|
"I CAN'T
STOP HATING YOU!" #2
HOME RUN HATRED
There are some sports fans out there who have been
mulling over a certain gross injustice for a long time. Here it is: Why
in the world did organized baseball ever let someone come along and steal
the sacred home run record of Babe Ruth? That golden number, 714, was
supposed to stand for all time! It was an unrepeatable achievement! The
Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, the linchpin of Murderer's Row . . . and
that hallowed number, 714, were never to have been erased from the record
books. Heaven would never allow it.
The fact that someone else might dare to come along and wipe out the big
714 — to this day, some purists are still mad. And so they compile statistics
and comparative records to show that, when you consider the ratio of number
of at-bats and that today's seasons are a longer 162 games and how today's
players glide across the country in first-class airplane seats in chartered
747s, while poor Babe Ruth rode in the back of a bus from town to town,
their anger and resentment grows. Plus, we have to admit it, there's sometimes
just a bit of racial resentment over the fact that a Black baseball player
named Henry Aaron, 25 years ago, came up to bat there in Fulton County
Stadium, Atlanta, Georgia, and hit his 715th major league home run. That's
right. Resentment has brewed in some baseball hearts ever since April
8, 1974, in that game between the Braves and the Dodgers. I'm sure many
of you remember. "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron owns the major league
record now, at 755, and some haven't forgiven him yet.
What do we do when we can't stop being mad about something? We've chosen
as our theme for this week a twist on an old country-western song, and
our revised version goes this way: "I can't stop HATING you!"
And many of us, even Christians, shake our heads in futility over the
challenge of giving up anger and resentment and hatred.
Yesterday we read twin challenges from the Word of God. First, the Bible
tells us, get rid of anger by sundown. Don't let a grudge span its way
across 23 hours, let alone 23 angry baseball seasons. Secondly, we're
advised to put our minds to other topics, other interests. Don't nurse
a grudge and feed the hungry lions of resentment. And that's where the
hard debate begins. How in the world do we change a mind when it's our
mind?
If we can borrow another line from the old country hit, there's a bit
that goes like this: "I can't stop . . . HATING you. It's useless
to say. So I'll just live my life in dreams of yesterday." Do you
remember that part? And sometimes when we're angry, we make a conscious
decision to keep focusing on that bad dream of yesterday, that negative
memory. We choose to resent and to be continuously mad.
Now why? Sometimes — and it seems strange to face this reality — resentment
is an enjoyable thing! It's a feeling of self-righteousness, of self-pity,
of self-excuse — and self is one of our favorite words. We all like a
bit of pampering, even if we have to do it ourselves. Eric Hoffer, a U.S.
philosopher from a few years ago, observed, tongue in cheek, in his book
The Passionate State of Mind:
"To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life!"
Somebody once noted that to keep a good feud going
takes a lot of work! And sometimes we find that work almost enjoyable.
And yet, as we face up to what God wants for us to be, as we consider
the poisonous effects of long-term resentment . . . deep down, we know
we need to be set free, don't we? Especially as we try to measure how
the Church is hurt, how God's missions in this world are hampered by our
hatreds.
All this week we're going to borrow rather freely and cheerfully from
a unique book entitled Letters to an American Lady, by one of our favorite
authors, C. S. Lewis. It's a fascinating collection of letters Lewis wrote
just to one woman, an American he never met. For nearly 13 years, this
busy, often fatigued and overworked scholar forced himself to respond,
in longhand, whenever she would write to him. She dictated the frequency
of letters, although he once gently protested:
"You have, you know, recently stepped up
the pace of the correspondence! I can't play at that tempo.
But you know, the interesting thing is this: the woman,
as we pick up the clues, obviously must have struggled a great deal from
resentment and hatred. We don't read her side of the correspondence; we
have only C. S. Lewis' more than 100 letters in reply.
And all this week, I'd like to invite you to look over his shoulder with
me as we read through a few of these bits of advice. What should a person
do when struggling with resentment that simply won't leave the brain?
It won't go away! The anger doesn't die down . . . and how does the born-again
Christian respond to that dilemma?
Here's what he says in encouraging his unseen friend:
"I'm sorry about your two jealous colleagues.
