Faith: Testing one, two…

Steve Stajich
Mirror contributing writer

   Soupy Sales tells a very long story about a well-trained dog that suddenly goes crazy in town, buying drinks and carousing. The dog is sent out with twenty dollars to fetch some cigars. Hours later he’s found sitting at a bar, a lovely French poodle on either side of him and dozens of empty beer bottles on the bar. The dog’s heartbroken master says, “Rover, you’ve never done this before!” The dog replies, “Well, I never had the money before.”
   The man had faith in the dog. The dog would be true, and not vary from pattern and training. The dog would bring back the cigars.
   Faith is earned, developed over time. And in that time, we come to trust and have confidence. Unless something new that never happened before… happens.
   Act of Faith Number One: I have no insights on the long, strange trip of John Walker Lindh. I do know people who have — in about the same time of life that Lindh spent on his journey from home to the ranks of the Taliban to imprisonment — become addicts of one sort or another and then found God. I’ve certainly seen similar journeys from wastrel to dedicated Dad or Soccer Mom. If you had known any of these people at the front part of their growth curve, you would never have believed a change would come.
   Actor/comedian Tim Allen was at one time a cocaine dealer. Kelsey Grammar now does time on “Oprah” discussing his former bottle-a-day liquor problems and drunk driving. If your son or daughter had died from either coke or booze-related troubles, you would not have been able to serve on the jury for either of these two future sitcom stars. But now you’d be honored to have them as guests in your home. Oh, wait … we already have them in our home.
   Without some amount of faith in human nature, I think we’re screwed. So, all that I’ve said so far melts down to this: If sometimes people can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time on the road to finding themselves… then I think we’re being played like banjos with Lindh’s big noisy legal processing as a traitor of some kind.
   Let’s quickly review the John Ashcroft file: Everybody remembers that he was on dozens of lists as the exact wrong person to become Attorney General, right? We want to assume that September 11 changed the focus of everything but… did it?
   Are we now, with the Lindh trial circus, seeing the P.T. Barnum side of Ashcroft? Why such a huge show of Lindh’s presence in the ranks of the Taliban? Because it will somehow make us feel better to make a war-on-terrorism whipping boy of Lindh? I personally don’t understand why Lindh isn’t at Guantanemo Bay with the other “detainees” (as the Bush Administration insists on calling the prisoners of war.)
   I have faith that John Walker Lindh was on a search involving Islam and he somehow got routed to the ranks of the fighters by way of testing his convictions. I’m not basing this on any presentation or sequence of events or testimony by anybody else. This comes simply from my faith, if you will, in the way young people search for and find answers. I just believe it to be the case.
   Last week at a hearing, Ashcroft and his office made clear that they believe Lindh chose freely to fight for the “enemy.” That’s interesting, since it’s my understanding we’re still working on exactly who the enemy is. We’re not sure the “shoe bomber” worked alone. We don’t know if Osama is dead or alive. We’ve got zilch on the party or parties behind the anthrax. But we somehow know Lindh’s mind and actions.
   I guess because we have faith in the Attorney General’s office. The office that John Mitchell occupied under Nixon.
   Act of Faith Number Two: Thousands of employees believed their bosses at Enron. “It’s okay, we’re making money, everything is solid, kids.” Now the news is full up with stories of heartbreak. Severance package deals are not being honored. New employees who relocated to work for the company are stuck with their moving bills. Corporate stock burst into flame, but not before the bosses unloaded theirs.
   You go to work for a company and without anybody ever really saying so, you nurture a faith that what is being told to you is, in fact, the truth. The reality they put out is reinforced by your faith.
And then the dog says, “Well, I never had the money before.” Or “We never had this much terrorism on our shores before.” Or “We never had to choose between going public with our failure or getting our own money out first while the shredder hummed busily in the background.”
   Human fragility, avarice, ambition, confusion… hardly new ingredients. But what a sequence, if you put it all together. September 11 we are rattled to the core about our place in the world. How could anyone dislike us this much? We react with warfare, and among the defeated troops is a young American. How could any young American dislike us this much? Enron collapses, the employees (and the nation) ask regarding the big men on top “How could anyone so violate basic decency in the conduct of business?”
   We passed “Wake up and smell the coffee” months ago. Lately, it feels like “Would you like more hot coffee poured in your face?””
   Maybe I have faith in George Harrison’s lyric that “For every mistake we must surely be learning.” Maybe I’m betting that the grandstanding with Lindh is somehow going to blow up in Ashcroft’s face. Or, watch: To get attention off the White House’s relationship to Enron, we’ll invade Iraq. And when pressed about the timing of his actions, Bush will say, “Well, I never had the money before.”

This Week’s “Know Your News” Quiz

1) Reports show that
   a) the earth rotates around the sun.
   b) kids enjoy video games.
   c) Richard Riordan has lots of campaign money.
   d) All of the above.
2) Evangelist Pat Robertson will
   a) develop his Santa Fe Springs property as a business park.
   b) ask the Lord for property management guidance.
   c) say something stupid any minute now.
   d) All of the above.
3) Gateway Computer has announced it will
   a) eliminate 2,250 jobs.
   b) close 19 stores.
   c) ask Pat Robertson for a “digital prayer.”
   d) All of the above.

Answer Key

(d) “You have to think out of the box.”
(d) “You have to box with anybody that’s thinking.”
(d) “You have to sell a box of something!”