The film SERPICO tells the story of corruption within the New York City Police Department in the early 1970s. For over a century, officers in the Big Apple had been taking bribes from criminals, from top-tier mafia dons to low-level pimps and drug pushers. For the right price, a law enforcement officer would look the other way. But Officer Frank Serpico refused. The man could not be bought. What did the good guy get for his troubles? He was shot in the face. Frank survived and went on to bring down hundreds of corrupt cops. His efforts cleaned up the NYPD and sparked a transformation that—along with the use of the RICO Act and the Mafia Commission Trial in 1987—would eventually turn the city around.
Frank’s story was made into a movie starring Al Pacino. Before filming SERPICO, Pacino spent time with the courageous officer he would soon portray on screen. The actor asked Frank why he was willing to risk his life to turn down payoffs that could have made him rich. Why not just take the money?
“If I did that” —long pause— “who would I be when I listen to Beethoven?”
What? Wait. What did he say?
“Who would I be when I listen to Beethoven?”
Pacino found that unexpected answer unforgettable, including it in his memoir SONNY BOY some fifty years later.
“Who would I be?”
What an unusual thought process. Most people, when asked about sins, say things like “I didn’t want to go to hell,” or “I didn’t want to go to prison,” or simply “I didn’t want to get caught.”
But when Frank Serpico reflects on his integrity, he speaks of identity. Frank wants to be worthy of Beethoven. Not worthy to meet Beethoven or perform works by Beethoven. He simply wants to be a person with enough self-respect to enjoy listening to Beethoven with no regrets.
I imagine it this way: Frank Serpico wants to open up a turntable late in the evening, slide a Beethoven recording from the album sleeve, place the needle on the record, and sit in a good chair with his eyes closed, enjoying every nuance from one of the greatest musical geniuses God ever gave mankind. Frank does not want to be diminished by guilt, by regret, by the shameful awareness of his own secret depravity. He does not want to be diminished.
Because that is what sin does. It DIMINISHES. It makes you smaller. It makes you weak and puny and cowardly. Sin covered Adam and Eve with shame. And sin left the serpent crawling on its belly. Sin will shrivel and reduce and weaken you.
“For by means of a harlot, a man is reduced to a loaf of bread, and an adulteress will prey upon his precious life” Proverbs 6:26 (NKJV).
And look at Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness makes a nation great, but sin diminishes any people.”
It does not matter how ‘swole’ you might be, sin makes you smaller. Sin makes you weak. Sin DIMINISHES.
Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6: “The immoral man sins against his own body” 1 Corinthians 6:18.
Of course, sin makes you weaker, smaller. You are hurting yourself, sinning against yourself, your health, your wholeness. (‘Integrity’ means ‘wholeness.’)
There is a reason people talk about “being the bigger man.” Metaphors are rooted in not merely linguistics, but perception. We instinctively know there is something bigger, something stronger about making good choices. Recently I bought a truck and the battery needed replacing seven days later. I could have lied, claiming to have driven less than 250 miles, knowing that was the cutoff if they were going to replace the battery. And I genuinely believed they “owed” me a battery. But the thought of lying filled me with the sickening sense of being diminished. I did not want to be reduced, shrunk down into the sort of man who would lie.
The “bigger man” will ignore an insult, both online and in-person. The bigger man will pay taxes where a smaller man would look for the way out. The bigger person will obey the de-humanizing rules in airports or the DMV, swallowing the indignities rather than insulting people doing thankless jobs.
And who are the small people? It is the small person who is always angry. It is the small person who steals houseplants off the porch. (Yes, I have had houseplants stolen.) It is the small person who will steal toys then wrap them up and give them to their own children as gifts. Once my debit card number was stolen and used to purchase $500 in gift cards from Pizza Hut. That was the act of a small person.
Gollum from LORD OF THE RINGS is Tolkien’s embodiment of the ultimate small soul. Smeagol was a man reduced—diminished—by a sinful addiction. And it is true for humans as it is for hobbits: sin will diminish not only your soul. It will diminish your body as it did Smeagol’s. Sin destroys you from the inside-out.
You have a choice. Do you wish to be a person of strong character or weak? Will you have integrity or will you not? If you want your moral character, your soul, to be ‘swole,’ you must make good choices. Because sin will diminish you and reduce you, leaving you weak and small.
Dear God, teach us to flee sin. Motivate us not only to be holy, because it pleases You, but because You have warned us that sin makes us WEAK. Sin diminishes us. Sin reduces us. Sin destroys us from the inside. Help us to value and cultivate integrity. Help us to nurture and care for the power and strength within our own souls. Help us see as Frank Serpico did that sin robs us of our joy and our self-respect. May we value our souls, our identity, and our inner lives enough to protect ourselves from sin. Help us make choices that please You.
AΩ.