We have reprinted below a chapter from Ethan Richardson’s This American Gospel: Public Radio Parables and the Grace of God. Ethan’s book, available here (or on Amazon), brilliantly explores grace in practice through the lens of real people’s histories as told on NPR’s classic radio show This American Life. The chapter dives into a beautiful story of redemption (from Episode 164 of This American Life) through the lens of grace in practice and the concrete impact of imputation on a human life.
–Ed. note
SYNOPSIS
Katie Davis reports on a hometown friend, Bobby, who has “Returned to the Scene of the Crime.” Known to others as a robber and a con, Bobby has cleaned up and come back home looking for a fresh start. He even decides to coach a little league team. Working with kids who are a lot like him, e.g., Benjamin, he finds a new identity.
There’s the holiday dinner, when everybody’s back in town. Sitting around the table that fed them, and didn’t feed them, each family member finds themselves sucked back into their old roles again — or struggling with all their might not to be.
There’s the inopportune run-in with the ex-girlfriend, the trivial formalities amidst whirling heartache and inexpressible distance. You see the face of someone you once loved and feel the sad weirdness of that “once” being a once and not an always, the revelation that you haven’t seen that sweater on her before, that her life’s somehow continued without you.
There are the various reunions with friends — the ones you’ve kept up with, and the ones you haven’t. The receding hairlines, the weight gain, the new spouses, the career trajectories; you compare what you wanted to be then with what you are now. You make retrospective judgments about whether or not you landed on the right side of the tracks.
Returns are almost never easy, most certainly when you are returning to a place where you had some trouble. Even if things have changed, scars inevitably remain, the people you’ve hurt, the memories stained into the fabric of the place itself. You are still you, and the places you’ve left behind are still charged with your past. In many ways, the presence of your absence lingers.
Still a Scumbag: Coming Home to Your Inner Thug
So it is with Bobby’s neighborhood, the scene of the crime, with many of the same actors lurking around, and Bobby still cast in the role of criminal. Despite the fact that he has “gotten his act together” — he’s no longer using, he’s even coaching a little league team — his past still looms skeptically like Katie Davis from her stoop, waiting for him to crash and burn.
Katie Davis: I haven’t seen him in a few months. And he’s kind of gliding along, smoking a marlboro. That’s the way he’s carried himself since sixth grade, when I first met him — one of the bad boys from over on calvert street . . . . inside I’m thinking, “Who’s he kidding? he’s rail-thin, he’s sweating. it looks like he’s been using all winter” . . . . Bobby flicks his burning cigarette into the street and watches me, waiting for more reaction. This is the same Bobby I loved and tried to save for a whole year, Bobby who stole $60 from my house to buy heroin and swore to God, swore to his own dead daughter, that my dog Purdy ate the money. And this is his latest plan to get clean, coaching a bunch of 10, 11, and 12-year-olds, rounded up by the D.c. Department of recreation. All I can say is, “That’s great.”
“Never accepted in your hometown” is an understatement. Whether or not you’re different than the name you made for yourself, you’ve got the same name, and you’ve got to face the faces that know it. As William Faulkner famously said, “The past ain’t dead. Hell, it ain’t even past.” Bobby’s past is very much alive in the eyes of his hometown — he is still imprisoned by the name he earned, not Bobby but “two and a half years on assault and possession charges.” The name he must confront is Thug.
Bobby’s change of heart does not mean that he has detached himself from the “crime scene,” merely that he is awake to it. Katie observes in his voicemail, “I know Bobby’s clean because if he were still using heroin, nothing could puncture his detached haze. He’s sounding awake and rattled.” He is no longer detached from the reality of his circumstances — he sees clearly what others see in him. In a sense, he has accepted his own innate urges, his inner-criminal. Here is how Bobby puts it:
Bobby: It’s hard to explain, really. it’s a roller coaster of emotions. There’s times — and right when I’m feeling like the world is wonderful, when everything is going my way, I’ll see someone that I had conned out of a few hundred bucks. And the voice in my head will immediately say, “See there? You’re still a scumbag. remember when? Look, that’s who you really are.”
