Recently I had the distinct pleasure of viewing a skateboarding documentary on television. The channel was “JCTV,” and the documentary was called “D.O.P.E.” At first I was turned off to the whole concept simply because it was on the cool young adult version of TBN, but as I forced my self to watch the whole thing I was pleasantly surprised by the first hour and the second hour wasn’t half bad.
The film follows young professional skateboarders in the 70’s and 80’s when, “sidewalk surfing,” morphed into the sport I know and love today. Blah, blah, blah, all the skaters spiral into a heavy drug addiction - and it all started when they took that puff of weed (if only they hadn’t inhaled, they could have became governor of California). Their lives take a one-eighty, they start hitting harder and harder drugs like meth and coke; I really shouldn’t have to explain this part, all anti-drug documentaries have the same middle section where they interview the mother and father and they say something like, “I couldn’t believe my son/daughter was taking __________(insert drug of choice here), I had no idea until it was to late.” Then the friend is interviewed and he says something along the lines of, “yeah I saw him taking _________(drug) and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t. The _________ had such a strong hold on him by that point…..” But instead of blaming it on the person’s addictive personality and the mental bond said person’s brain made between the drug and happiness, the narrator decides that it is all Satan’s fault for giving these poor kids a crack pipe. Now the movie was all fine and dandy until this point. But at that pivotal moment I realized why it was showing on “JCTV”.
I assume everyone has been preached to at one point in their lives, if not I salute you for avoiding the mega-church scare tactics I preached for the majority of my young life.
Getting back to D.O.P.E… By this point in the film Satan had a grip on all the young skateboarders through drugs and, by golly, he was not going to let go without a miracle. But he only saved a couple guys. Some of them had to hit rock bottom like normal people and go to rehab and relapse and go back to rehab, I think a couple of the non-influental characters actually died, but God forbid the director focus on them - if Jesus didn’t save them, they’re not important.
So God miraculously saves these, “survivors,” from their addictions, and replaces that empty hole with another addiction: preaching in prisons, or doing crummy documentaries. But don’t mind that they all get together at the end for a friendly BBQ to reminisce about that one time they were famous and had money, and women, and really really good crack.
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