The "I knew it" Syndrome

If you ever watch a movie with my Mom you may hear the words, "I knew he was a bad guy!" come out of her mouth. Obviously it's most prevalent when a movie has a twist, and the real bad guy isn't revealed until the end. Of course after a while you ignore it, but it started out with a rolling of the eyes and a "Sure you did Mom." My mom actually does this a lot with things. If they catch someone stealing in their store, about 70% of the time, "As soon as I saw them, I knew they were stealing from us" is part of the story. (Side note...my mom followed a lady into the bathroom who was going to flush the stuff she stole down the toilet after she was confronted about it so...don't steal from my mom! It's futile!)

But alas...the apple tree that is my family does not have many over-hanging branches, and I must not have rolled much after dropping because I find myself doing very similar things. In one way it's validated it for me. Before I had wondered how many people she thought was stealing from her that really weren't. I mean if you think everyone is stealing from you, you're bound to be right about someone. Or how many people did she think were bad guys in that movie. If you consider them all at one point in time, of course you're going to be able to say, "I knew he was the bad guy." But I've also begun to see what she means, and the feelings that she is commenting on, and I have definitely had my fair share of, "I knew that's what you wanted to talk about" moments. Now, I have come to realize that my mom is a very spiritually aware person, and I believe has picked shop-lifters out of a crowd and been right about them. But Looking at my own tendencies...I'm more of the, I'll consider everything, so when one of them comes about, I can say that I knew it was going to be that, kind of guy. If you are in a relationship, and the other person says, "We need to talk." It is not impressive to be able to think of the 2 maybe 3 things that she could want to talk about (and we're definitely talking about the "I need to talk about us" kind of statement). And since you are in the relationship, and know where the problems are...you can probably narrow it down to one. Recently, I could tell someone wanted to talk to me about something (which was the only impressive part of it all, if there was one), and I had in my mind the 3 possible reasons why. And one was even the "Something I'm not considering" option. Now, I did have a favorite, and I probably would have put money on it had there been a bookie present. But it felt weird telling myself "I KNEW that's what she was going to say" when I had considered everything else. Yet...I did. But I guess that's what it means to "know" something was going to happen. To have considered all the options (they are shop-lifter, they are not) but to have a favorite and one that you would predict as truth if asked. I'm not sure why I mention it all except that I was thinking about a pastor friend of mine who has recently been caught in a sexual scandal that has cost him his position. And of course I look back and think, "Did I see that one coming?" Obviously there was never a point where I was like, "Oh he's going to fall to this particular sin someday." But...I've been wondering how surprised I am. There was a church I was going to in High school that I thought was awesome, and the pastor was amazing, and I had talked him up a lot to my family. And once he spoke at my school and my parents got to see him. A couple of months later it came out that he had been having an on going affair for the past 10 months. And my mom had said, "I knew something was wrong when we saw him," (I had written off the talk as just not his best one) "I told your dad that, and I realize now that it's because the Spirit had left him." (meaning whatever anointing he had had as a good, spirit lead preacher, not as in salvation) And when I heard her say that I did the rolling my eyes thing again. "Sure you did mom." But looking at this latest situation...I wonder if I knew something was wrong with my current friend.

Of course again, I am surprised by the particulars of the sin. But I look back at our interactions, and I've always wondered why I felt reserved about him. Before this, if you had asked me if we were good friends, I would have said..."we were friends." Good just seemed a little too far. But as I think about all of our interactions, I would have to say that we probably were. I've played racquetball with the man, taken two Greek classes from him, lived in the same neighborhood as him, he helped teach me how to drive a stick, we've had lunch on numerous occasions, I drove him about an hour and half away to preach to some youth and back, he had spoken at my church many times, he even officiated my brother's wedding. We had talked about sex, speaking in tongues, predestination, total depravity, and even about that other pastor that I had mentioned who had the pro-longed affair. And yet...through that...I always thought something was wrong there. Not that he was tempted by what he ultimately fell to. But...just that there was something...wrong. There were some good things about him. He was the first Baptist I knew who didn't grimace and snarl at my mentioning of a church I went to that spoke in tongues, but instead reminisced about his own spiritual journey of figuring all of that out and how beautiful it was when they sang in tongues. So I had a lot of respect for his openness about it. Even though he was probably the most Armeniest person I had known while I was going through my Calvinist stage, and we definitely disagreed there...But I never felt judged or belittled, but instead respected that I was thinking it through.

So those were the good things. There were also things that just seemed off. Even though he's in his fifties, he sometimes acts like a little kid. He always asked why I never called him (even though I was a 16 year old, and he was...well...an old man). He seemed very lonely in that. My brother just said he seemed bored. He once told my youth minister that if he ever had the itch (talking about moving churches) he could help him out. His sermons rarely ever did it for me and he often talked about Christianity or Christian things like he was a text book. I had always taken it as a 50 year old man who had a PhD and had been in the ministry most of his life, and it was just how he talked and related to things. While I feel like no minister should be above getting emotional about the gospel, I didn't feel in the position to judge him for his seemingly lack of it. While a good friend, he was never someone I wanted to be my pastor, and I could never totally figure out why I felt that way. And now I wonder. Do I sound like my mother if I say, "I knew something was off." Do I sound like my mother to look back at the other pastor who had spoken at my school and thought about how his sermons did seem noticeably worse during those 10 months?

I think it's natural to go back and think about your interactions with people when you find out something like this. When kids start shooting up schools, the interviews always include people who knew them trying to figure out if they should have seen this coming. And maybe my mom takes that natural tendency as the Spirit speaking to her. Or maybe there is something more. Maybe there was a spiritual pulling of "something just doesn't seem right with this guy." I didn't feel it with the high school pastor. It was a total surprise and even if I had noticed his sermons slacking off...there was no spiritual tugging telling me that it was because something was wrong. But I now wonder if those moments where I just felt something wrong with my friend were more than just disagreeing with a point or not relating to his personality.

I'm not sure what my point is...or if there is one...or if I need one. Just noticed that I was playing the "I knew it" card a lot, wondering when people will start rolling their eyes and say "Sure you did Zach." But the big one being my friend. And it makes me wonder if there is spiritual involvement in letting you know something isn't quite right...and what we are supposed to do about it. Or if I'm correlating to unrelated things and just didn't relate with him well, and therefore thought something was wrong. Who knows.