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I’VE GOT TO NURSE THIS GRUDGE
BECAUSE IT’S SICK! III
WOUND-UP ANGER ON THE WEST WING
It’s just about the hottest thing on American television
these days, once you get past Regis Philbin’s matching shirts and ties,
and all of these desert island survivor shows. But NBC’s The West Wing,
set right in the White House of the United States, gives us an almost
achingly perfect picture of the pain caused by human jealousy and greed.
I don’t know the entire story, but many of you are aware that Martin Sheen
plays a progressive Democrat president named Josiah Bartlet. And the interesting
subplot story is about the vice president, Mr. John Hoynes, a bit role
held by Tim Matheson. And I mean, it is a bit part. NBC’s official web
site, where it describes the main players, doesn’t even have the vice
president listed. On some episodes he doesn’t even appear in all the action
with Josh and C.J. and the others.
Why do I bring it up today? Because here is a man consumed with jealousy
toward the president. He hates him. He loathes him. He should be the one
who sits at the big desk in the Oval Office. In fact, the season opener
back in October, 2000, revealed how, back in the primaries, it was John
Hoynes who, at one point, led in the polls by 40 or 45 points. Now he’s
under Bartlet, second in command to Bartlet, attending weddings and funerals
while this man he despises runs the country. You talk about stomach-twisting
pain!
Our series title for the week is this: I’VE GOT TO NURSE THIS GRUDGE BECAUSE
IT’S SICK! And really, the word “sick” is in there for a reason, because
unresolved anger and resentment actually can make you sick. An old medical
journal called “Holy Bible” says as much. Notice this diagnosis from the
book of Proverbs, chapter 14:
“A heart full of peace gives life to the body, but
envy and jealousy rot the bones.”
When you and I walk around boiling with resentment
or jealousy, when we harbor hatred and bitterness within our hearts, it
actually affects your heart. It can make you sick. I think we’ve all felt
the physical knots that can come when you allow a grudge to just sit there
in your gut.
I guess it’s no surprise that the fictional feuds on this NBC television
program find their basis in real life. Very often, vice presidents have
stood on the sidelines while adoring millions cheered for their boss.
They’ve cut ribbons for little factory openings, while the main man flies
to Europe and Asia aboard Air Force One.
In his two-part biography entitled Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr. describes the smoldering frustrations felt by Lyndon
Baines Johnson, who had to stand aside while a young millionaire from
Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, was sworn into power. Johnson, a huge,
magnetic figure in the U.S. Senate, a man used to being adored, a man
used to getting his own way, now had to count the paper clips and sit
quietly in meetings while JFK ran this show called Camelot. “Every time
I came into John Kennedy’s office,” he said later, “I felt like a . .
. raven hovering over his shoulder.” And he hated it. He absolutely hated
it. “I detested every minute of it,” he confessed many years later. And
“minute” turned out to be a predictive word, because his “face time” alone
with the President got smaller and smaller. White House secretary Evelyn
Lincoln, who kept the logs, calculated that LBJ and Kennedy had ten hours
and 19 minutes together in private conferences in 1961. In ‘63 it had
shrunk to just 1:53. Not even two hours together the entire year. And
of course, as historians know, after the assassination and in the ensuing
five years before the Los Angeles tragedy of 1968, Johnson and John Kennedy’s
brother, Bobby, developed a hatred for each other that was rabid, almost
paranoic.
We took a couple of sad anecdotes Monday and Tuesday from the wonderful
book, Dead Man Walking, by Sister Helen Prejean. In describing the “walking
wounded,” the victims of these terrible death-penalty crimes, the moms
and dads who lost children, the burdens of hatred and grudges were almost
overwhelming. Except for the grace of God, some parents simply did not
recover.
“I am startled to find out,” this Catholic nun writes,
“that the divorce rate of couples who have lost a child is 70 percent.
. . . I find out that four to seven months after the murder is a critical
time for survivors because by then the shock and numbness wears off and
the loss and rage set in.” Then she adds: “I discover new meaning for
the word ‘anniversary.’”
