Gold’s Gym, Sheol and Tullian: Why I’m Trying to be Grateful

Last updated on: September 3, 2015 at 10:14 am by Anne Kennedy

Gold’s Gym, Sheol and Tullian: Why I’m Trying to be Grateful 2015-09-03T10:14:19-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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The great tragedy of Tullian and his wife broke open this summer when we happened to be on the end of a gorgeously restful vacation. We’d spent weeks lolling about by the pool, planning to make extravagant meals but then wearying in the details and rushing off, in fits of hunger, to a Mexican restaurant that smokes its own meat. We would make all kinds of plans, in fact, and then carry through on none of them. I read an actual book, that’s how perfect it was. And every morning, because he is a creature of discipline and habit, and so that we could sleep in, Matt took his workout routine out of the bosom of the family, bless him, over to something called Gold’s Gym. As far as I know, we don’t have anything fancy like a Gold’s Gym up here in the fading, decrepit northeast. We have something called Court Jester, which I always feel is fitting…for a few laughs, don’t you know, as they take lots and lots of your money. Or you can go to Planet Fitness for cheap, where, I’ve been told, you have to beat your way past mountains of bagels and pizza. Maybe that is just a rumor, maybe it isn’t true. But if it is, oh my word, if I went to workout there, and was confronted with a pile of bread…I don’t know, I guess I’d just start crying.

Because of these few and, in the case of Court Jester, expensive choices, Matt always works out at home. He has some quantity of medieval looking weights and benches. He is surrounded by dirt, down there in Sheol, by piles of laundry, by broken children’s toys. I try never to go down there but when I do, I shudder. My heart and my flesh recoil in horror. But he does it, every day, for what seems like hours, lifting the weights, listening to sermons and lectures, disciplining his body and his mind at the same time.

Contrast this with my exercise routine, which keeps me far from both gym and Sheol. I get up, I lie on the floor in front of an offensive and annoying workout video, I swear gently to myself about how much I hate it, I pray for God to make me thin supernaturally, I give up and go downstairs and try to walk past the golden mounds of cinnamon rolls and bread, because, in a striking twist of ugly luck, I am a pretty good baker. Oh, who am I kidding, I have a true gift. I can deliver from the fire of the oven bread and cake and pie and muffins. And yet I am married to a man who can walk by all of them no problem, as he descends into Sheol. Sheol is the official name of our basement. I’m not really trying to say anything theological. Not really.

So, in the last days of our glorious vacation, every day Matt going off to Gold’s Gym, the news about Tullian (oh my gosh, I can’t spell his last name) broke open and we read the Internet in open mouthed sorrow and sadness. What on earth, we asked over and over. How could they have fallen into this trouble and sin? What were they doing? Where were the people around them to say, do you really need to take another trip right now? Or anything? I mean, Tullian and his wife are beautiful, in the modern way. They have it all, as far as I can tell, which is only through the confines of the Internet. Surely a person who has it all also has people to cast dubious and critical remarks upon the smooth surface of prosperity and fame? Don’t they? Isn’t that a requirement?

Every time something like this breaks open–notorious adultery, catastrophic sexual sin, that kind of thing–we, Matt and I, always end up stuck in the office, batting away kids, reading comment threads and articles and going back and forth in our “What On Earth” way. And then, inevitably (and truly, it feels like we are doing this every other week now, instead of once a year, exclaiming in horror over the public downfall of another known and famous Christian pastor) we stop and comb carefully through our own lives, trying to make sure that we are being honest and true about the state of our own marriage and work. Because, well, we are awful people. We are. I, to say nothing of Matt, am selfish and petulant. I do not love God the way I should. I always put myself first, or, when I put someone before me in action, I feel pretty bitter about it. I am Not Good. It wouldn’t take very much for me to do something catastrophic and sinful, really.

In the aftermath of the Tullian Tragedy, we had lots of conversations about Gold’s Gym. It is probably the ordinary culture of the regular in shape American. Matt was interested to note how many married women were there, working with personal trainers, how social were the women with the men who openly strutted and competed for attention, how easily women would make eye contact with him and try to engage him conversation. It’s like many of them were there, you know, to, um, well, I mean, it’s not very nice of me to judge. And I didn’t even go. By the end of the month, the last week or so, Matt quit going because it was too weird. For which I’m really grateful, because I was beginning to feel a deep desire to go over there myself, heaven forbid, not to workout, but to bash all the other women’s heads together.

It’s really hard not to look at the Tullians of the world and be jealous. The evangelical industrial complex of fame and fortune and beauty looks really fine to my outside, obscure, unknown eyes. We live in a town where people are not really beating down the doors to hear about the latest cool theology. People don’t tweet that much up here. Our parking lot is the thoroughfare of the downtrodden and poor. Matt has to stand up every week, every single Sunday, and preach to a congregation spread abroad in a building that seats four hundred. Each person is important, counted, numbered, fussed over, but there are not four hundred of them. On a good day, maybe if Jesus himself came in bodily human form, and I don’t mean the bread, because that’s always there so who even cares any more, we might expect 130 of them. This is down from last year when there were 150. Thirty or so moved away from Binghamton, some against their own desires. Did I mention this is a decrepit town? I sit in my pew every week, every single Sunday, listening to Matt, praying for some kind of multitude, or even just one more person, just to walk in. There is little beauty and honor, certainly no fame, and so it’s easy to be jealous.

I guess though, with the Tullian thing, and then the Ashley Madison thing, and the Supreme Court thing, and even the Mark Driscoll thing, I guess it’s time to be grateful for the obscurity and the ugliness. It is really not bad for Matt to work out alone in a place filled with stupid children’s toys. It’s not bad for us to live right next to the church so people are able to walk in freely all the time (ask me about how much I love this, really, go on and ask, I dare you). It’s not bad that there are no fancy speaking trips, that there is not any travel, that we have to cook all our own food because taking six children out to dinner is too expensive and too much trouble. It’s not bad that we have to work really really hard, together, in each other’s physical presence, in a fishbowl, in discouragement and sorrow. If we hadn’t had all these incredible “gifts” bestowed upon us by God, we would have rushed off headlong into sin and foolishness.

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