If you haven’t seen the season finale of 24, and are planning on it, go to Fox’s website or Hulu and watch it before reading. I’ll wait.
Good, you made it back. First of all, I don’t know about you, but that was probably the best season ending of 24 that I have seen yet. I’m even more saddened that I’ll be somewhere in Africa when the next season premieres.
While the entirety of the finale blew me away, the moment that most sticks out in me is the scene where Jack is in the hospital bed with the imam, whom, not two hours before, he had tussled with in an attempt to find a man who was being framed as a terrorist. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series (shame on you), Jack Bauer is a sometimes-rogue government agent who fights terrorism in any way he knows how, including the use of torture to gain information from a hostile about the blanket organization they are working with. He admits in the finale that he values human life over the law: if there was a bus with fifteen people on it that was targeted by terrorists, he would have used any means necessary to save those fifteen people. This season has been about Jack coming to terms with those demons of the past six seasons, which have come back to haunt him in the form of a Senate ethics hearing on his implementation of torture.
In Jack’s final conscious scene (he’s later induced into a coma), the imam comes to his side, and prays with him that they would be able to let go of the guilt and burden of their pasts. And as poignant as that scene was for Jack, I was thinking while it was going on: I can kind of relate to this. I mean the challenge of forgiveness of oneself. If you calculate by presidential terms, Jack’s been doing his thing for upwards of twelve years. That’s a lot of heavy stuff to deal with for a guy, and not be able to forgive yourself for.
I can’t say I’ve ever almost gouged someone’s eyes out with a pen, or threatened someone’s family in an attempt to get them to talk, but I’m far from perfect. And sometimes the hardest thing to do is forgive yourself for those things. I think that’s why the concept of God’s forgiveness is so amazing. He has forgiven us about seventy times over what we deserve when we struggle to face ourselves in the mirror in the morning. And I think that, in a kind of weird way, that’s a little arrogant of us. Who are we to think that our sins are so grave, so terrible, so unimaginably awful that we can’t possibly deserve God’s forgiveness? Seeking out that forgiveness is the key. And really, if you think about it from what I imagine would be God’s perspective, wouldn’t it be harder to forgive someone who didn’t think they really deserved it?
Discuss.
On an unrelated note, I leave for training camp tomorrow. EXCITED BEYOND REASON. As a quick financial update, I’m currently at $6560, with another $9440 to go before I reach my $16,000 goal. My next deadline is $8000 by July 1, so please keep my fundraising in your prayers. It’s been nice to not have to reason for concern yet, but as I hear news of current Racers who are $4000 behind in fundraising, it’s something that has worked its way back into my mind.
I’ll be back May 31 with some camp insight. Til then, cheers.
