The Third Race - 2-11-09

It seems to me that most people divide humanity into two groups: those who keep trying and as a result eventually succeed – the noble ones, the cream rising to the top on the basis of sheer hard work and faith – and those who are too lazy and self-indulgent to make anything of themselves and so they never do. It’s a neat list, one easily managed and corroborated by multitudes of human case studies out there in the world at large.

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But what if there is a third category, one many people dismiss because it is so slippery and amorphous? What if there are some people out there who could make it, but who have lost their faith in themselves and this universe? What if these people, just given some help, would rise to the top like all those people who are so much stronger than they are, who never lost sight of their goal?

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What if these people, this third race, are not so tough and strong as the first race but have so much to offer? What about them? What happens to them? One or two probably do receive some help, some lifeline, some buoy thrown out by some unusually kind, perceptive member of that first race who are made to more refined specifications than the rest of us. But what about the others?

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I’ve been thinking that maybe God really doesn’t help those who don’t help themselves, making no distinction between those who won’t and those who can’t. Maybe the verse, “Draw nigh unto God and he will draw night unto you,” is more universally true, more uncompromisingly consistent, than we’d like to think. I’ve always noticed God comes to help, is faithful to save, far less often than we cry for him to do so. And when he does, it’s because you have kept striving for him, or at least still sending your weak call out to him. But what if you have stopped calling? Does he then look down disapprovingly from his throne and say in a disappointed voice that you can’t hear anyway, “You gave up. Sorry. Can’t do anything for you.”

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Maybe our human frailty is our sin. And if you can’t see a way to be strong, to shoot your bones through with steel and push the corners of your mouth into a stretched smile, if you can’t even cry out or call out or whisper out to God for help that he probably won’t send anyway, then you’re damned. What a bleak thought. How can it be called rescue, salvation, if you’re strong enough still to keep yourself afloat? How can God save you from the raging waters if you’re not drowning, your lungs filling with salty water that cuts off your voice?