Monsters

Teacher Tom

I recently read Claire Dederer's book Monsters in which she considers the question of what to do about artists who have created beloved works of art, but who have also revealed themselves to be, well, monsters. Woody Allen is one of her prime examples. Dederer uses the metaphor of a beautiful piece of lace that has been stained. It remains a beautiful piece of lace, but it's nearly impossible to not notice the stain.

As people who work with and care for young children, we are in the business of forgiving and forgetting. Of course, we don't let a two-year-old's missteps stain them. Even our teenagers usually get to leave their transgressions in the past. At what age do we stop forgiving? How long ago does it have to be? It's been decades since Woody Allen was accused of his crimes. Has the stain faded? Should it? If we still enjoy his movies, are we condoning his past behavior? Are we forgetting about his victims? Are we forgetting about justice?

It's easy to forgive preschoolers, of course, because they're so young. Their brains aren't fully developed. Even if they hit or bite or verbally abuse a classmate, we don't let that stain set. They're not bad children; they just made bad choices. They didn't know any better. But when should they know better? There are teens who we try in court as adults. I guess we assume that they should have known better. On the other hand, we commonly expunge crimes from the records of teens under the assumption that they have learned their lesson and don't deserve to start life with a stain. But what if their's was a horrible crime, like rape? Some courts try to split the difference, keeping their juvenile crime a secret unless they're accused of doing it again, which might seem fair until you consider the second victim who might have benefitted from knowing about the stain.

When I was in school, one of the ways that adults tried to get us to behave was to warn us about stains on our "permanent record." Back then, it was a boogeyman -- there was never a permanent record. But in today's world, increasingly, everyone's permanent record is at our fingertips. It's no longer just the famous whose stains are visible to the world.

I'm grateful to have grown up in an era in which videos of my worst moments don't show up on the internet, where my outrageous and misguided "hot takes" are preserved forever in some database just waiting to be revealed. I'm not a monster, but I've made mistakes, out of ignorance, out of insensitivity, out of privilege, for which I might well have found myself "cancelled" were they have happened today. Many of us recoil against so-called cancel-culture when we think of it this way, but don't most of us wish that someone had done something to cancel history's monsters, the 9/11 high jackers, Ted Bundy, Stalin, Herod?

The children in our care will live their entire lives in a world in which their mistakes really might wind up on a permanent record. It's hard to imagine anyone making it through life without some sort of stain.

In the Christian Bible, Paul, in his letter to the Romans (3:23), writes: "For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard." In other words, we are all stained. Of course, God also forgives, washing sinners clean, rendering the beautiful lace unmarred, but for us mere mortals, forgiving other adults is hard and the stain remains no matter how much we try. God can look into hearts and know whether or not they are sincere, but since we can never know for sure, the stain remains. Is it truly forgiveness if we can't forget?

That said, I find I'm incapable of this sort of radical forgiveness. For instance, I think of those children who continue trusting and forgiving even when they are abused. The stain on "monsters" who do horrible things to children, like what Woody Allen has been credibly accused of doing, can never be washed away. The stain is too revolting to ignore; the lace is completely ruined. I struggle to forgive any adult who abuses the weak and vulnerable. And I write this knowing that forgiveness would, I'm promised, set me free.

But we do forgive young children. We must. We trust that they are sincere, and even if they haven't learned their lesson this time, we trust they will, eventually, with our loving support. So the capacity for god-like forgiveness is within us and no where do we see it more clearly than in the children themselves, who forgive us, daily, even hourly, for the mistakes we make. 

I'm grateful for Dederer's book, not because it provides answers, but rather because it poses important questions that may or may not have answers. 

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