Thursday 11 July 2013

Being Mean To Each Other: The Heart Finds Ways

Recently, tired of persistent passive-aggressive comments on Facebook, I swore at a Christian.  I did it and then wrote a whole thing contrasting that (aggressive) with what "we" always seem to do (passive aggressive).  Thing is, I know "what's done" and "what's simply not done" in Christian circles.  So it's not ignorance.  Nor is it "breaking rules" I recognize as valid.  As usual, this is me objecting to our culture and saying it's gone way off the rails and also missed the boat entirely as to loving one another.
  Civility.  Compassion.  Kindness.  These are virtues that are rather lacking in the modern world.  I value them, when done correctly.  I mean, I had a class of fifteen year old History students one year who were so thuggy, so nasty to each other, that I made civility a central part of what I felt I needed to do in order to work with the kids at all.
  It worked pretty well.  All I did was explain that everyone was going to be able to come to my class and learn stuff without fear of being insulted and disrespected, nor would they be allowed to indulge in insults and disrespect.  In fact, if anyone insulted or "dissed" anyone, they had to apologize immediately.  Apologizing was so humiliating that no one dared insult anyone.  These weren't Christian kids.  So if they were being insulting, it was really easy to catch them. Because they didn't reflexively deny dissing each other, and were not used to getting away with that kind of denial and evasiveness.  They knew when they were dissing someone and admitted to it.  So no one dared do it if it meant apologizing (something I also never saw in Christian circles).
  Well, one kid dared to do it.  He said the whole class was gay.  I told him to apologize to his classmates for calling them a name, and he said "I'm not apologizing to THEM!  They're faggots!"  I chose to phone the father about this, and the fact that the father laughed proudly when he heard this news didn't help much.
  But my home was very different.  No swearing or vulgar talk.  We couldn't even say "Shut up!" or "Who farted?"  So was our home more civil than "Mr. Faggot"'s?  Was there a wonderful lack of disrespectful comments?  We were more decent to one another? That's where things get complicated.
  I have come to the conclusion that when scripture says "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," (who can know it?) that we think of a Christian/nonChristian divide, and how the world is always full of wickedness.  Or something like that.  I think we don't really apply it to how Christians act with each other.  What I don't remember hearing on the subject is how, when we, our church, imposed this whole lifestyle of civility, with no swearing or even emphatic talk of any kind, really (being emphatic seemed low-class to us, and made us laugh at the colourful talk we ourselves didn't indulge in), we were still mean to each other.  We were still disrespecting one another left and right.  The heart found ways.
  By "ways," I mean that, if you try to censor and legislate away every single word or expression a child may use to diss his or her siblings and peers, the human heart will always find a way to do it anyway.  The human heart's like that.
  We were taught that only Christ could save us from our heart and its wicked ways, yet we nevertheless set up a human-created lifestyle (a style of living) with guidelines we avoided calling rules (the kinds of rules you were told of course you didn't need to keep, but could, of course, not break either).  We set this up, and it didn't work.  It really didn't work.  The heart finds ways.
  My family and my church were completely free of swearing and vulgarity, yet my memories include a great deal of cold, superior nastiness in day-to-day interactions with each other.  I hear this kind of thing went on in the courts of some of the most elevated kings of history.  Subtle snubs.  The heart finding ways to express its worst self, despite its own best intentions.
  When people met the adult me, raised to never swear or speak with emphatic or vulgar language, they still commented on how "negative" I was.  Because I was/am.  I was raised that way.  I was steeped in it.  I grew up in a competitive piety contest, with continual fighting over who among us was worst. 
  In fact, where my school friends would say "Fuck off, queerbait!" to each other, I didn't have recourse to any of that kind of talk, so I'd be bitchy, subtle...and psychologically accurate.  The others would just toss one of those all-purpose expressions of anger and disrespect.  I'd actually quietly, blankly impugn their own distinctive character.  By telling the nasty truth.  This did not hurt them less.  It came off as ridiculously worse.
  On this topic, Mark said:

i once looked up all the words in Hebrew for 'dung'.  out of the 12 used, there's only one that is specifically meant to be crude, it relates to our word "shit".