. . . it depends on how I feel. And there’s times when I might be feeling real insecure and I’ll put that macho thing up. And I’ll put the cocky thing up and hope they say something wrong to me so that I can go south with it . . . . I want to. There’s a part of me that still wants to be a thug. There’s a part of me still very capable of being a thug. I just wouldn’t be able to be a real good thug with my hands because I’m older. I’d have to get a weapon now.
Some might claim that the inner-criminal is automatically chased away by turning one’s life around. It does not work this way for Bobby, nor does it for anyone. If anything, it seems that Bobby is more aware of his scumbaggery than ever. If one doesn’t understand what one’s done and who one is, how can there be any hope of getting better? The steadfastness of one’s inner-scumbag is the properly low anthropology that bouts with addiction reveal to a person. As the Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous proclaims, “Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago” (The Anonymous Press Mini Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. Malo: The Anonymous Press. 2008. p. 24). Bobby may now be clean; he may be in the dawn of new life, yet he remains on intimate terms with the compulsions and desires that would propel him right back into the old life. He knows he is an inch away from thug.
Bobby’s change of heart reveals a counterintuitive truth. The crime scene is where real change happens, not at the margins but the heart of the problem, where healing is most painful. Confronting the crimes of his youth, the people he has hurt, the lies he has told, Bobby must come honestly before himself, which often involves making a hopeless assessment of his circumstances. As he passes someone he’s conned in the past, he immediately condemns himself: “This is who you are. You cannot be anyone else. Your past is your present and your future.” Despite that the rest of the story contradicts this assessment, it is no less true that, when brought to confront the depths of who we are and what we have done, a powerful and tempting surge of nihilism accompanies. Bobby returns to the scene of his crimes a new man and yet that new man stands in conflict with himself.
“Coach:” The Twofold Ministry of Imputation
Fortunately, Bobby’s story doesn’t end there. From the moment that the kids begin to call him “Coach,” something beautiful happens. We see how the disasters of Bobby’s previous life serve as preconditions for new life and new hope. Returning to the baseball field where he once went prodigal, he now hits groundballs to nine neighborhood kids who call him Coach.
Bobby: You know, it didn’t really hit me at first, you know? I took them to a picnic a couple of weekends ago that some recovering alcoholic and addict friends of mine threw. And to hear people there, “Hey, Bobby. Hey, Bobby,” and then to hear this group of kids that I came with, “Hey, coach. Hey, coach,” that’s when it sort of hit me. Hey, man, That’s who you are. And these people now see me as Coach, not just Bobby the recovering dope fiend, you know? He’s Coach. so that makes me feel good to have these kids call me coach. So now, I have this little small part in shaping what their day’s gonna be like, you know?
From the heart of his own personal tragedy, from the neighborhood where he “got it all wrong,” comes a new name. It is more than a new name, it is a new identity. The same re-dignifying takes place in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our old natures are taken in by Christ and we are covered with, or imputed, the clothes of righteousness and favor. In the same bad neighborhood, we are given a brand new name. We are reckoned Righteous (Genesis 15:6) despite our conflicted desires and wanderings
Does this mean nothing inherently changes about Bobby’s life? Is imputation, as one theologian has put it, merely a “‘legal abstraction’”? No more than a court verdict is merely a legal abstraction. Bobby is called “Coach” by these children. To the kids, he’s not a dope fiend, or a thug, or an ex-felon. He even tries to convince them of this, but they don’t hear it — they can only see him as Coach. And the transfer of title profoundly changes Bobby. As being given a gift — the gift of nagging, whining, punk kids, no less! — Bobby is suddenly given purpose, clarity, and love. It is as if the imputation itself evokes the office it named. That is, being called “Coach,” he became a coach. He sees the very place of his pain and suffering — his neighborhood — as a new neighborhood with new — tenuous though they are — desires:
Bobby: I don’t want to have to avoid my neighborhood. I don’t want to have to avoid my community playground because I let these kids down because I’m a drunken dope fiend [bleep] bum, which is what I’d become if I go have a beer right now or some dope right now. Tomorrow I’m a bum because all the good feelings are gone.
