sharing sorrow

While it may be true that misery loves company, I’ve recently been brought to understand a better truth: there is comfort from sharing sadness. The old adage that misery loves company is, in my opinion, sick and twisted. A person that would take delight or be placated by knowing that other people are miserable is not showing love. We should never wish misery upon another and certainly not for the sake of making ourselves feel better.

However, we can find comfort from sharing in other people’s sadness. When someone is hurting, others come alongside of them and try to encourage them. When my wife and I recently shared what we were going through with the loss of our unborn baby, we received many statements of encouragement and assurances of prayer. Some of the most comforting and encouraging notes were from people who had also gone through such a loss or something similar. They shared how they had felt and how the Lord brought them through it.

On the surface, these two things seem to be the same. But the difference is that the first desires to see other people hurting while the second rejoices to see that God has been faithful to other people even though they hurt like you do.

human brutality

Syler, the monstrous villain of NBC’s sci-fi action-drama, Heroes, is a violent, loveless, power-hungry psycho. Throughout the season, he has been portrayed as pure evil--a man without any redeeming qualities. His character is so ruthlessly wicked, that it is easy to think of him as being sub-human somehow and devoid of any natural emotions. But episode 21, “The Hard Part,” reveals some things that shake this classification.

In the episode, Syler begins to feel remorse, not for the horrible things that he has done but for what he believes that he will do. In an attempt to avoid his future actions, he seeks help. He goes to his mother’s house and tries to put his driving ambitions aside. At his mother’s house, Syler seems to be a completely different person. He shows kindness, affection, frustration, a desire for parental approval, and perhaps even love, and you begin to feel sorry for him. I found this greatly disturbing and almost wished that I did not know these things about the character. It was easier to think of him as a monster and not a person. He certainly behaves like a monster through most of the shows, so how could he be a person? And why was this possibility so disturbing?

After I listened to Yinong Young-XuIt’s “This I Believe” NPR essay, “A Potential for Brutality,” I realized that Syler’s humanity was disturbing because it revealed our own potential of violence. Humans all over the world have been and continue to be brutal. People enjoy and celebrate violence and brutality in movies and, in some cases, even in real life. Violence and fear rule the lives of many people, perhaps even the majority of people in the world. When we watch the news, we can see that this is true.

But we comfortably distance ourselves from the violent by labeling them as fanatics (which they are) and by considering them to be devoid of natural affection (which some may have made themselves). Yet these people have mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. And as to our fallen humanity, we are essentially the same. Our society simply puts more restraints on violence than does their society.

We then are capable of the same brutality. We have the same potential for evil in us that communists in China displayed during the cultural revolution, that gang members and other criminals show in American cities, and that terrorists display throughout the world. Our thoughts can be perverted, and our consciences can be seared. Thankfully, western governments put restraints on people to keep most of us from realizing our violent potential. This keeps brutality in check, but it does not rid you of it. It can not get rid of it.

Violence exists because people are sinful. Christian influence has limited violence in society, but only the gospel can rid a person of violence (and that progressively), because only the gospel can free a person from sin. So when faced with the reality of violent people, we need to recognize our own potential and look to Christ who alone can save us from our own sinful inclination for violence.

navigating life

Watching kindergarten students is quite amusing. When my classroom was arranged differently, there were fewer ways to make it from one point to another. When I would call upon a student to come to the front of the room, he would often choose the most challenging route available to him and then push his way through until he reached his destination. The students chose the hard way because they did not realize that a better way existed. Their ignorance was either due to the inferior perspective that comes with being five and short or they simply chose the first route that came to mind without giving any thought to the efficiency of their steps.

We make poor choices for the same reasons. Sometimes our limitations impede our understanding. This is unavoidable. While God is infinite, we are not. Maturity will improve our situation, but even when fully grown we have limitations and will tend to make poor choices because of our limitations. Thankfully, God reveals His perspective to us, directing us through His word. Unfortunately, we tend to trust our own limited perspective and fail to trust Him. Spiritual growth will help us trust God's revealed perspective. We must work to trust Him more and more, but we will still falter.

If, on the other hand, we choose poorly in life simply because we have not thought things through, we are doomed to continue unabated until we wear ourselves out and give up or until we realize that we have been choosing poorly all along and need to make a change. This type of bad choices is far less excusable. We have the capacity to make a good choice; we simply fail to try. Either way we are left fighting to do what would have been so much easier if we had taken a different route. When kindergartens do it, teachers laugh and tell each other about it. But when adults do it, they hurt people, are unhappy, and resign themselves to doing as little as possible because life is too hard.

Too Busy to Think

Several years ago I was watching the old Martin Luther movie. In the movie Staupitz's character decides to keep Luther so busy that he will not have time to be concerned about his soul. My coworkers, who were watching the movie with me, suggested that this was our employer's philosophy too. In the movie Staupitz's tactics proved unsuccessful for Luther. Unfortunately, most of us do not live life as thoughtfully as Luther did. We allow our activities to completely occupy our time, leaving us so exhausted that at the end of the day we either want to thoughtlessly vegetate in front of a television or just go to sleep.

This blog is designed to fight against that tendency in my life. I do not intend to make an entry every day. Such a determination would not only openly display my inconsistency, but it would also result in my writing entries under obligation rather than out of a true desire to communicate thought. And yet I must take the time to think and write. If "my actions flow from my thoughts", I must not allow my actions to crowd out my thoughts. If I make such an error, both my thoughts and actions will be rather poor.

So while the frequency of forthcoming entries is questionable, I must be thinking continually. And I must take the time to think more clearly and to write about my thoughts, acting all the better for it.

Meeting Needs

In the wake of the recent Virgina Tech tragedy, I read an interesting article discussing what creative writing teachers should do when they receive disturbing papers from their students. It basically said that English teachers are not equipped for and should not be expected to perform psychiatric evaluations. The article gave several example of cases that were so severe that the papers were taken to higher authorities, and the student was denied the right to come to class. There was some question as to whether this is the right course of action or not. Shouldn't the officials be trying to help the student rather than excluding him?

I would contend that the teachers and psychiatrists alike lack what is necessary to deal with someone like this. The most qualified of people does not have the ability to change a person's heart. And the heart of one who could senselessly kill so many is desperately wicked. He could have been medicated. He could have been managed. He could have been institutionalized. And well he should have been: the tragedy might have been avoided. But it would not have changed his heart.

Only the Spirit of God can change a heart. English teachers and psychiatrists lack what it takes to meet the need of an evil heart. What about Christians? To our shame, I think that most of us tend to avoid people like this. We think of them as beyond our reach. Well, they are beyond our reach, and so is every other person that we encounter. But they are not beyond Christ's reach. And we need to be pointing them to Him. The Virginia Tech murder spoke of Jesus but clearly did not understand who Jesus really was. Whenever I hear or senseless acts of violence, either from disturbed individuals or brainwashed terrorist groups, my heart goes out to those evil people who would have been so different if they knew my Savior. I'm also thankful, briefly wondering what would have become of me had I not come to Christ.