Pulling Away the Veneer by John Monday

One morning as I walked into the church I saw Chris standing in the lobby. Chris is often in the lobby as I walk in, but this time he wasn’t alone. As he approached he introduced me to Neal, and it became clear that this was going to take more of my time than I was willing to spend.

Despite my frustration, I took a few minutes to listen to Neal. As it turns out, Neal had been released from the hospital ED the day before where he had been treated for an infection in his leg, a sight I had no desire to see but was shown anyway. A few days before that, he had been released from the Orange County jail where he spent 39 days for a minor offence. Prior to going to jail, Neal spent a couple weeks at the Orlando Union Rescue Mission. All of his clothes were left at the mission when he was arrested, and had since been given away. He was at the Rescue Mission because his employer went out of business and was unable to pay his employees. But that is far from the beginning of Neal’s story.

Neal was a high school football star in Alabama. As a senior, he was a team leader, an object of the local paper’s sports writer, and heavily recruited by colleges across the South. He had an offer of a full scholarship at the University of Alabama and was poised to live out his dream when he suffered a broken neck during a game. While the injury didn’t leave him incapacitated for life, it did leave him in the hospital for several months and unable to play football. When he got out of the hospital, his senior year had passed him by, there was no high school diploma, there were no scholarship offers, and he had developed a drug dependency. His drug dependency would dominate the next ten years of his life, sending him into a spiral that led to alcohol, cocaine, crack, and eventually to Orlando.

To be fair, he didn’t come straight to Orlando from his drug dependency. He had been clean for the better part of a year in Alabama. As sobriety replaced drug dependency, Neal began to realize what he had lost and just how little he had. He had no money, no skills, no education, no prospects, and he had burned the bridge of every relationship in his life. So after a stint in rehab, he came to Orlando. His goal was to prove his sincerity and his ability to pull himself up then return to Alabama with a bit of dignity and begin rebuilding relationships - a goal that clearly had not come to fruition.

As he was speaking to me, his goals had been reduced to just one: He wanted to go home. He had been in touch with a pastor from his youth who had put him in touch with a local junk yard manager that was willing to give him a part time, minimum wage job back home. His only possession was a Home Depot store credit card worth $74.00, a possession he would happily sell. He had tried for days to sell the card but was unable to get anyone to talk to him in the Home Depot parking lot. It was, in fact, this effort to sell his store credit card that landed him in jail. You see, people don’t like to be approached in the Home Depot parking lot by big, homeless men, and Home Depot doesn’t like it either.

I’ll admit that I was moved by Neal. After I went with him to the Orlando Union Rescue Mission where I verified that he had, in fact, been a exemplary tenant and his possessions had been given away days before; and I talked to the pastor in Alabama that helped him find a job; and I verified that the Home Depot store credit card was worth $74.37, then I agreed to buy him a bus ticket to Dothan Alabama for $79.00. He, of course, gave me the Home Depot card resulting in a net loss of $4.63

So what? So what is the point of this rambling? What was my take-away from the time I spent with Neal?

As I considered Neal, the single thought that kept coming to my mind was that for days he couldn’t sell that card in the Home Depot parking lot. But the problem is not only the people in the Home Depot parking lot, it’s me too. Why was I so reticent to spend any of my precious time with Neal? Why do I avoid spending time that way with people like him? My time isn’t actually that valuable. Allow me to propose a possible answer.

When I considered Neal long enough, I was struck less by our differences than by our similarities. I began to wonder, what would have to happen in my life to place me in his position? The answer is surprisingly little. But for one missed tackle in one game 12 years ago and Neal might be every kids Hero. How many of my opportunities would have to be taken away before I fail? How much of my ability? What if I had less diligent parents who were less committed to equipping me for life? What if I had a sudden accident resulting in a loss of mental or physical acuity? What if my employer, my friends, and my family lost all confidence in me?

What if there is a something more sinister? What if I capitulated to my base impulses? What if the social boundaries that guide my behavior were no longer able to contain me? What if the Relationships that compel me to behave and provide no longer held sway in my life? How much of my life is a veneer that, if ripped away, would reveal a man very much in need, a man very much like Neal.

You see, Neal is just like us without the veneer. Neal, and those like him, are walking reminders that we’re not OK. We have little tolerance for Neal because to look at him is to see ourselves. So much of our lives are houses of cards that crumble under the slightest weight. To engage with Neal fully is to be confronted with the depravity that lurks beneath the surface of our lives.

The reality of our condition is so offensive that many of us refuse to acknowledge it. Whether we consciously avoid it or subconsciously ignore it, it is there, waiting to overwhelm us. But this is precisely where authentic Christianity begins. Not in serving people like Neal, but in realizing that we are just like Neal. This is the point where Christ meets us and the only point at which Christ can change us . . . can save us.

Neal knows, and is absolutely clear, that he cannot accomplish anything. He has no self-inflated ego; in fact he has no ego at all. This is the first work of God in the life of a Christian. We must have the veneer ripped away and see ourselves for who and what we are: utterly and totally degenerate creatures capable of no good thing. Upon realizing our depravity, we must acknowledge it and surrender it to Christ. If we view it as something that we work on by ourselves or even together with Christ, then we have inflated ourselves, denigrated Christ, and rejected his work of redemption in our souls. Our salvation is wholly and completely a work of Christ. The new creation that we become is wholly and completely a work of Christ, and to turn myself wholly over to another, even if the other is God, cuts against every thing in my nature, my sinful nature, the nature just under the veneer.

Maybe that’s the reason Neal couldn’t sell that store card.