Are You Still Scratching? | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Are You Still Scratching? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
04/13/18
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Jamey Higgins still blames the Instagram post I put out. Seriously, it was one quick shot of me scratching a little patch of reddish pimples on my shoulder. I had nothing to do with the irritation he felt along his rib cage. Him rubbing his skin raw was his own issue. If he wanted to deal with rashes he should have checked out Leviticus.

I had nothing to do with Selma Johnston picking up the share message from Jamey and feeling the itch on her shoulder blade just out of her reach. When she started rubbing her back along that wall like a bear, before she knocked over that lamp and broke the bulb, that was not my problem. I’m sure they have healing services in her neighborhood if she felt that bad.

The fact that Harvey Jamieson picked up on her Facebook post, as she described the trauma she went through after she cut her finger picking up the shards, means nothing to me since I don’t even know who he is. I know we’re supposed to love our neighbor but my neighborhood only goes so far. If he thought it was intelligent to Google “rash like symptoms” and then felt like ants were crawling up his spine that is not something I’m taking the blame for.

It doesn’t make sense that Havier Gonzalez in Mexico somehow linked onto Harvey’s page, saw his pain, and checked out the local herbalist in Guadalara for a bizarre series of bumps behind his kneecap. The fact that he was scammed by some quack in a shack is not something they can track back to me. Maybe he should have been doing his penance and confessions with the rest of the crowd down there.

What’s even more insane is that Marianne Francois from Paris, who happened to share contact information with Havier during a two-week tour on a Latin American beach, still blames my snapshot for distracting her when she was looking at it as she went around a traffic circle on the Arc de Triomphe. The ticket she got for her accident was well deserved. Imagine, telling the judge that it was my picture that was responsible for distracting her concentration.

Of course, Anthony Sarcozi’s shot leaning against the Tower of Piza almost made me willing to shoulder responsibility if he wanted to text me and suggest a few hours over a cappuccino. How he got the snapshot from Marianne is not my worry. I just can’t believe people that good looking don’t have better things to do with their time than to ogle some rash. I’m almost convicted enough to buy a ticket and suggest a tour of the Vatican for a special blessing.

If my mother was still alive she would never believe that Cardinal Bertiloni posted a prayer online for the poor “rashed souls” who were contacting his intercession center for well-being. I’m not sure why he attached a link to a ‘child-labour factory’ expose in Bangladesh and another to a ‘sex trafficking investigation in Cambodia’ website. I tried taking down my post but it seemed like it had gone viral.

When I shut down all my social media platforms and opened my hard copy Bible I started near the beginning of the book I hadn’t opened for years. All my time and attention had been taken snapping shots and letting people know what a great life I was living.

In the third chapter of Genesis something clicked. Adam and Eve messed up and God got in touch. The blame game began with the very first people. Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. There has been a rash of blaming going on with every human being ever since.

We hardly scratch the surface of how deep the infection has gone and we hardly ever know when or where it will show up. This rash seems to hit every culture and every continent. It seems impossible to stop.
I’m just glad the Bible doesn’t just tell me where the 'blame rash' came from but how to deal with it by confessing to God and letting him deal with the root cause in my soul. That’s a message I would love to share with my unseen friends in Europe, India, Russia, the Philippines, Asia or South America.

I should probably start by connecting with Jamey Higgins. Maybe if I ask his forgiveness he might still come to our youth retreat this weekend.

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