These unresolved feelings of anger and bitterness were
literally poisoning these people. They couldn’t sleep, eat, relax, play.
All they could do was plot and build up and pile on and endlessly fantasize
about getting even. And as it says so simply in the Bible, after a while
the bones actually begin to rot.
Over in the book of First Samuel, chapter 25, is a story you might remember.
A crabby, resentful man named Nabal — who, ironically, ought to be more
cheerful, considering he’s rather well-to-do — has the habit of just snapping
at everyone. Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, he goes around singing:
“I hate people.” And when the warrior, David, who has quietly protected
Nabal’s turf and his flocks and herds without payment for a long time,
sends a delegation at shearing time to ask him for some vittles and a
few jugs of grape juice, this sour-faced man snaps at them, tells them
to buzz off. If you know the story, Nabal’s wife, the beautiful Abigail,
intervenes and sends a huge caravan of provisions and treats to David
and his 600 men, preventing a bloodbath.
Here’s the kicker to the story, though. Nabal gets drunk at a party, and
when his wife tells him what she’s done, how she’s undone his feud with
her backdoor gift, he actually has a conniption fit. That’s right. “He
became like a stone,” says the NIV Bible. And speaking of stones, we read
that his heart fails him, he has a stroke, and ten days later this guy
is stone-cold dead. It reminds me of a quote coming from our “second Bible”
around here, the Reader’s Digest! Back in the November 1999 issue, the
“Quotable Quotes” gave us this one by Jim Scancarelli:
“A sharp tongue sometimes cuts its own throat.”
Our gift book for you today, entitled How Can I Forgive?,
contains a mountain of quiet wisdom in its 48 pages. And here’s an observation
by author Vera Sinton that goes directly to this point regarding the physical
hurts caused by our grudges.
“If the resentment is strong enough,” she writes, “the
inner stress may take its toll on the body. Every doctor knows patients
whose chronic conditions are made worse by unhealed resentment inside.
So initial anger may be healthy, but long-term, unhealed anger is very
dangerous indeed.”
We suggested on Monday that an initial jolt of anger
might be an appropriate thing, a necessary wake-up call when something
is wrong. When a selfish deed is happening, or when injustice is before
your eyes. The Bible tells us that kind of anger, the first flash of it,
is not a sin. But when you hold on to it, when you nurse a grudge and
let it go on for four or eight years while someone else runs the country
you thought it was your divine right to lead, resentment can actually
become a poison, both physically and spiritually.
Well, friend, the solution is perhaps hard to face, but it’s really the
only one that holds out any promise. Here it is: Give your anger to God.
If you hold onto it, you’re going to be destroyed, because, as we said
yesterday, grudges and resentment are a one-way escalator to ruin. You
simply cannot, in your own vengeful power, balance the scales. You cannot
get even.
Vera Sinton, in a later chapter entitled “The Role of Love,” writes about
the times our grudges are against someone that we’ve had a close relationship
with: maybe a child or a spouse. And we actually love this person! But
now that small hurt, that petty irritant, has grown up to the point where
it’s gotten to be bigger than the love itself.
“Forgiving is going to be hard and hurt us,” Sinton
writes. “But we also know that in the long run it will hurt us more to
lose their love.”
Yes, forgiving is hard. It’s an act of faith. It’s
a willingness to wait, while God, the righteous Judge, takes His own sweet
time about balancing all the rights and wrongs of the world. But in the
end, it would be a bigger hurt to lose that person you love. And even
if right now you’re hating someone that you actually hate, your grudge
is going to cause you more hurt too.
I imagine the brilliant television scriptwriter, Aaron Sorkin, who feeds
those jealous lines to this fictional VP, John Hoynes, wouldn’t want him
to read in the book of Proverbs:
“Don’t be envious of dishonest [or even honest] people
who have more than you; let the Lord be the center of your life.”
Yes, “Let the Lord be the center of your life.” For
the vice president in all of us, that’s the best bumper sticker in town.
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