Beth and I finished Adolescence the other night. It’s an amazing, excellent, but gut-wrenching show. The Emmy awards that it won are completely justified. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television.
And I never want to watch it again, not one minute of it.
It’s not like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, where I enjoy seeing clips and reliving “I am the one who knocks” or Paulie Walnuts & Christophuh in Pine Barrens or whatever.
Adolescence is of the same same caliber, the same excellence, as those shows. But it hits rather close to home for me, both in relation to America in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and for me as a father.
(If you haven’t watched Adolescence, you might want to skip the rest of this post. I’m not going to avoid posting spoilers here.)
Adolescence is the story of Jamie Miller, a thirteen year old boy who has been radicalized by the online “manosphere”. He lashes out and murders one of his classmates, a girl who rejected him and was cruel to him. The narrative follows the boy and his family as they wrestle with the impact of his horrific act, their denial and then acceptance of what he did.
Viewers see the effects of the boy’s crime on his parents and sister, their horror, shame, anger, and fear. We see their isolation, the hostility between them and their neighbors, how their notoriety makes them question every relationship around them.
The emotional center of the show is the anguish his parents feel, as they question their love for their son, their parenting, their mistakes, the things that happened while they weren’t watching, when they assumed their kids were safe.
I’m the father of three grown kids. Watching Adolescence brought back a lot of feelings and anxieties I experienced as I watched them grow up, knowing that I couldn’t know everything they were doing or going through, knowing the limitations of my ability to protect them from their own actions and the actions of people around them.
And watching this fictional family on Adolescence caused us both to think about the family of Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s assassin, and what they are going through in real life.
Kirk’s assassination breaks my heart on several levels.
I am heartbroken for his wife, children, and those who loved him. I am heartbroken at the loss of an articulate, good-hearted spokesman for the Christian faith and right-wing politics. This is a tragedy for the church and for all Americans.
(It’s interesting that Adolescence told us almost nothing of the fictional victim and her family. She is seen onscreen for only a brief moment, and her family and the murder’s effect on them are barely mentioned.)
I am also broken-hearted for Tyler Robinson’s family. I imagine that they are in the same place as the Jamie’s family in Adolescence.
In Adolescence, the Millers were loving but busy parents, distracted by the daily grind, unaware of the darkness that was about to consume them.
The little bit that I have read and heard about Tyler Robinson’s family leads me to think that they are much like the Millers. They were not radical, they seem to have been quite normal. I have no reason to think that they are dysfunctional or abusive. And they were unaware (or not sufficiently aware) of the darkness growing in their son, their brother. My prayers go out to them.
I’m even broken-hearted for Tyler Robinson himself. As with Jamie Miller in the show, he turned himself into a monster, and committed a monstrous act. That’s the danger of staring into the void, right?
How does God see Tyler Robinson? Is he not still precious to God, one for whom Jesus died?
It’s comforting to us to think of people like Tyler Robinson as monstrous exceptions to the norm. To reduce him to something demonic, inhuman.
But violence is extremely human, and extremely American. We are the most violent developed, high-income nation in the world. Our homicide rate is much higher than Canada, Australia, Germany, France, the rest of the EU, etc. We stand out among our peers as both the most religious AND the most violent.
I’ve always said that there is no crime, no sin, that we are not all capable of, given the right (wrong) circumstances. And one of the lessons I’ve learned is that great good and deep evil can be active simultaneously in a person. Robert Morris was a gifted pastor and leader, and God did great things through his ministry. He also had a sexual relationship with a 12 year old girl, and denied and hid his sin when confronted.
Violent acts ripple out, like a rock thrown into a pond. And like the aftershocks of an earthquake, or the tsunami that follows an earthquake, the ripples can be just as damaging (or perhaps even more damaging) than the initial act.
Evil, monstrous acts lead to a lifetime of heartache for victims and perpetrators and bystanders alike. The damage cannot be contained. It’s hard to find healing, wholeness, shalom … UNTIL.
Circleslide 