Lindy West is a writer who says that she is trolled constantly. “Trolling” is the practice of posting online in a deliberately offensive or provocative way to elicit an angry response. For West, nasty tweets and emails are a daily part of her job, with comments ranging from making fun of her for her weight to wishing for her death.
Her worst trolling experience was so bad that the story ended up making news. In 2013, one and a half years after her dad had passed away, West got a message on Twitter from someone who had created a fake account with her deceased father’s name and picture, purely to be as mean as possible. He was using the account to post derogatory things about West. The account’s bio read, “Embarrassed father of an idiot.”
West made a risky move: she reached out to the troll who did this. The radio show “This American Life” told their story and played a recording of their conversation. West attempted to understand this person who did this horrible thing. Because she extended grace and forgiveness, they connected with each other. West learned more about how easily our internal insecurities can cause us to do harm, and the unnamed man who trolled her was able to repent, and committed to “go and sin no more” — at least with respect to trolling.
In one sense, West’s story is a special case. She was the victim of psychological abuse, and most such victims are not in a position to try to connect with their offender, nor should they be expected to. To be clear, when abuse is taking place, victim protection comes first. But still, her story is one of the more powerful examples of how things can work differently. Our culture is very focused on punitive approaches to wrongdoing, but there is a different path that, when it’s possible, is much more transformative.
People can do horrible things. News outlets like to highlight them. More often than not, there’s a story from somewhere about this person who got caught lying or that person who got caught cheating. Every time stories like this hit the news, though, it’s not just shock and sadness that we feel. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to tolerate its permeation in the airwaves. But we can, because with each affair or corruption scandal we also usually leave with a subconscious satisfaction that it’s not us. We get a low but consistent dose of vindication mixed with schadenfreude.
Then, all of a sudden, sin hits close to home, and we are thrown for a loop. Someone we know or love does something wrong, and we’re left confused, perhaps devastated. As a Jason Walker song says, “It’s easy to deceive, but it’s hard when the trust that’s broken is mine.”
“There is no one righteous, not even one … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:10, 23). Some of us know these verses from Romans quite well. We have recited them many times. No one is righteous. All sin. We know this. Why, then, are we always so shocked whenever it proves true for someone we know?
It happens a lot. People fail us and break our trust. People say, do, or post things in anger that we never thought they would. It can leave us jaded.
For ministers like me, this dynamic is further complicated in at least two ways. For one, we clergy feel especially high pressure to keep up appearances and live in fear of what will happen the next time it is discovered that we are human. Second, we are often the ones that “know too much” about people. We, too, struggle to come to terms with the Romans 3 reality, although perhaps in an amplified way, because, as one writer put it, “Pastors know things that are hard to know.”
Here’s what’s ironic: at any given time, I will have persons A, B and C all struggling with the same temptation or hardship, and if I were able to get them together to be open and vulnerable with each other, they would realize they’re not alone in their remorse or struggle and would be able to receive grace from each other. But all of them have sworn me to secrecy for fear of shame and retribution (or they don’t even know that I know). We all have secrets, and we guard them with fear and trembling, sometimes actually believing that the person next to us has none of their own.
What would it take for us to stop playing this game, understand that Romans 3 is real, and be able to face the worst in ourselves and in others?
We perpetuate this lie that there is such a thing as a clean life, a closet without skeletons. Because we do that, we continue to be shocked every time we find out otherwise. We live our days in the midst of this fake drama of being self-assured and put together, and start to believe it’s our true narrative. We live with lists of “unforgivable sins,” but it just so happens that none of our own sins are on the list. When someone else gets exposed, we retreat to our positions of judgment and superiority — not to punish them but to protect ourselves.
Church, instead of being a place of freedom from this game, is too often a place for upping the ante, a place for advanced-level players of this game. Church can end up being a place where we are expected to hide from our brokenness rather than admitting it, working through it, and receiving the grace of God. Somehow, the church must become the place of refuge for the repentant tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) rather than where the adulterous woman, covering her head, waits for the first stone (John 7:53-8:11).
Most harmful behavior boils down to a hidden fear or unmet need. We really never know how we would respond in certain situations. It’s the circumstances we rarely take the time to understand, but it’s the circumstances that are key.
When the Ashley Madison accounts were hacked and leaked online last year, people found names of friends, co-workers, spouses and pastors among those who had accounts on this website that touts the sinister purpose of facilitating extramarital affairs. Some (like me) didn’t even know that such a website existed, but regardless, many of us went no further than our knee-jerk shock and sadness.
Grace, and an attempt to understand, did not come from Christians but from technology geeks and independent journalists. They were the ones to explain important details like the fact that Ashley Madison does not require email confirmation, and so anyone can be initially signed up by a third party without their knowledge. Even more poignantly, it was these fairly unknown writers to whom people went for repentance or to share their deeply personal stories. Sure, there are people on the website with the worst of intentions, but some were people who, in their younger years, acted in a brief, undiscerning moment of morbid curiosity and had long forgotten about it until they were publicly shamed and quickly lost their families, jobs or reputations, with some even committing suicide. I don’t know what to call it when one moment or one mistake ruins a life, but it’s not grace.
In today’s world, anyone with a smartphone can instantly share pictures or live video with the entire world. I sometimes wonder if we will be able to withstand this advance in technology if we don’t learn grace. I equally wonder how we will fare in this election cycle, especially with the increased levels of demagoguery we’re seeing.
Attempts to offer a reason or explanation for a certain behavior are seen as tantamount to an excusal of the behavior. But the reasons — the personal stories and pain that lie behind sinful behavior — are often precisely the key factor in our ability to extend grace and achieve reconciliation.
May we not so quickly condemn one another without an attempt to understand. May we think twice before gawking at another’s moral failure from the fragile safety of our imaginary high ground. After all, “no one is righteous.” Not one.