Lesson Learned: Some people aren’t even remotely interested in my opinion:)

Yes, I know that this may be hard for you to believe, but I found out in no uncertain terms that not everyone values my charming insight, loveable, sarcastic wit and humble, sage wisdom. :) I was pursuing through Facebook the other day when I ran across a rather long but interesting thread submitted by a friend of mine. Somewhere toward the end, there appeared what I thought was a rather rude departure from the thread, where some guy (actually an MTSO Seminary student) that I didn’t know, seemed to be (in my opinion) bullying a woman, who I also don’t know, but have grown to admire as I have read her Facebook responses. (She is actually the Aunt of one of my “friends”)

Her comment to him was that she thought his critique of the issue he was discussing was rather harsh. Well, let’s see, he used the words Nazi, concentration camp, ghetto, and stated that we as Americans are all culpable in the genocide of the Palestinian people, so I think that those words might possibly qualify as harsh.

Of course me being ready to jump in and help this woman out, (and certainly not having a dog in the hunt) I pointed out to him nicely, (at least that’s my story:) that his words were not only harsh but incendiary and that perhaps he could win more friends and influence more people to his cause if he tried to tone down the harsh rhetoric. I think I have mentioned to you before that if you sit down with me and simply tell me your side, I am much more willing to listen than if you try to beat me over the head with your viewpoint.

Believe it or not, he didn’t seem to find any wisdom in my thoughts, as a matter of fact he didn’t find me wise at all:) (maybe a wise… well you know) He accused me of putting words in his mouth, not reading what he wrote, and basically saying that if I find the use of those words incendiary then it was me that had the problem, he was just speaking the truth.

Hmmmmm so what do you do? Well, I first looked and found out that this young man was younger than my kids. I know, go figure that one, young and already knows all the answers, now there is a combination that you don’t see every day:)

So, being the pastorally and mentorly type I am, I thought. “You know something, I bet he doesn’t even realize that he is being rude and totally insensitive,” and quite honestly, if he doesn’t understand that before he enters ministry, the people in his churches, or perhaps the Board of Ordained Ministry will help him to figure that out very quickly, and usually painfully.

Hoping to save him that potential career ending error, I sent him a message and pretty much just shared with him that he could do much better for both his cause (which happens to be the Palestinian people) and for himself if he dropped the incendiary rhetoric, and actually made an attempt to help people to understand the plight of the people that he was concerned about, that making the people angry who could potentially be allies in the struggle is really not a good idea, and in defense of my friend, shared with him that there is a big difference between the theoretical debates of seminary and the give and take of ideas in the real world and that you can catch a lot more flies with honey if you only try.

Well, our young friend took considerable exception to my fatherly advice, told me that I wasn’t worth his effort to respond, questioned my intelligence (which he may be right on that one) called me several things that I had to go look up in the dictionary (He really is an intelligent guy) and told me something psychoanalytical about me trying to act superior to cover my inferiority complex, or something along that lines. I may have to go look that one up as well, you never know, he may have something there:)

So, I thought of a thousand ways to respond and then decided that no response was probably in order.

Ok, here I go with the superiority thing again, or perhaps he would say condescending attitude, but I really do feel sorry for him. I don’t even know him, but his words were really seething with anger, he responded in a manner that I perceived as anger to the woman who was simply stating her understanding of the issue, he responded to me in anger (And I am certainly not saying that I don’t deserve it) but, past experience tells me that there is always a better way.

I really do wish him the best, he is facing a very long and difficult road ahead, the people in his churches are not always going to agree with him, and somewhere in his journey he will have to learn that lashing out in anger isn’t the best option, and I will tell you that speaking from experience it has never worked out well for me.

Hopefully he will learn these lessons along the way, I know he won’t learn them from me, He thinks I am a……… Well, I will let you fill in the blank on that one:)

Blessings!