What if St. Augustine were to run for office?

If we’re lucky, we have forgetful friends.

And that goes double for folks who don’t like us much.

Once again, news-cycle after news-cycle has been pummeled by what folks in an earlier, less – I guess the contemporary word is “woke” – age would have dismissed as a “youthful indiscretion.”

Yup, we all found out that somebody somewhat important now did something dumb way back when they were just another schlub on the street.

This time it’s the governor of Virginia and a yearbook picture taken about 35 years ago.

Just to put that in perspective, 35 years ago my son, an upstanding individual who holds a responsible position and enjoys the respect and confidence of his contemporaries, hadn’t quite mastered toilet training.

Time, it would seem, changes people.

It doesn’t take any great insight to figure that out – just a mirror, a memory or maybe an old photo album. If we’re still upright and taking nourishment, not a one of us is the person today we were a while back – be that for good or for ill.

We all change.

And there’s one other thing we all do.

Screw up.

Yup. I dare say there isn’t a one of us who right now doesn’t have an image dancing in their head of at least one and more likely a whole bunch of things we’ve thought, said, or done that we really, really, really hope we never have to explain to anyone … anyone.

Now, just for a moment, roll that sordid picture around in your brain and imagine if that was suddenly to become the most important thing to be known about you … the one thing that your entire life and being would be judged by. No further explanations needed or accepted.

Just how fair is that?

I guess that depends on what that thing was … and even more so … what we’ve done and  how we’ve lived our lives since.

Because people change. Who we are, what we are today isn’t necessarily who, what we once might have been.

Consider Saul of Tarsus – aka St. Paul.

“For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. ...” he wrote in his Epistle to the Galatians.

But after that incident on the road to Damascus there was more to Saul/Paul than that.

Or maybe Augustine. He lived quite a wild life before he settled down to qualify as a saint.

Now granted, most of us aren’t on the road to canonization, but I just bet every one of us can think of quite a set of folks we once knew as total and complete jackasses who’ve changed course to become folks we’re not ashamed to greet on the street.

And if we’ve got a lick of decency about us, don’t breathe a word of their past to anybody we might introduce them to.

“Cuz that’s not who they are any more.

We know people change because people we know have changed.

Even politicians, judges and others who stray into the public eye.

If a boy can grow out of diapers, can’t a man quit soiling himself in other ways?

The gospel writer summed it up quite neatly:

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.  Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

But then, Matthew didn’t have the daily news cycle to contend with…

And Augustine’s world was a little less “woke.”

May we all be blessed with forgetful friends.