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WHAT TO DO ABOUT LOVING HATRED
#5
TRUTH FROM THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
I guess if we were to consider today the very extremes
in media — from the highs to the lows — you couldn't pick anything more
lofty than the deeply spiritual musical, Les Miserables, based on the
book by Victor Hugo. This is a story rich in religious metaphors and forgiveness
and redemption. On the much lower end of the scale, we could pick out
something as trivial as the old reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies. And
you know, it's those two very distinct examples which give us the concluding
lesson to our radio series: WHAT TO DO ABOUT LOVING HATRED.
Maybe you remember, how in "Les Miz," the character Javert stalks
and chases down the hero of the story, Jean Valjean, for something like
20 years. Valjean is a criminal! He stole a loaf of bread! And just because
he's now an upstanding citizen, mayor of the town, helper to so many who
are down-and-out, he still belongs in a French prison, as far as Javert
is concerned. He's still inmate #24601. And through the entire saga, which
runs well over three hours if you've seen the musical, he can't let this
grudge match go. He MUST get his man. He must repay his adversary.
And this has been our very theme in studying what God's Word teaches us
about forgiveness and laying aside old feuds. How can we get over the
fact that we actually LOVE the chase, the eternal hunt to get even, to
put our enemy behind bars? In the Bible, it was Saul and David. They hated
each other! Even though David was a great warrior ON SAUL'S BEHALF, killing
Saul's enemies, the king couldn't stand this man. Twice he went into a
rage and tried to pin David to the wall with his javelin. He spent years
tracking his adversary over hill and dale.
And you know, it got to the point where Saul could see nothing good in
David. Nothing! Just as Javert, the zealous gendarme, could not acknowledge
anything about his enemy, Jean Valjean, except that he was #24601. He
should be locked up. Period. No extenuating circumstances could or should
be considered. And at the end of the story, when Valjean actually even
saves his adversary Javert from death, the police officer just can't stand
THAT. To be indebted to Valjean? Psychologically ruined by such an upside-down
state of affairs, he ends his own life.
In the fascinating religious book we mentioned earlier, The Ten Challenges,
Dr. Leonard Felder writes about this tendency we all have to see our enemy
as COMPLETELY wrong.
"In psychology," he writes, "this
process of believing you are 100 percent right and the other person must
be bad or evil is referred to as overidentification."
He then adds a bit more — and remember, this comes
right from his very successful practice of counseling people with these
exact temptations.
"It takes a conscious and deliberate effort,"
he writes, "to snap out of the trap of self-righteousness and see
deeper into the humanity of the OTHER person. It requires an almost unnatural
willingness to be open to an opposing viewpoint when our more ‘natural'
instinct is to stick with the self-righteous idea that we are 100 percent
right and the other person is either stupid, out to get us, or just ‘being
difficult.'"
And so often as we bounce over the potholes in our
own road of life, we have this same attitude as Inspector Javert: our
enemy is wrong, wrong, wrong . . . ALWAYS wrong.
Well, friend, it's a long leap from the grandiose orchestral themes of
Les Miserables to the twangy banjo music leading into those old Beverly
Hillbillies reruns, but do you recall the scene? Old Uncle Jed, Mr. Clampett,
discovers oil on his property. It comes out like a bubblin' cruise. Black
gold. Texas tea. And the first thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire.
And what's the next line of advice? It even rhymes with millionaire! All
the hill folks say, "Jed, move away from there!" Move away from
the hills and the poverty and the possum stews that Granny used to make.
Move away from the pain of poverty, and get yourself to Beverly. Hills,
that is.
And friend, this line is one we need today. "Move away from there!"
When there's a festering wound of resentment in your life, a person whose
misdeeds consume your mind, your every waking hour, this is what God's
Word teaches us to do: "Move away from there!" You remember
a few weeks ago the wonderful list of eight things Paul gives us in Philippians
4:8: "Things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, etc."
And how does he close? "Think on THESE things."
I've mentioned before a long correspondence between an American woman
and the English writer, C. S. Lewis. For many years, he graciously wrote
to this often bitter, petty woman who had many quarrels with unnamed enemies.
