The Sad Sack

There is, my adult children tell me, a small temptation that can ruin a life. This is the Temptation of the Sad Sack.

When I was a boy, the Sad Sack was a comic (before they were high brow comix), World War II humor transported to the 1970’s, the jokes lost in transition. There have been many Sad Sacks in literature, the first I know of being Dolon in his weasel hat, the Sad Sack of Homer’s Iliad.  He was a fast runner, good so far as he was quick, that decided to be a hero and, instead, weasel skin hat firmly on his head, met real heroes and so went bad going to Hades quickly.

The Sad Sack, like any human created in the image of God, could most excellently be himself, but chooses or is drafted to be in a place where he cannot thrive. He is bad at what he tries to do or is forced to do and so becomes most miserable. The Sad Sack fails, but only because he has decided to fill a place not his own.

He is William Shatner singing.

If you believe that success is measured by “winning” or doing something grand, then you are well on your way to being a Sad Sack. There are few that greatness corrupts, most of us are not up to greatness, so we are ruined by our Sad-Sackery: our attempt to do something we were not meant to do. We make music that we force on others when we cannot sing. We go to more school than we wish or that our natural aptitude permits. We end up rising to the level of the Sad Sack: a miserable incompetent, pretending all we need is one break.

We need to break the demands of Sad-Sackery and be free to be what we are: most often average, utterly normal. There is no product I can buy to make me young again and I was never cool (whatever the cool word for “cool” is now). We must be free of the demands of consumerism, even Christian consumerism. I am not going to be an Apostle on a throne, those roles are filled. When called to change the world, as we all are, the call is to change myself into the likeness of God by the grace of God. I need not strive, Sad Sack man, to be what I cannot be, anything other than what I was designed to be.

Since demons are not very clever, there is an opposite Sad Sack: the one who will not do or is manipulated out of doing the things God has given her the gifts to do. This Sad Sack is, again, most often imposed upon by outside forces. Instead of being forced, unnaturally upwards in society, she is pushed down. “You cannot do this hard thing,” they are told, “you are a stupid, silly, soppy.” This Sad Sack is one who could have been, but is not and so mopes, mumbles, murmurs about what might have been. She must cast off the lies and be and do what she can be and do.

How can we know? One of my great-grandfathers was asked if a man had a call to preach and he responded: “Can he preach?”

Just so.

The Sad Sack will do what he cannot, because he thinks he must to matter. O Sad Sack! The Sad Sack will not do what she should, because she thinks she does not matter. O Sad Sack!

We must find our calling, our true gifts, and double down on those. We need not do what is demanded or some chart tells us is wise. Instead, we move forward Godward. We look to God and God brings us to ourselves. Mostly this means we will become wholly average . . . splendidly normal.

I may be just one of the throng before the Throne of God, but my, what a wonderful thing that is. We stand together, all of us, made what might be from what we were, nothing cosmos shaking, but beloved by the Almighty. There is no Sad Sack in the Kingdom!