About ten years ago I had just finished speaking in the chapel service of a Christian university, and I was enjoying catching up with students and friends there. My family was with me and it was a little like a mini-reunion. In the midst of this love fest, a guy walked up that I recognized from my first year of college...the year I flunked out. The year I got kicked out of the dorm. The year all my stuff from my dorm room was carried out and left on the front lawn by maintenance because I was too irresponsible to move it out by the deadline. Ya...that year. Ugh.I wasn’t thinking about any of that, because that was B.C. (Before Christ) in my life, and now it seemed like another lifetime. But suddenly it was in my face. As he approached the group, I greeted him with the kind of hello that you give someone you haven’t seen in nearly 20 years. I gave him a big hug, from which he stepped back and said in a loud voice, "Hey man, do you remember when you got kicked out of college and they threw all your stuff on the front lawn, and like they found your dirty magazines?"
Wow. It felt like the wind was knocked out of me? He stopped his question with a punctuation intended to have that effect. He seemed to want to deliver a blow, and the setting was exactly what he was looking for. I was surprised, and I did also feel the wound. I was embarrassed, and that old shame of my sin crept back over me. My children and my wife and especially my younger friends were waiting with me in that sluggish moment.
I finally looked at him, (actually within seconds though it felt much longer) and said, "You know, I don’t think of those things much anymore, unless someone reminds me." He walked away, and so did we. I painfully realized again that my history is a part of me. It is not bigger than Jesus, and I am forgiven and renewed in him, but it still stung.
In the weeks that followed I had some decisions to make. Would I let that painful memory of my sin make me feel worthless again? Would I start allowing shame to make me question whether or not I could ever really be God’s man, or ever be worthy in his sight. I also had to make a decision about how I was going to think and feel about that man. Would I just write him off? Would I judge him forever from this low moment? Would I cringe every time I see him, avoid him, or talk negatively about him when he came up in conversation? These were important decisions for my spiritual life.
It wasn't long before I saw him again, and I definitely did not like it. Pretty soon God worked it out that I was seeing him more regularly. Ugh! I prayed, "Come on! Give me a break!" But there he was.
So I tried to imagine how Jesus would go about loving this guy, and I knew I had to start at the cross with how Jesus loved me. This started changing me. I quit avoiding him. I started looking for opportunities to either connect on Facebook or email or even sit with him at a conference. When we were both on the campus of that university from time to time, I would try to initiate a trip to the student center for at least a cup of coffee.
Then came a conversation I was not expecting. It started the same fateful way, "Hey, man, do you remember...?" There was a knot in my gut. But then he referenced that morning after chapel a few years earlier. He said, "I am so sorry for what I said. I have struggled so much in my life and my career, and it seemed like things were so good for you. I was jealous of your family and it was just eating me up. I thought of how foolish you looked back in that first year of college, and how I now felt like the fool. I started resenting you bitterly. Then, when I was sitting in chapel that day listening to you speak to the students, that monster inside just got a hold of me. I wanted to hurt and embarrass you in front of your family and whoever else was standing there. I wanted to make you feel small."
At first I was a little relieved, and then of course, I felt a little anger. But his tears made the authenticity of his remorse very clear. He was hurting, and quite possibly more than me. I acknowledged his apology, and that this certainly did not need to be an issue between us. But it was his last statement that opened the door for my compassion. The reason he wanted to make me feel small, is because he felt insignificant himself. He was trying to overcome those feelings by his own accomplishments. And when that didn’t work out, he thought the only other option was to try to make others feel small also by saying or doing things that might hurt of embarrass them.
We all have our own history to deal with, and sometimes the truth of the past is not pretty. But there is something very liberating about discovering that my past is not what defines my life. Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for me define my life. But it also defines the lives of our detractors and those that try to hurt us. Jesus died and rose again for them also.
But whether or not we shrink back from our goals and aspirations is up to us. In fact, it might actually be a blessing to them if we do not give up big dreams and audacious goals. If our hearts are humble and loving toward them while we pursue great and adventurous expansions of the kingdom of God, they may see a path that will work for them, as well. Our example might also liberate them to be all they can be in God’s Kingdom, as well.
- Don McLaughlin
