The Anonymous

There is a world of anonymous people out there. They live in musty old church buildings when everyone else has left. The janitors are all gone, the sanctuary so silent, the parking lot is empty save the half dozen cars owned by the nameless. The coffee reeks and tastes of brown hot water. There are week old cookies and donated dough nuts on the table and a dozen people sharing their most dark and intimate moments with each other. To the outside, the church is empty, but the inside it full of life. This is community at it's purest form. One person sharing, then another, then another all ready and willing to devote their lives to helping each other recover. Yet rehab is punishment, the anonymous people are anonymous not because of their own shame, but because we as society force them into shame. We look at them as rejects, idiots. We praise their efforts to better themselves from afar, then with the same lips, thank God we were not so stupid. One of them dies. My friend. Someone I have mistreated in the past and no one cares. A dozen anonymous people show up to pay their respects. Isn't this kind of community what Jesus intended. I think the anonymous people reflect Jesus more than I do. I think the anonymous still have names even if we choose to marginalize them as addicts. We are all addicted to something, the Bible says sin, we call it by a million different names, some we think are more honorable than others, but it is all the same. We need rehab. We need that community. We need to stop judging others. Stop being self-righteous, we are no better than the worst heathen. If you boast about how you do not struggle with something, or how you would never do that. Stop and think about what you would do and did do. No one on earth is righteous, not even one. So we need to take the planks out of our own eyes before we judge others.