 Malachi 2:3 "Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread shit upon your faces, the shit of your solemn feasts; and you will be taken away with it [the shit]."


comforting.
The bible doesn't shrink from vulgar, rude talk the way we do.  Over and over again it "goes there."  Another example of the apostle Paul saying (this is often translated so as to purposely obscure the meaning) the he really wished that all the Jews who were trying to force new gentile Christians to be circumcised would just go cut their own dicks off and be done with it.
   So on Facebook I contrasted the blank, unfocused swearing of "worldlings" around me, with the much more hard-hitting behaviour of someone like Jesus, calling people names and impugning their character flaws (whitewashed tombs, shining outside, but inside filled with rottenness and death, in their actual personalities).  Much worse.  Accurate and focused.  And then I tried to write about "what we do instead."  I was on a bit of a tear. I hate how when Christians play dirty online, it's often couched in false humility, bragging, false concern, false piety, and false decorum.  It is false, false, false from top to bottom.  So, to me, at one end you have Christians, who seem to be trying to slowly smother you to death with a cushion when they're unhappy with you, in the middle you have regular folk, who swear, which by contrast feels like being hit over the head with the couch cushion a few times, and at the other end, farthest from the "Christian" end is the man whom "Christian" is named after, and instead of a couch cushion, he seems to have a scalpel.
  When I was visiting Mark last weekend, he gave me his "collection" of copies of all the correspondence written during one of our church's "divisions."  He was done with it, and hadn't sent it to me when I was writing about that event in my book.  But he was having a last look at it, and at one point "translated" what was written in a letter.  He "corrected it" to what it seems was really going on inside the people, discernible in their spirit and actions.  So, where the letter, (victoriously kicking out the people on the "losing" side of a little church war) read:

"It is with great sorrow and heaviness that we write this letter,"

Mark translated it

"It is with great glee and a thinly-veiled feeling of triumph that we write this letter."

Now, some would argue that these men actually were sad about kicking out everyone.  In tears over it, even.  I would argue that, as time has gone by, not only have they resorted time and again to the same tactics, but they have carried on with their lives, refusing to discuss, let alone express any sorrow or real regret for their actions, and flatly refusing to attempt reconciliation of any kind, because getting rid of the people was the intent all along.  Were they filled with sorrow over using their only strategy?  Why was/is it their only strategy?  Is it "sorrow" if you do it anyway for generations and refuse to discuss having done it, or not doing it in future?

  Anyway, I was trying to give an example of just how rude people can be online without quite looking like they're being rude.  With expressions of sorrow and regret that are as plastic as the keyboards they're typed on.  An example of how if I am aggressive, they are passive-aggressive, thinking that it is a "better testimony" to be passive-aggressive than to be insulting.
  I have had pastors actually tell me that it IS better for Christians to be passive-aggressive than aggressive.  Because it's a better example to unbelievers.
  I think it simply cements our testimony of being self-deluding fakers.

  So, this is what I typed, as pretend Christian passive-aggressive online behaviour:
George, I'm so sorry you feel this way. I think it's so sad that certain people, even ones who call themselves Christians, have to resort to this kind of thing on the Internet. I know I used to indulge in this kind of behaviour myself, and it's SO hard to change! It takes a close walk with the Lord, I've found, which is what's worked for me!
   I think if we all read our bibles more, (
Hez 2:3) we'd see less of this kind of sad behaviour.  Far be it for me to give what is merely my own opinion (and I could be wrong, just ask my husband!) :) Hez 2:3 but I think we really need to just really just not do any of the stuff that I don't like that we're doing (And by "we" I mean "you"), and just really really just really do things the way I think we should do them, of course. see: Hez 2:3 to admire how right it makes me look at this point. WHAT a saviour!
   Now, I realize that maybe in the kinds of assemblies you're used to (there is a solemn warning against them in Hez 2:3 which we do well to heed), people may feel it appropriate to go around judging and correcting absolutely everyone and everything without having first built a relationship founded on mutual Christian love and respect like I always do, but I've just really, really found that when I just do things the way I think I should do them, and surround myself with people who don't do things I just really don't like, that I'm SO much more happy! Hez 2:3 (also much better able to serve the Lord!) there's a really good thought in Hez 2:3 about that which clearly makes me look awesome and Christian and righteous and you look like a mouth-breathing worldling idiot.
   So, I really hope you sort things out with the Lord, who is able to forgive us beyond what we ask or think. (see: Hez 2:3 to understand how important it truly is to think exactly as I do) This bitterness and small-heartedness of yours, and sad need to argue could well require a course of medication, as well. I have the name of a LOVELY Christian doctor who could set you up and help you on the road to your future improved state of Christian walk.
In the meantime, give serious consideration to how wrong you are and how right I am, given those solemn words in Hez 2:3.
 
