably more than you do. In fact, it is extremely possible that he loves God more than any other person I've ever met in my entire life.
He made an entire album about his own hypocrisy, and I was BLOWN AWAY by the honesty and the vulnerability. He put it all out there. He rapped about what a screw up he was, he IS. He rapped, in great detail about exactly how badly he was letting God down. He rapped about what a terrible influence he was and about how he was in no way reflecting God's love for other people, and was only destroying himself. He rapped about things they would never allow people to talk about in a church.
But, ooooooh...they should.
My friend Canada says that the first time he ever went to church was at an AA meeting. That he saw there, for the very first time in his whole life, people who fully admitted they needed God on a daily basis. People who were willing to admit that they were screw-ups, and live their lives accordingly. They'd stopped with all the pretense. They didn't need to pretend like they had it all figured out.
How unlike a Sunday morning church service.
Several times growing up in the church, I heard people talking about how much God loves screw-ups, because the worse you've screwed up, the more you know you need God. Yet, we continue to live these pure, Holy lives, instead of living like Mad Mix...effing up royally and then bearing his soul, recording it, and then selling the albums for all the world to hear.
And you say, "Wooooooah! Hold the phone! Are you suggesting that we shouldn't live pure, Holy lives?"
You see, that was a trick. I just got you to say that you live a pure, Holy life. That's what you really believe, isn't it? When push comes to shove, you think (as I do) that...sure...I may screw up...but really, overall, I'm better than this guy Mad Mix. I love God, and I put that into action by striving to lead a pure and Holy life. I'm not perfect, but damn...I sure am close.
I'm not suggesting you stop trying to live a pure, Holy life. In fact, I think you, me, and Mad Mix should all try a LOT harder. What I am suggesting is that you reexamine your life. You do just as many drugs David. You smoke the cigarette that is called sin. You've got your big grubby hand in the bag of Doritos. You may not even know what your particular temptation is. You may not even be trying to stop.
At least David is.
The fact of the matter is, I think we could all learn a lot from Mad Mix. So, when you think of him, and when you meet people like him, instead of looking down on them for having such depraved behavior, take the opportunity to remind yourself that you might ought to look up to them.
Because people like him love God. More than you and I and everybody else on the path of pure, Holy, righteous living combined.
___________________________
*you actually MAY have heard of him -- I changed the name so as not to reveal his identity, as he is a public figure of some sort.
**again, not his real name.
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