Her letters, thankfully, aren't included in the book which finally grew
out of the collection, but there must have been some real doozies. And
he finally writes to her, and compares her endless resentment, this growing,
festering rage inside of her, to a thorn embedded in a person's flesh.
Now, of course, you'd like to get that thorn out of there . . . but what
if, right now, that just isn't possible? He basically encourages her with
this:
"[Don't] press on the place where [it is]
embedded."
In other words, don't keep pushing on that spot. Don't
stay fixated on the hurt, the infection. "Move away from there!"
In fact, in an earlier letter, he makes that explicit suggestion. In a
letter dated from October, 1954, he writes about some person who had apparently
wronged his writing companion.
"But I mustn't encourage you to go on thinking
about her: that, after all, is almost the greatest evil nasty people can
do us — to become an obsession, to haunt our minds. A brief prayer for
them, and then AWAY to other subjects, is the thing, if one can only stick
to it."
So there we have it. That person who occupies your
mind OWNS you! They're occupying your mind rent-free, is the way I heard
it put once. And so Lewis advises us, and the Bible advises us: "Move
away from there!" Say a prayer for that person, and then direct your
mind to move on! Get to another topic! As people say it these days, "Get
a life!"
In the book Pain and Pretending, we found an interesting twist on the
New Testament teaching where Jesus told His followers how, if an enemy
like those hated Roman soldiers, commanded you to carry their pack for
one mile, you should carry it for two. And for any person struggling with
a Javert complex, a burning resentment, it sounds like the stupidest proposal
in the world. Why in the world would you do that?
Ah, but notice. The author, Rich Buhler, points out that according to
Roman law, that soldier had a right to order any Jew to carry his load
for a mile. And for that mile — man, he OWNED you. You were at his beck
and call; he had the proverbial ring in your nose.
But now what happens if you VOLUNTARILY keep right on going and carry
his pack and his water bottle for a SECOND mile? He can't MAKE you do
THAT! Here's Buhler's summary:
"What Jesus was essentially saying was,
‘For the first mile, the soldier has you under his control; you are trapped.
For the second mile, you are under your own control and are walking in
complete freedom from the law. In other words, for the first mile he has
you. But for the second mile, you have him. It is an act of POWER, responsibility,
and choice, and the result is freedom."
Well, friend, I don't know how far we want to explore
the metaphor of POWER through forgiveness. Although even the Bible teaches,
in that famous chapter, Proverbs 24, that when you're good to your enemies,
you're actually "(quote) heaping coals of fire on their heads."
But it is true that whenever we seek God for the purpose of moving our
minds AWAY from our hurts and away from our resentment, freedom IS the
promised result.
Back to old Jed Clampett and that oil oozing up from the ground. In a
sense, oil is a messy, gooey substance that sticks to your clothes and
makes the farmland all soggy. It's like that bad spot in your relationship,
where the advice, "Move away from there," is offered. But let's
look at it another way. What did that oil represent for the Clampett family?
Millions of dollars, of course. That's WHY Jed and Granny and Elly Mae
and Jethro could afford to move away from there. They soon had millions
of dollars in Mr. Drysdale's bank; they could afford to move away and
live in a mansion.
Here's the point, and you can see it coming. Friend, you and I are millionaires,
are we not? Because of the cross, and because of the river of grace that
comes bubbling out of that place we call Calvary, can't we afford to "move
away from there," away from our resentments and our bits of anger?
Maybe you DO have a fifty-cent argument that's gone on for 20 years. You've
been chasing your own Jean Valjean for a long, long time, determined to
get even. But come on! It's a 50-cent argument . . . and you're a millionaire.
You don't have a banker named Drysdale; instead you have a Father who
owns all the cattle on a thousand hills! You have a Savior named Jesus
who made you a millionaire the minute He cried out: "It is finished!"
And right now, that millionaire status is offered to set you free, to
make you well. Louis Smedes writes:
"The first and often the only person to
be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiving. . . . When
we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the
prisoner we set free . . . was us."
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