Have you ever had a thread on your social media go south and you had to ask people to keep it clean and be respectful?
Ain't it grand?
Truly, I really only ever want to cuddle, and social media is no exception. But with the country divided like it is and frustration levels running high and the keyboards right at our fingertips enabling us to respond instantaneously--with nothing seemingly at stake to give us pause--a thread can go rogue pretty fast. And for those of us who don't really want to provide a platform for hostility, how do we manage it?
I can only thank my lucky stars that social media was not a 'thing' when I was in this phase of my life. I swear, as revolting as I was, had I spewed my self-indulgent sass for all the world to see, I would have had to go off the grid forever; and I don't generally do well in nature, so there is proof positive right there of the grace of God.
These days, as I read through social media and come upon example after example of vitriol reticent of my own past sins (always just under the epidermis of my gossamer ethics) I am reminded of a time in my life when I used to say mean things and didn’t give a rat's rear end where they landed or who they hurt; a time when I used to blame a very specific group of people for all of the country’s problems—I had names for them; a time in my life when I didn’t have to be polite because I was right; a time in my life when I didn’t have to listen to anyone else because I was speaking for Almighty God; a time in my life when the ‘facts’ didn’t matter and experts in their fields didn’t matter and no amount of evidence mattered because my ears were slammed shut and locked up so tightly with the key of ignorance and the deadbolt of arrogance.
So was my heart.
And I remember distinctly, like it was yesterday, that I hurt people. For God, I hurt people. I claimed quite loudly that I loved God, but I was hateful to anyone who didn’t agree with me and treated them with contempt. I condescended to them and ridiculed them and shamed them and was patently dismissive of their concerns or their problems or their feelings or their very humanity. According to the Bible, I was a liar—and God was not in me.
I’ve written these confessions a thousand times, but for all the words that I pour into page after page, the way Mother Earth keeps spinning and spinning and spinning, it’s never, ever finished. Here’s one more attempt. It likely won’t be the last.
(*Note: I've written this all before and am compelled to write this out--again and again--to offer up some kind of explanation as to why I was so horrible. These confessions are mine--no one else's. Please don't project my words and assume I'm talking about anyone else. I'm not. These are my sins. These are the reasons I felt justified as to how I treated people. Just hear me out.)
I used to be an asshole.
I wish there were a better way to say that, but there's not. I was a mean girl. I was a wretched representation of Christ’s love. I was everything that love is not.
Every hour of every day, I broke the commandment, “Thou shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain," and I'm not talking about the cussing.
Even though I 'spoke with the tongues of men and of angels', I had no love. I was a clanging gong—a sounding cymbal. I prophesied (or at least pretended to) and fathomed all mysteries.
Yep. All of them. There was no answer to any of life’s hard questions that I couldn’t whip out of any one of the ten Bible verses I’d cherry-picked and memorized. I embodied all knowledge. I had faith that moved mountains. Mind you, I never actually moved any mountains, ever, but I postured myself as if I had enough faith to collapse Mount Fugi like a lung. Or so I proclaimed. Oh, I gave my two cents to the poor, all right, and bragged about toiling in sweat for all the missions work I did at my junior high and high school.
The Godless were everywhere, and making sure they didn't end up in Hell was thorny and thankless work. It takes a lot of patience to be that tenacious.
Love is patient, you know. I knew that I was patient too to be working as hard as I was working--doing God's good work. Looking back, though, I was really just jonesin’ for a chance to be hateful. I had no idea I was a bigot. It never occurred to me. All my sins were forgiven, and I was clean as the driven snow. I understand now that my prejudice was the very sword I swung against anyone who didn’t go to my church or vote in obedience to God the way I did for the Godly party. These people needed my correction because, as aforementioned, my pervasive knowledge of all things equipped me to do just that.
Love is kind. I knew that I was too. I swung that sword politely, with my tongue smugly in my cheek only slightly. And it felt good to let people know the truth. After all, you have to be careful with love or you could inadvertently love someone right into Hell forever. How kind would that be then, huh? Not very.
Love does not envy. And why would I be jealous of anyone else? I mean, even if they had families who were happier than mine? With clothes that fit and something different in their lunch boxes every day? The only true happiness comes from Jesus, and my family loved Jesus… even if there were things… bad things… that happened in our house. At night. When Jesus wasn’t looking. But I knew I’d have the last laugh when I was sitting up in Heaven with Jesus and everybody else was…? Well.