  The usual thing happened.  An unknown number of people thought it was funny, an equally unknown number of people were needled by it and disapproved.  An unknown number of people didn't care either way.  Then a guy started a new discussion about how disgusting it was, the way "we" (not him) act (I don't think it was the sample of passive-aggressiveness he was obliquely objecting to, but the swearing at him).  He did it without naming names, leaving several innocent parties wondering if he meant them.  He meant me, but hadn't exactly PMed me to discuss it or anything.  I don't think he wanted a discussion.  He wanted a public indictment, without benefit of trial or jury.  He just wanted to say "shame on you!" as far as I can tell. It's not like we discussed it. I did try.
  This made me think of Paul and Peter.  They didn't have cars or phones, but even so, when Paul had a problem with Peter, he went to him and withstood him "to the face."  We're not like that.  We play things up for our faceless little Internet audience, but we don't PM people, let alone phone, let alone go visit them if we have a problem with them.  Many times when someone's started to really trash talk me, I've PMed them to try to sort it out.  I have yet to have my PMs responded to.  What normally happened is the person settled WAY down on the public forum, and pretended I hadn't PMed him. There is an honesty and an openness in even a PM that some aren't "up for."
  But one thing in the "How sad that we act this way" response to what I'd said stuck with me.  He'd typed "you have a pretty good thing going on here, do you really want to loose (sic) it by treating each other the way that really bothered you in the meetings that you went to?"
  I realized that what I really wanted was people to try to stab me in the front, for a change.  I realized that I was sick of polite-rude and passive-aggressive. I realized I was sick of false modesty, false piety and false everything.  I remembered feeling refreshed by how "worldly" people casually dissed each other, and got it out of their systems, or were just joking anyway, as opposed to the environment in which I grew up, in which every word might be remembered and misquoted for the rest of your life and long afterward.
  Because we're supposed to love one another.  Like a family.  Not just feel or act loving.  We're supposed to actually do it.  And just like in my family, in my experience of Christian communities, nothing is forgiven, and when it comes to hurting each other, no matter what rules are put into place, the heart finds a way.
  I am only in contact with a few young Christian people.  What I find is, when pushed to it, they will swear at me.  And that makes things much easier to deal with when disagreement happens.  We can have friendships that can weather them saying some opinion or other of mine is "bullshit" or telling me "fuck you".  There can then be no pretending they're not annoyed ("No, no... I'm fine.  You're just imagining I'm angry.  My word! My goodness, not everything is about you, y'know...")  There can then be no pretending they're not hitting back a bit, or expressing annoyance.  And then, when the friendship continues, and moves on, a rhythm of forgiveness and longsufferingness is seen to have been established.  So I'm okay with it, though I don't usually swear at people.  If I am, I am likely making a point of some kind.  It's not a daily, casual thing.
  This Christian lifestyle we try to enforce, and which we judge people for not adhering to?  It is a culture of backstabbing.  Only Christ can save us from ourselves and teach us first honesty and then forgiveness for each other.  We suck.  We just really, really do.  All I'm doing is getting sick of it.  It's not like I'm doing any better. 

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