Rough talk

I heard a rough man say once, “I’d go to his funeral just to make sure he was dead.” I’ve heard a lot of rough things said by a lot of really rough people, but for some reason that utterance feels like the roughest. This fellow was listing all the people he didn’t like and he added that line after the names of the ones he really didn’t like. You may think he was joking, but I assure you he was not. If you could have seen the pain and disgust in his eyes your breath would have caught in your throat.

Over the years as I’ve wrestled with what I heard him say, I keep circling back to two things. One, I have this sad sense that what the man really wanted to say was, “I am so unhappy. I think I hate myself and what my life has become.” For whatever reason, maybe lack of courage, maybe devastating heartbreak, maybe past trauma, he couldn’t get honest with himself, so he projected all his pain onto these poor souls who he didn’t “like.”

The other thing that strikes me is the theological absurdity of disliking someone who is dead. The dead person who is not “liked” is in heaven completely immersed in the infinity of God’s healing love. Whatever it was you didn’t like about them is no longer an issue. Your foe has been resurrected with all the saints in light in the eternal glory of God’s grace. There’s nothing about him to not like.

Sometimes I think about the man and his rough way of talking, and I remember that he’s one of God’s injured kids. He’s someone that God loves in a very special way. He needs more of God’s attention than others of us do, and I hope he gets it. More often than not, rough people are broken people starving for compassion. God, help us to give them our love and to be tenderhearted with them even when faced with their cruelty. Hurt people hurt people. Loved people love people.