Love doesn’t boast. And neither did I. I didn’t have to. Everyone could plainly see that I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t make out with boys (except a couple of times after youth group on Wednesday nights in that dark hallway at church that looked over the parking lot). I certainly didn’t go to my prom or any other high school dances because that wouldn’t have been a good witness for the Lord, and boys were only out for one thing, and why would I even want to go to dances or parties where I couldn’t bring Jesus inside because He’s holy? It was blaringly apparent to anyone who cared to see all that I didn’t do, for Christ’s sake. No need to brag about it, even though I was darned proud of myself and, frankly, felt pretty sorry for anybody else who didn’t live up to the standards I did—much like the compassion Christ had when He wept for the people who shuffled around like sheep without a shepherd, voting with the devil, going to the wrong church with their errant doctrine. Such a sad, sad state of affairs. My spirit grieved with the Holy Spirit’s.
At least I was on the straight and narrow. And I wasn’t angry at all because Love is not angry or self-seeking. It does not dishonor others. I mean, people have the right to be wrong, right? And it wasn’t anger I was feeling so much as it was a… righteous indignation… you know. For the sake of the gospel. People trouncing all over the cross and having no regard for the sacrifice Christ made for all of us. How many times in a DAY could I count the number of times someone stepped all over the grace and mercy of our Savior? I considered it my duty to keep such a meticulous record of wrongs.
It was exhausting being me.
But the fresh breeze of retribution always seemed to come around and I was positively delighted when I saw the hand of God move toward justice and those people got their comeuppance. Those were the times that I could rejoice in the truth. If I’d told them once, I’d told them a thousand times: God is still on the throne, and He will NOT be mocked!
Hallelujah!
Love protects, and I would protect those ten Bible verses I knew with my life, trusting that if I could just manage not to screw up and commit a sin in that precise moment when the rapture hit… Not getting left behind in the Great Tribulation was my greatest hope… if I could only persevere.
THEN, I would not fail! Because, you know... love doesn't.
So I spoke out boldly! And I stood against the evils of sin! I found demons under every rock and cast them out! And most importantly… I stood with the Moral Majority, and I VOTED, God bless America, because I was going to usher in the Kingdom of God, by God, with the precious few saints who, like me, had been predestined to find that narrow road. I guess it sucked to be those other people who had simply not been chosen.
It felt more like a tightrope.
And one day I fell off.
Life brought me to my knees, and I realized that my whole life was bullshit. My entire jumping-off place was bullshit. All those so-called promises… all that grandstanding… all that papal perspiration… was bullshit. Everything I did, all of the vitriol that came out of my mouth, was done and said in the ‘name of God’. That's how I broke the third commandment every day: Thou shall not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. When you go out and do the kind of damage I did on a daily basis, and you do it in the name of God? That's what I call taking His name in vain and smearing dirt in the very faces of people God loves, expecting Him to pick up the tab.
I wouldn't suggest it.
But I truly thought I was doing right—yet I’d managed to screw up one of the Top Ten every single day of my life.
Every time I pointed my finger to correct someone ‘in God’s name’, every time I tried to micromanage the way a person lived ‘in God’s name’, every time I attempted to create someone in my own image ‘in God’s name’, every time I got into that voting booth ‘in God’s name’ believing I was ushering in His Kingdom, I broke that commandment. Every time I took the words and commands of a man-made political party to be the words and commands of God, I committed the sin of idolatry.
There's really no pretty way to say that.
I attempted, with a good many others, to build a great tower that would lead us all to Heaven. We built it with brick and mud, votes and patriotism, eating the mammon that funded the whole futile enterprise. We were nothing but babbling idiots, and I blathered on louder than most.
Why didn’t I just read the red letters for myself when Jesus was prompted by the disciples as to when He would establish His [political] Kingdom on this earth? The red letters say plainly, “Yeah… no. You’re really barking up the wrong olive tree with that one.” I wish I had just realized that religion, nor any political system, will ever fix what’s wrong with this world. Maybe I would have put my hammer down a lot earlier and saved myself colossal amounts of humiliation and regret.
One day my glass cathedral shattered around me, and I completely bled out. Thank God because I needed a blood transfusion.
And now?
The only sin I ever want to talk about is my own: I’d been bamboozled by fear of punishment and baited with hope for reward and was not motivated by love at all. And it made me a bully. It’s the only ‘sin’ that I still feel ashamed for… taking the name of the LORD my God in vain. I’m so, so sorry that I was ever that way. God forgive me – because I’ll never forgive myself for that, despite the best efforts of good friends.
As it stands now, I love all the wrong people. I do life with all the wrong people. I eat with all the wrong people. I go to churches with all the wrong people. I sing at the weddings of all the wrong people. I sit with all the wrong people at the Lord’s table and take communion with them.