I don’t want to feel the shame which I felt from relapses. And it’s big time shame. it’s shame. I won’t be able to look these kids in their eyes, in their faces. I’ll duck them. God, I’m 42 years old, and I would have to come in my own neighborhood and duck children because I’m ashamed. I don’t want that.
. . . I was walking after a practice like a week or two ago. I swear to god, I walked across Duke ellington bridge to the subway, and I started crying. I start crying because I was so [bleep] happy. So happy that, damn, this is probably going to work out. I’m probably going to be able to pull this off.
New Life for Bobby and the Bobbys
New life also arises here out of incarnational love. Not only has the rag-tag group of younger Bobbys imputed to Bobby a new life; Bobby is able to pour an irrational amount love and support into his team precisely because they are younger versions of himself, because he sees himself in them. He loves them because he has been them. This is most clearly expressed in his love for Benjamin, who reminds him of himself at that age:
Bobby: Benjamin, he’s my favorite because I just see me, more so than any other child on that team. I don’t know what his home life is like. But from what I can see, he’s emotional. And when he feels cheated or done wrong, he reacts exactly like I always reacted—violently, verbally with the violence. And he just goes off and, “[Bleep] you, and [bleep] the team.”
Well, that’s me. That was me. And in ways, it still is. When I get my feelings hurt, I don’t always say, “You really hurt my feelings.” I say, “[Bleep] you, mother [bleep]” And you know what I do? What i’ve done for a lot of years is I would hurt myself because someone hurt me. Well, Benjamin does that at practice.
No love feels genuine except that which moves into our places of pain. This is the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) — love reaching into the ditch and pouring its life into the beat-down stranger. Likewise, it seems that the ministry that best reaches people is motivated by this kind of love, the honest kind that accompanies suffering. This kind of love cannot be faked or manufactured. Many times it is only as powerful as the Other’s ability to understand and empathize with the sufferer’s suffering. And this is why Bobby favors Benjamin — he completely understands where the boy is coming from. There’s no judgment, there’s only compassion because what holds Benjamin back still lives inside of Bobby. This is what theologians call communio peccatorum, the community of sinners, the grace that can spring up between two people who come from the same home: the common neuroses and baggage allow an avenue for compassion that could not exist between two people from different backgrounds.
This is not a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be true in many circumstances. We trust people who we feel understand what we’re going through, and we tend to parse the words of those who do not. If we feel our context is not understood, it is nearly impossible to be convinced of anything. On the other hand, there is a reason why we feel more comforted by the presence of people who come from where we come from. All the more so in ministry: in the ditch, no one wants to hear from someone who’s never been there. The good news is that, despite the circumstantial differences, we have all been in the ditch — ministry entails knowing yourself well enough to communicate your compassionate sameness with whomever you find lying alongside you there. Ministry involves “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” speaking from your inner ditch in such a way that it trembles into your neighbor’s heart, who is also in the ditch (Zahl, Paul F. M. “Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Mockingbird Preaching Seminar.” Pensacola: 2010. http://www.mbird. com/2010/12/breaking-fourth-wall-mockingbird/). Ministry is not condescension; a beggar cannot condescend to another beggar — he can only meet him where he is, which is where they both are, and point to the only one who can condescend.
This is why Bobby loves Benjamin, not because Benjamin is who Bobby used to be, but because Benjamin is who Bobby still is. There is no other explanation; Bobby does not self-consciously ascribe to some radical inner-city social justice ethic; he has not (to our knowledge) taken social work classes in the evenings; he has not read up on “How to Love the Tough Kid”; he is the tough kid, he is the inner-city, he is the thug. No reading need be done, nothing need be accomplished that hasn’t already been given. This is the givenness of authentic ministry, an imputative power one has solely based on the life one has already lived. You share the message of love in the way the message was brought to you — which, coincidentaly is the only way you will be able to share it, at least with any depth. Any other process would have left Bobby exhausted and resentful, and Benjamin angry and patronized. The same can be said of church dynamics:
In the first place, preachers require a history of grace in relation to their own personal sin and sorrows. Unless preachers have individual knowledge of their own form of original sin and total depravity, they have nothing to offer to which anyone else can relate. Grace has to be the core of preachers’ own story in order for their sermons to carry any impact. if this is not so, they will preach law and exhort. Then they will become angry at their own dispirited and paralyzed listeners. (Zahl, Paul F.M. Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2007. p. 233.)
