Helping the Hurt (Focus On Grace, November 2013)

When I was a teenager, I had a classmate who had some kind of a problem with me. At the time, I didn’t have any idea why, but he always had a bad attitude towards me, and often attempted to bully me. It didn’t work. He seemed to think I was too wimpy to defend myself: I was the geeky, smart kid in school, so he felt like he should be able to push me around. Twice in the years that we knew each other, it went as far as a physical altercation, and both times I humiliated him in front of the rest of our classmates. I never pressed the issue, I just shut his aggression down in a way that made it obvious he couldn’t beat me, and both times were very public. After the second incident, he left me alone. But he never liked me, and the feeling was mutual. We were distantly polite, and that was as much as could be asked for; I never saw or heard of him after high school, until very recently.

In the summer of 2013, I came across his obituary. I was a bit stunned and curious what happened, so I looked him up on Facebook. And I saw post after post of people saying what a great guy he was, a great friend, an asset to the community, and a valued coworker. One post particularly touched me, from a teenaged niece of his, emotionally saying how much she was going to miss her favorite uncle.

The first thing I thought was, “this isn’t the guy that I knew,” and the second thing that followed right after was, “what a shame that we never got past the stupid kid stuff to know each other as adults.” Now, I realize people will often put the recently departed on a pedestal, but I couldn’t help but think I missed something. I never got to know the man he became, I never shared Christ with him. The kid I knew wouldn’t have listened, he would have mocked me for it. But what of the man?

It’s probably true that anyone who isn’t a complete hermit has someone, or any number of someones, who doesn’t like them. The challenge is knowing why, and whether you can actually do something about it. This classmate of mine, I never wronged before he started up against me. Looking back, I recognize all the symptoms of a young person feeling insecure, and thinking the only way to boost himself in his own eyes was to put someone else down. In my case, he wrongly thought he picked an easy target for that put-down. But his hurtfulness grew out of his own hurt. And I think that’s true of a great majority of people who treat others badly; it’s a injury they carry around inside themselves, and don’t know any better way to deal with it than to lash out at others.

Which begs the question, what can you do about this kind of difficult person in your life? The very first thing to enter my mind is what Christ said in Matthew 5:39 – “But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” This is often cited as a pacifist thing, that Christ is saying you should never meet violence with violence, but I think that’s too simplistic. And the reason I say that is the verses that follow after, where Christ speaks of loving your enemies, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who spitefully use you (Matt. 5:44). Is Jesus saying that those who behave badly should go unchallenged, and allowed to continue unchecked that way? No, He speaks of loving them. Love seeks to do what is best for the one who is loved (I Cor. 13:5b). And that can only mean when you are wronged, not to respond in kind, but to look beyond the wrong and try to see the need … and seeing the need, if it is in your power to meet it, to do so.

It is not always possible. Sometimes, like me as a teenager, you can’t even identify what the problem is, much less meet it. Sometimes, this person is so wrapped up in themselves that nothing short of an act of God will get through to them. And sometimes, it’s simply not in your power to ease the hurt … but in all these cases, it is certainly within Christ’s. Hence the injunction to pray for them. Hence the injunction to love them … as Christ loved you. And loving others always means being able to look beyond your own hurt, do whatever you can for them, and let God do the rest.

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