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"I CAN'T STOP HATING YOU!" #3

ALWAYS MAD AT MR. OBLIVIOUS

It's one of the most chilling profiles ever penned — a tragic story about a kid named Lee. As bestselling author William Manchester tells it, this young man had zero going for him. He was kind of short, with already thinning hair. He had a squeaky, pre-pubescent voice. He couldn't hold down a job making more than about a buck an hour back in the 1960s.

He had a wife who was actually kind of attractive, but she made fun of him, jabbing verbally at him in front of their friends. In fact, she went so far as to complain publicly to others about his sexual failures; he was "not a man in bed," she would sneer, with him standing two feet away.

And as Manchester tells the story, all of these putdowns, these inadequacies, built up, one on top of another. Lee didn't talk about it, but basically just suffered in silence. After his wife dumped him and moved in with a friend, he would sit alone in front of an old black-and-white TV set and watch thrillers and murder mysteries. His eyes looked kind of glassed over, but deep inside the volcano of resentment was quietly boiling. "He was slowly going mad," Manchester wrote later.

And finally, on a Friday morning, when he rode to work with a friend of his, as things turned out, that package of curtain rods in the back seat wasn't really curtain rods after all. And Lee, pouring all of his resentment into one act of violent payback, pulled the trigger of his mail-order Mannlicher-Carcano, and sent bullets crashing into President John F. Kennedy.

Friend, that's how deadly resentment can be if we let it build up. That's the end result of rage that isn't resolved. And yes, it's what can happen if we memorize and keep this week's revised theme song: "I Can't Stop HATING You!"

In this book, The Death of a President, William Manchester points out how in a very impersonal, long-distance way, Lee Harvey Oswald resented everything Kennedy had that he didn't have. Kennedy was rich and tanned and powerful and wealthy, and Lee had none of those privileges. And day by day, as his life aimlessly and bitterly tumbled toward November 22, 1963, he simply couldn't get past his resentments. He couldn't turn his mind in any other direction.

Let's think for a bit today about the other person in our rage relationship, the person we hate. If we can borrow some more music, this time from Linda Ronstadt, we recall those complaining lyrics: "I been cheated, been mistreated. When will I be loved?" That's our cry, isn't it? And maybe it's no accident that it's also a Ronstadt hit which goes this way: "You're no good, you're no good, you're no good . . . baby, you're no good." Because most of the time, our resentments in life are aimed at that other person. We can't be happy unless they're no good AND unless the entire rest of the world agrees with us that they're no good. We'd like to stand up in church and point at them and cry out: "Can I get a witness? They're no good!"

There's one tragic bit of truth in life that we often don't realize, but the Lee Harvey Oswald story painfully points it out. A good deal of the time, we are resenting a person, or their behavior, and frankly, the person we're obsessing about has absolutely no idea that we're angry. They're a thousand miles away and completely clueless.

Think about it. Did President Kennedy in the White House know that a sulking former Marine, estranged from his smart-mouthed Russian wife, was huddled in loneliness there in a small Fort Worth house? Did he know anything about the poisonous thoughts Lee was thinking as JFK and his younger brother Bobby weathered the Cuban missile crisis and then planned the trip to Dallas? Of course not. And yet Lee Harvey Oswald spent literally hours each day resenting, fondling his hatreds, plotting ways to get even with the world, hatching schemes to make those rich, tuxedoed Kennedys pay a price for their undeserved good fortunes.

In one of his recent review columns, critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times shares a marvelous tip. Writing about a recent film where a number of women compulsively sat around bashing their ex-husbands, he said this:

"Someone should tell them that resentment is just a way of letting someone else use your mind rent-free."

And friend, I think that's true both in our personal relationships and also in the spiritual realm. Why should that enemy be permitted to use your mind that way, to torture you with thoughts of hate . . . and not pay any rent? He doesn't even know you're spending all that energy on him! What a deadly trap it is!

And even more sobering a realization is how the enemy of this world, Satan, does the same thing. Resentment is his choicest tool! Imagine the price tag he puts on it. And if we could put a price tag on the hours and days — maybe even adding up to years — where we've mulled over how angry we are with someone, we can't imagine the celebrating he does. And of course, those hours come right out of the time we could be reading God's Word, praying, sharing Christ with others, forgetting ourselves as we serve others.

There's a tragic story in the Old Testament book of First Kings, chapter 12, where a new king, Rehoboam, had just inherited the throne from his father, Solomon. And all the people, resentful over years of heavy oppression and taxation, sent a delegation to the king asking for some relief. They'd harbored anger for years and now they were finally communicating. Things had boiled over.

And as you read through chapter 12, it's clear that this king is completely out of touch. He's clueless! He can't even relate to their resentment. He asks two groups of advisors, "How shall I respond? Shall I ease up?" One group said yes, but the other bunch, a collection of real tough Generation Xers said, "No, man, pile it on. Let them know who's boss. Tell them we're tripling the size of the IRS; we're moving from whips to scorpions." And this aloof king, Rehoboam, so out of touch with the resentment of the people, goes with the advice from the under-30 set. And as a result, the kingdom splits in two and is never reunited again.

Well, friend, what do we do, then, with our rage? W. R. Alger once wrote — and we don't want this:

"Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason."

And of course, we remember the twin bits of advice coming to us from across the years. First, the ancient Chinese proverb:

"Never answer a letter when you are angry."

And then Mark Twain's rather unscriptural advice from Pudd'nhead Wilson:

"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear."

Certainly we don't advise you to do that in communicating about your resentment. But what do we do?

We probably would do better to take counsel from our Bibles instead of Samuel Clemens this time; what do you say? I'm sure you've heard these two classic gems from the book of Proverbs:

"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."

I think we should extrapolate here and suggest that the person who's slow and cautious in expressing his anger is equally wise. Sometimes resentments do need to be verbalized, especially if we want to lay aside our burden of anger before sundown as the Bible teaches. But friend, let's be slow to anger and slow to express anger. Let's pray over each word before we say it; let's get down on our knees before we compose that e-mail attack memo and get down on our knees a second time before we hit the SEND button.

And then, just one chapter earlier, Proverbs 15:1, we read these great words:

"A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

How many people have brought a feud to an end with that gentle, soft answer? It's been suggested that these five words — "I was wrong. I'm sorry" — are among the most powerful on this planet. In his classic bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie advises people to say this to an adversary:
"I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let's examine the facts."

You know, as we get ready to close, I think we should cross over to the other side of the field and think for a moment about what's happening there. Friend, resentment is bad . . . but being a person who needlessly causes resentment — well, that's even worse. Why should the people of God live in such a way as to consistently create such bitterness and simmering rage? Why should we who are bosses and leaders and spouses conduct our affairs with such insensitivity that those beneath us are resentful and angry?

It's ironic to note that these two marvelous Bible gems about being slow to anger and using the soft reply were written by King Solomon! Here's the king whose insensitivity and heavy taxation helped lead to the kingdom split of his son Rehoboam! His words were good, but what a greater blessing he could have been if he had lived as a true and humble God-fearing monarch.

And for you and me today, here in 1999, how about some soft words from us? On both ends of this equation we call resentment? Can we live, on the one side, forgiving lives? And on the other side, attractive lives that don't need too much forgiveness? It'd be nice to get our favorite country-western song back the way we like it: "I Can't Stop LOVING You."