We have all been on both sides of this equation. You know when you’ve felt condescended to, and you know when you’ve felt understood. Condescension happened when you had just finalized your divorce, and received all the pity-glares at church. Condescension was when someone gave you hollow advice after you lost your job and your depression kicked back in. Most of the time, those who condescend are also those who are obsessed with their own ability to fix. You almost want to gain more weight just to prove them wrong. The crazy thing about the opposite — compassion — is that it rarely advises at all. It never seeks its own way, but only advocates for you: it never sits so that but simply sits with. You suddenly feel that the issues you are battling are so common that you actually forget the self-defenses you had set up. You don’t need to defend yourself. There is nothing you can say that hasn’t already been understood or experienced by the person you’re with. You are not alone, and it’s okay.
In fact, imputation happens on two levels in this story. In the same way that the title “Coach” was thrust upon Bobby, Bobby gave his scruffy group of unreliable and disrespectful thugs the name “Team.” Another case of “Love to the loveless shown / That they might lovely be” (Crossman, Samuel. “My Song Is Love Unknown” (1664). The Hymnal 1982. NY: The Church Hymnal Corporation. 458). Troublemakers become something altogether different on that grubby baseball diamond.
The Effect of Imputation: Do We Ever Change?
Or don’t they? One might object that there does not seem to be any discernable change in the boys. The fields stay shabby, the boys get to play two baseball games the whole season, they’re still getting in fights, Benjamin’s disappeared — what kind of lessons are these kids learning about love? That it is good to hope, even if hope gets you nowhere? If “imputation evokes the office it gives,” where’s the Team here? They still seem like a ragtag group of delinquents.
These questions are the questions we ask about our own lives as well, about those who are dear to us, about the world at large. Why don’t things change that much on the whole?
Well, it seems clear what the answer is not. Change is not a matter of choice. When radical transformation does happen, it is the miraculous exception, not the rule. But its recipients often promote the illusion, however well-meaning, that radical change is possible with the right kind of stuff. “If you can summon the mojo, you can make the change.” This flies in the face of the countless people who have honed their mojo until they were blue in the face, and found the same face in the mirror when they came around again. These narratives advance a linear mythology of progress and leave out the inconvenient circuitousness and seasonal loop-deloops. We are talking about recidivism. People may always be moving closer to old age, but they are also always moving back to where they started, and around again. Our obsession with forward progress binds us to a shallow understanding of how we actually work.
Despite this, changes do happen, things do move forward, improvements are made — just seldom as quickly or as overtly as we would like. We often don’t know we’vechanged or how life has changed us until we stop and look back. And even then, such measurement is rarely a conscious or intentional project; it usually happensdespite us, especially in the face of love. The same is true with the boys on the team. Sure, they still bicker and run off, but they have experienced the love of their coach — and the changes come embodied in an awareness and acceptance of it.
Boy: When he told me that he came from prison and got shot in his neck, I thought he was just another one of them people who like to talk about their life and then get over it. But I learned to understand him.
KD: How do you understand him?
Boy: He don’t want no trouble. he just wants us to listen to him. But I guess as you grow into people, you start to have more patience.
KD: As you roll into people?
Boy: Grow. You start to have more patience. And I think that’s what’s happening.
KD: The Department of Recreation gives Bobby an ID badge, which he wears around his neck when he comes down to the neighborhood, like a sign. “i am no longer a dope fiend. I’m doing something good.” Most people might keep it in their pocket. Bobby wears it right on his chest.
This is the badge of love. It is the love that has begotten love without expectation for change. It is the love that shows up. When “the grass is shin-high, there’s a pile of dirt in the outfield,” with “no fans, no parents,” Bobby is there with his boys, the Coach and his Team. Jesus, our Good Samaritan, wears the same badge of love. Having gone to the ditch before us, the scene of the crime, he accompanies our grief, comes to us in our sufferings, and gives us new life.
For more, check out the full This American Gospel, available on our site and Amazon. The full TAL story (Act 3 of Ep. 164) can be found here.
