Heartsick

I read an article tonight on some recent events that made me feel sick at heart. What made me sicker was the sarcastic hilarity with which it was being reported and passed about even by believers. 

  There's a story in the Bible about Noah getting drunk and passing out naked and his tent. One of his sons stumbled into his dad's tent and saw him and went out and begin to ridicule him before his brothers.  The two other brothers took a blanket and laid it across their shoulders and then walked backwards into the tent to where their father lay and spread the blanket over him without ever looking at his unclothed body.  I don't know how their dad found out about it, but he did and he pronounced some pretty hard judgments on the son who ridiculed him. 

  Perhaps the father, who had always been a goody two-shoes type, brought on the ridicule by his bad behavior.  This is the man who was perfect in his generation according to God. When you've always stood up against bad behavior, people take notice of your faults very quickly.  This is Noah, the builder of the Ark to save his family and the animals. The world that had existed was now destroyed.  The Bible describes him as a preacher of righteousness. Whether his preaching was done with a hammer and saw as he built the boat or whether he actually preached words of judgement  and admonishment, he preached for many years as a man of exemplary behavior and great faith. That tends to rankle people. 

Why he found grapes and made wine and got roaring drunk after the amazing things he had experienced we don't know. Perhaps he figured there was no one to be righteous for.  Maybe he thought it didn't really matter anymore.  At any rate, his sons were affected deeply.  Maybe everything the son said about his father was true. He was still judged harshly for his ridicule and betrayal.

After reading the article, with its detailed description of detestable behavior of which no one with any decency can appreciate, I felt at though I needed to walk into the tent backward and lay a blanket over the foolishness of my nation. I am distraught that anyone has seen her this way. People I know are making sarcastic jokes about my nation and my gender and regardless of what they saw, I've heard enough. I want to gently, cover her nakedness and leave her be to sleep it off.