Recently I saw a video of a mom, having a fit in her car, which got posted on Tik Tok. There’s some pretty vulgar language, but if you can stomach your ears being a toilet for a minute or so it’ll help to get where I’m trying to go, and you can watch it here. In this video – in case you didn’t watch it – this woman is having what can only be described as a breakdown. She is crying out about how hard it is to be a parent – how children are mirrors who put your own behavior right back into your face.
Now, just looking at this woman’s Tik Tok account and hearing the language she’s using will tell you that she and I probably would not agree on a whole lot. And one of the signs that she and I would not agree on much is that she talks about wanting her son to grow up to be “better person” or a “good ******* human”. I know that using terms like “be a good human” started out as being ironic – but now it’s getting tired because it’s being used, not as an ironic alternative, but as the default way of saying “be a good man” or “be a good woman”. And this isn’t a nothingburger of an issue because, lest we forget, being a good man is actually different than being a good woman. Yes, there’s an enormous amount of overlap, but they aren’t the same. But, that little, but not so little, semantical issue aside, I actually can commiserate with her and empathize because she is having a real crisis moment in her life.
But what does her crisis revolve upon, or devolve unto? Her own shame at being a failure at being a good person. She is recognizing, through her children, that she is not a righteous person, she is an unrighteous person. Now, she doesn’t use this language – but that’s the realization she’s coming to. She’s coming to the conclusion that the reason her boy makes her so mad is because of the little thing people call the loathing of self-recognition. Through her son she sees herself and she despises herself because she despises the self she sees in her son.
She says as much, she talks about how her son is a little mirror. And she recognizes that the only way for him to be better is for her to be better.
I actually agree with an enormous amount of what she’s saying. These are the issues I find fascinating. This is why theological anthropology fascinates me.
But here’s the problem – who’s she talking to?
You see, in classical and Christian terms we would cal her…episode…a confession. This is a confession of sin. More than that, it’s a confession to being fallen. The problem isn’t that we’re sinners because we sin; the problem is that we sin because we’re sinners. And she’s recognizing this…unfortunately she lacks the theological categories to describe what she’s groping towards, but this is evidence of the deep need for people to confess their sin and more than that their sinfulness. She seems to realize that the problem isn’t that she has isolated, discreet, iterated actions that are bad – but that she’s a bad person.
And that’s an enormous discovery! And when you recognize that you’re a bad person, that you, like everyone else on earth who’s ever lived, are a fallen and utterly sinful person, who died in Adam and like him because a slave to sin. This is deeply troubling. Indeed, if you never experience and emotional crisis in your complete recognition that you are guilty, vile, and helpless, as the old song goes, I wonder if you ever actually realized these things. A real confrontation with our guilt and our falleness is painful.
This woman is experiencing that pain. And that’s a good thing!
The problem is that she’s praying to nobody. She isn’t confessing to God. She isn’t confessing to a brother or sister confessor, or a priest, or a confidante. She’s confessing to the ethereal universe of Tik Tok. And a lot of good that’s done her.
She’s confessing her guilt and her guiltiness, but she is confessing it to everyone BUT the One who can take away her guilt. She’s crying out for help to everyone BUT the One who can give her aid. She wants to cleanse and refine her thought and affection, but she has nobody to help her to do so. And so, what we see here is the hopeless cry of the godless and derelict soul, trapped by her own recognition of her sin and the concomitant recognition of her own impotence to change herself. This is not a good place to be. And yet it is exactly the place people need to be to be saved.
Until you recognize that you are an utterly sinful and evil person who cannot help themselves, then you will never really have a need for Christ. Until you recognize how completely impossible it is to take away your own guilt or to actually become better – let alone good enough – then you’ll never need Christ.
Until self-sufficiency is defeated salvation cannot come. I pray for this woman. I pray that her prayer will be addressed to God. I pray that He’ll hear her confession and get the Gospel to her.
But here’s the thing. We all know people. Everyone knows other people and we all know that at least SOME people we know are either in, have been in, or will come to a moral and existential crisis like this, if they have any self-awareness at all. That’s why it’s crucial for Christians to be active in sharing our faith and being honest about our own failures: so we can have a witness to people like these women.
This woman doesn’t need a therapist’s couch; she doesn’t need pills; she doesn’t need parenting advice; she doesn’t need any self-help, self-affirmation, self-love, self-centered, intellectual and moral pornography. She needs Christ. I hope someone leads her to Him. Because we all too were once without God and without hope in the world.