Jesus ruined my politics. He ruined my religion. And He ruined my life. I am currently a complete abomination to the girl I used to be--this "Hope Girl" is a hopeless case.
It doesn’t occur to me anymore to tally up the numbers of all those going straight to Hell. And I certainly don’t adhere to the notion that I can ‘love people too much—right into the fiery pit’. That smacks of my past and gives me total flashback heebie-jeebies. I’m getting flinchy just thinking about it. Because it’s something that those who wanted to control me with fear and threaten me with retribution would say.
I have to open the Book and find the red letters. I have to pour over those pages to find a passage where Jesus ever said:
Hey, be careful not to love people too much. Be careful not to hang out with people who don’t believe like ‘us’. Don’t eat with them or celebrate their lives or delight in them or laugh with them or care for their children or do life with them or be vested in them in any way… or else you could make them feel so cherished, so precious, and so treasured that they might accidentally, inadvertently end up burning in Hell, apart from us forever—and that would be your doing because you didn’t manage to achieve that delicate balance between compassion and admonition. It’s better to create some distance… yes, you can love them… but give them a wide berth so that they don’t poison your well of Living Water. Remember, the threat of eternal separation that hangs over them hangs over you too. So beware. It’s better to point out their errant ways than to try to be friends. Instruction, in love of course, reigns supreme. Provide for them an example of right living. Show up faithfully at the polls and legislate my will for all people and cloister yourselves with like-minded souls. Do what it takes to protect your religious freedom—this alone will preserve my gospel. I’ll forgive you for being unkind if it comes to that—because the bottom line is, those people have to be told. If those who don’t yet follow me are open to the truth, they will see the error of their ways by the saintly archetype you don each day and accept me into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior.
So don’t screw this up—because I’m watching you.
Nope. Haven’t found those words. They aren’t written anywhere because Jesus never said anything of the kind. In fact, He preached and lived the polar opposite.
I wish I could say that I don’t know why people believe that a political party will save us or that America is some kind of Messiah. I wish I could say that I am baffled at how people can ignore facts and logic and be so dismissive of experts in their fields and the evidence they provide.
Come, let us reason, right?
But I do know why I, personally, believed and spoke out and acted the way I did. It’s called fear. I know how it happens because I was part of all that mess. It’s how I lived my life for a long time. And even though I get frustrated at the disrespect that is thrown in each other’s faces, I’m reminded to at least attempt to be kind—to try.
Because deep down it’s so impossibly hard to be afraid all the time.
All.
The.
Time.
No reprieve in sight. Just white-knuckled fear.
That is no life at all, really. I know this full well.
And let me tell the truth here in no uncertain terms...
I liked the high horse I was riding.
It made me feel important.
It made me feel superior.
It made me feel like I was somebody.
But here’s the kicker as I wind down these 2,000+ words about how we should be to one another--while the whole world watches--over issues that have been debated and fought over for 2,000+ years:
If I were reading this blog post back in the day, it wouldn’t occur to me that I was the very one in such desperate need of these words. I was abiding in such willful ignorance that no amount of persuasion could crack my resolve. I was too afraid to let go of everything I thought I knew—too afraid of going to Hell or being ‘left behind’.
In fact, I’d be pissed off. I’d take it personally and claim that I was being 'persecuted' for the sake Christ and His gospel. I’d go so far as to pray for the deluded writer of this blog post, whom the devil so obviously had gripped in his claws—that she would be ‘saved’ and find the ‘truth’.
That she would one day truly know Jesus.
That she would stop writing this bullshit.
What should we respond to her on social media? How should we handle the hostility and rancor that she posts on our threads?
Somebody please help me help her...
Daisy Rain Martin is an author, speaker, advocate, and educator as well as a founding member of The Flying M-Inklings Writing Group. She lives with her husband, Sean-Martin, in the beautiful state of Idaho and teaches English and Literature during the school year to the best 7th graders the world over. Daisy spends her summers writing, speaking, researching, creating, gardening, and canning.
Hope Givers: Hope is Here, is the sequel, of sorts, to her comedic, spiritual memoir, Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside, which was her publisher's (Christopher Matthews) #1 top selling book in 2012. She has also written a free e-book for anyone who has or is currently being sexually abused called, If It’s Happened to You, which appears in its entirety in Hope Givers. Please follow her weekly blog, SATURDAISIES, which addresses a plethora of current issues including child advocacy, all things hilarious, and matters of the heart. She would love for you to join the Rainy Dais Community by friending her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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