I suppose the only way with thorns in the flesh (until one can get them
out) is not to press on the place where they are embedded; i.e. to stop
one's thoughts (firmly but gently: no good snapping at oneself, it only
increases the fuss . . .) whenever one finds them moving toward the unpleasant
people."
There's an interesting metaphor there — an embedded
thorn which, at least for the moment, simply isn't going to come out.
For today it can't be removed. And so, Lewis advises, don't press on that
place! Don't lean on the sore spot!
Of course, that's easier said than done, as he would certainly acknowledge.
But I think there's some sage Christian truth in what comes next. We need
to "stop our thoughts, gently but firmly," when we find them
"moving toward the unpleasant people." You know, friend, I've
found in my own life — not as much as I'd like, to be sure — that if we
seek God's help, it certainly is possible to gently but firmly stop our
thoughts from going toward that favorite grudge.
Some of us catch ourselves standing in the shower in the morning and thinking
about that certain person we're upset with. Or maybe as you go for your
evening walk or lumber around the three-mile track in the early morning
hours. These are times when we're tempted to rehearse that same cherished
but worn-out speech. It's a speech we never really give, but we just keep
practicing it!
And yet, it's true that if we'll breathe a prayer, asking for God's help,
and then deliberately turn our minds to another topic, the mind can be
directed! "Gently but firmly," we can move to higher ground.
Of course, the same decision may need to be made again ten or fifteen
minutes later! C. S. Lewis himself observes in another book that when
Jesus talked to His disciples about forgiving someone 490 times, He might
well have meant forgiving one person 490 times for the same one thing,
the sin committed just one time. But we have to mentally keep forgiving
over and over, resolutely moving the mind away from that cherished cesspool
of rage again and yet again.
Here's another paragraph written to the same American lady; in fact, this
bit of encouragement actually comes ahead of the other one in the chronology.
He writes about plain old human nastiness, and then adds that it probably
comes from . . .
". . . Inner insecurity — a dim sense that
one is Nobody, a strong determination to be Somebody, and a belief that
this can be achieved by arrogance." Then he adds this: "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." Now, friend, notice this powerful spiritual
diagnosis, which is his very next sentence: "A brief prayer for them,
and then away to other topics, is the thing." And then even Lewis
admits our human frailty, when he adds: "If one can only stick to
it."
I'll tell you, this is a monumental hurdle. Can we
pray for that person, first of all? What an impossible thing, but can
God help us to do it, to really pray for that person? Jesus did exactly
this, of course, as we remember from that agonizing Friday at Calvary.
Can we do it too, pray for that person? And then, as Lewis advises us,
"away to other topics"?
In her book, Beyond Ourselves, Catherine Marshall recommends this prayer:
"Lord, You have plainly told me that all
vengeance is thine, not my business at all. You have said that I must
forgive. I am willing to, but I've tried over and over, and the resentments
keep surging back. Now I will this bitterness over to You. Here — I hold
it out to You in my open hand. I promise only that I will not again close
my fist and reclaim the resentment. Now I ask You to take it and handle
these emotions that I cannot handle."
And maybe one biblical truth can help us as we close.
You know, the Bible tells us in the book of Romans, chapter three:
"Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of
God's glorious ideal." "[We all] come short of the glory of
God," it says in the King James.
Friend, that person you resent so bitterly . . . is
without a doubt a sinner. The Bible says so. But you know, you're one
too, and so am I. The human race is one motley collection of pretty hopeless
people. Maybe there are different shades of wickedness and selfishness,
but I doubt if those shades matter much to God. You and your enemy both
stand in the same corner of need, don't you?
So then, if it's difficult to pray for that stupid person, that unkind,
insensitive man or woman, it might be well, first of all, just to stand
in the shadow of the Cross for a few minutes. Try to sense how both you
and he need the grace of Jesus, the covering robe of Christ's righteousness,
the saving power of the blood applied for the both of you.
And then maybe we can pray for that person. In another of his letters
to an American woman, C. S. Lewis made this helpful confession:
"I'd sooner pray for God's mercy than for
His justice . . . on my friends . . . my enemies . . . and myself."
|
