Rector's Blog: Just Words

I was 12 and I didn’t like him. And I could tell you that I was trying to survive the disintegration of my parents’ marriage, the sale of my childhood home, an alcoholic family system, and my own adolescent hormones and feelings. And all those things would be true. But it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t kind. That I made some other kid’s life immeasurably worse instead of better.

I was a good kid too, by almost anyone’s standards. I didn’t break rules, smoke, drink, or do drugs. I was on Student Council and Honor Roll. I went to church every Sunday, and was deeply involved in Youth Group. I told jokes and had friends and got along with my teachers – most of whom I genuinely liked. I was honest. If you asked me if I was unkind, I wouldn’t have denied it. I would’ve said, well yeah to people who deserve it – but I’m not hurting anyone, just putting them in their place, knocking ‘em down a peg. Plus if it’s a joke and people are laughing, everyone should just lighten up, right? So I would say withering, mean things to some kid I didn’t like and I would say them directly to his face and people would laugh and I would think it was justified and that I wasn’t really hurting him because it was just words.

Just words!

I remember I was 27 years old when my priest and I were talking and he said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can really hurt me.” I had never heard that play on the old rhyme before, and it blew me away. I knew exactly what my priest meant, and I knew it was exactly true and that nobody said it. In a way that physical pain cannot, words can really hurt me.

One day the kid had had enough of me. We had just finished playing a flag football game and were all walking back to our parents’ cars. I had come up with a real zinger and I shot it right at him, and then turned and walked away from him. He howled in anger, and before I knew what was happening he had jumped on my back and I was on the ground. He was on top of me now and shoving my head into the dirt. It didn’t last long, and a couple people pulled him off me. I stood up and looked at him, and in that moment I remember thinking I wasn’t going to fight back, wasn’t going to try to hit him. I remember thinking that my Dad was at the game and other adults and that I wasn’t going to stoop to physical violence. I was going to restrain myself. I was going to be better than him. After all I had only used words.

That night my Dad took me out to dinner and a movie. While we were eating, he brought up the football game, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was what he said. He said, “Philip, I saw hatred in that boy’s eyes today. And I want to know what you did to make him hate you like that.”

30 years later and I still get goosebumps thinking about that moment. I was sitting there with a band-aid on my forehead where it had been slammed into the ground. I had not hit him. I had not fought. I was not violent. I was restrained. I was civilized. I am telling you, I thought my Dad would be proud of me. He was not. “What did you do to make him hate you like that?” That was the last thing I thought he would say, and it was exactly the question I needed to be asked. Because I had done a lot of things to make him hate me. I had been profoundly and intentionally and unapologetically unkind, all the while thinking I was a harmless person. I was genuinely ignorant to the possibility that I was actively making someone’s life worse. It seems impossible as I look back on it. How could I not realize?

Is there anything more telling than Jesus’ own words on the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”? They know they’re killing Jesus, but they don’t understand the implications of their violence. They don’t see it. They don’t get the deep violence they are doing to God when they harm Jesus. They don’t comprehend the power they have. And I get them, those people who killed Jesus. Because I have so often chosen ignorance of my own power to harm. I chose to think I was not actually harming this kid. I had a list of all the reasons he deserved the things I said. I had reasoned out my own unkindness and, at the same time, had minimized my capacity to harm this boy – to harm Jesus, who dwelt within him – and dwells within him still.

“Blessed are the meek,” Jesus says at the outset of his ministry, as he describes what it looks like to follow him. And we misunderstand that word meek at our own peril. We confuse it with weakness. But they are not the same. Meekness is the decision to be gentle, the intentional act of being kind. It is a choice. And if we are honest, it is often an unpopular and unattractive choice. It is considered naïve and uncool to be shocked by the unkindness of our leaders, popular figures and cultural heroes. Kindness and gentleness is for the weak – or at the very least it should be reserved for ideal times. Meekness is seen as ineffectual at best. Toughen up. Laugh it off. They’re just words. Can’t anyone make a joke anymore? Sticks and stones. We speak violence into the world and then are shocked by the violence that explodes right in front of us.

“What did you do to make him hate you like that?” What was my part in the violence? What had I done? And would I have the courage to make amends?

Sometime since becoming an adult I have decided to try to be Christian again. And in doing so, I have tried to pray more. One prayer showed up about 20 years ago and I didn’t know why. “Lord, help me to be more gentle.” It did not come in the aftermath of anything significant, and yet there it was. Something inside me knew the truth. The truth is I am not gentle. I am not kind – not without trying, and not without God’s help. The fact that my weapon is words doesn’t make me less violent. I am still praying that prayer. I want to be meek.