Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Your Spiritual Formation, and Pigweed
For several weeks the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation case bubbled along far out in the periphery of my judicial awareness. Then, I must confess, I succumbed to the inner machinations of some algorithm and gave it about 10 minutes of attention. Oh man, that was a mistake. The whole situation is a collection of strangeness that twists itself together into something far more fascinating than just the latest Hollywood drama. The actual character of actors is now on legal trial while being gleefully hammered out in the court of public opinion. Well, actually, I guess this is pretty standard for Hollywood.
Here's the catch. It is standard, but it isn’t just standard for Hollywood. Complicated character flaws are standard for humanity. I’m in the process of reading Rebecca Deyoung’s Glittering Vices, A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and their Remedies (I would highly recommend it by the way). When we look at what she persuasively argues are best described as “Capital Vices,” we start to see them everywhere. She uses “sin” as an activity and “vice” as a component of our character. It turns out that when you have the resources of a global church that have communed with God and interacted with millions of humans for a couple thousand years some rather perceptive insights on the human condition float to the surface.
Deyoung uses “Capital” in a classic sense that is more akin to “fountainhead.” The Capital Vices are the flaws of our character that are source material for much of the chaos we generate in our personal lives. It won’t shock you to hear that “don’t chop off fingers with a broken bottle,” or “don’t do cocaine” aren’t on the Capital Vices list. No, the power of looking deeply at traditional vices is that they really do describe the source material in our inmost being that lead to levels of creative dysfunction that sometimes make it to a nationally televised trial.
It turns out that if you take the basic human vices and add fame and fortune, you’ll get a real show. Lest ye be smug, the problem with vice is not the scale of the fruit that it produces, but the fact that it exists at all. The warping of our character away from Christlikeness doesn’t operate in quantum leaps, but on a continuum. Whatever Depp and Heard have or had going on, chances are you do too. Okay fine, so you don’t have millions, a penthouse, and global fame. But pride destroys many people who don’t. The size of the fruit may vary based on externalities, but the vice at the root is known to the Lord in us all.
Ironically, prophetically, or accidentally, my parents named me Nathan David. How do you like that? I have the conflicting prophet and king all in one name! Every time I’m about to rail against someone else’s sin in Davidic fashion, there’s the Nathan saying, “You are that man.” I’m not accusing you, implicating myself, or asking us to throw up our hands in despair because of the brokenness of humanity. Far from it. Fortunately, the Lord has provided the resources to confront these, and is willing to provide the power for vice to be confronted and rooted out in our lives. The point I’m making is that what we shake our heads at in the Depp/Heard case is the very grown-up version of what is festering in the hearts of billions.
Speaking of festering, my wife and I recently purchased a couple tons of compost for our high tunnel this spring and as the crops began to grow my wife noticed a little weed that had a thorn on it. This was new. Apparently, the seed came along in the compost. We looked it up. It’s called Spiny Pigweed. I won’t go into the details, but I can assure you we don’t want a garden full of it. So, knowing what it can become when it is full-grown, we rip it out when it is little.[1]
My life isn’t like Johnny Depp’s, yours probably isn’t like Amber Heard’s, but my challenge to us all is that while we watch the weed[2] infested trial that our country can’t take it’s eyes off of, lets grieve because of sin in the world that makes the news, and repent of the vice in our own lives. When we see it in its grown-up form we realize that we don’t want it. Let’s ask the Lord to search our hearts and see if there be any wicked way in us.
[1] See Barney Fife’s analysis of the concept at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU5iLiEySyk
[2] No pun intended