The Problem of 'Schadenfreude'

As most of you know, the NFL season is about to begin.  Praise God! Lots of people are excited about the upcoming season as always.  Some familiar teams like New England and Green Bay will be in the mix as favorites to win the Super Bowl.  Some new contenders include the Los Angeles Rams and the Jacksonville Jaguars.  And of course, little is expected from the perennially pathetic Cleveland Browns, Chicago Bears and NY Jets.  In Las Vegas you can bet on anything.  The saddest story I read gave odds on the first head football coach to be fired.  The favorite to be the first coach fired is Tampa Bay’s head coach, followed by Cleveland and Denver’s head coach.

As I thought about that, I thought about our apparent fascination in America with watching people fail and fall.  I can’t think of any kind of story that receives more press coverage than the stories of failure, or stories of a fall from grace.  Who can ever forget OJ Simpson in the white Bronco, the Matt Lauer or Harvey Weinstein scandals, or the very public moral failures of Jim Baker or Jimmy Swaggert?  I don’t know why these stories are so popular.  Maybe it’s what psychologists call “Schadenfreude”, the emotion of taking pleasure in others misfortune.  The explanation is that these stories make us feel better about ourselves.  We look for qualities in that person that caused their failure, evaluate ourselves to be sure we don’t have that same quality, and then sleep contentedly.  I think we have all probably experienced this emotion ourselves once or twice in our lives. 

Of course, if we do this, we are only betraying our own insecurities.  We don’t know OJ Simpson or Matt Lauer or what makes them tick. We only know that we are not murderers, serial cheaters, or sexual abusers.  This makes us feel safe that the same things that happened to them can’t happen to us.  What this emotion ignores is that we are all sinners in one way or another.  James says whoever is guilty of breaking the law at any point is guilty of breaking the whole law.  Jesus said if a man looks lustfully at another woman he has already committed adultery.   We all know that we are lawbreakers and we are thankful that we are not public figures whose failures will be exposed to the whole world on Facebook and Twitter. But God knows our failures even though the world may not.  

Paul warned us in Romans 12 to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment.  If we do that, we will not rejoice in anyone else’s failure.  We will say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  When a brother falls, Galatians 6 tells is to “restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so you will not be tempted.”  We must always be on guard or failure will come quickly.  Jesus said, “Broad is the gate that leads to destruction and many find it.  Narrow is the gate that leads to life and few find it.”   We know that it is only by God’s grace that we stay on the path toward the narrow gate.  

As Christians, we don’t bet on which coach will be fired first and then root against him.  We don’t watch Matt Lauer’s moral failures and rejoice that someone who seemed to have it all crashed and burned. Schadenfreude is not Biblical. It’s the opposite of the compassion that believers are to have for others, even if their bad decisions led to their failures.  Consider these examples:  David committed reprehensible sin with Bathsheba and yet God spared him.  Paul was a murderer who became the greatest evangelist the world has ever known.  John Mark deserted Paul in Perga, but was later was deemed useful in ministry. Peter denied Christ three times and still the Lord restored him.  God was not be done with any of these men. Failure is one of the tools that God uses to draw people to Himself.  I don’t know what the future holds for public figures like OJ Simpson, Matt Lauer or Harvey Weinstein. OJ Simpson served time, and Harvey Weinstein may as well.  But God still may not be done with them.  When someone in our circle of influence fails, let’s never be part of the problem by rejoicing in it.  Let’s be part of the solution by restoring one where we can Biblically, and helping him walk with Christ again.  

And when we fail, even if no one knows it, know that our story is not yet complete.  God loves us, and the reason that we still have breath in our lungs is that God has a purpose for our lives.  We repent and turn back to Him.  There is grace at the cross for all who will come! 

Be 'Re-Purposed'

When we were shopping for a house in Texas, our realtor frequently used a term that we had never heard before.  The term was “re-purpose”.  She would say things like, “If you don’t like that light fixture in the foyer, you can ‘re-purpose’ it in another room where it will be less conspicuous.”  Re-purposing simply means to use the something in a different place or in a different way than it had previously been used.  The thing doesn’t change, but the way you use it changes.  I must confess that I am more of a ‘chucker’ than a re-purposer.  If I don’t like the light fixture in the hallway, I’m not going to like it in a spare bedroom either, so I’ll chuck it and get a new one.  

I thank God that He’s a re-purposer and not a chucker.  Like many of you, I came to faith as an adult.  I went to church as a kid, and I believed in God, but I didn’t understand the gospel.  As a teenager I left the church, became an atheist, and stopped going to church.  It was a full 20 years before God got my attention again and gave me grace to see that Jesus became a man to live a perfect life and to die for my sins.  God raised Jesus from the dead to show that He has power over death.  I understood that to be raised to eternal life, all I needed to do was to trust in Jesus alone for my salvation.  So I did.  

Every Christian’s story is basically the same. The details differ, but the theme is that God first redeems your life. He shows you the beauty of Jesus and His sacrifice and you believe.  That’s your salvation.  Salvation is not ‘hell insurance’ as a pastor friend of says.  Salvation does save us from the wrath of God and eternity in hell, but it’s so much more than that.  John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”  Notice the use of the present tense.  He who believes ‘has’ eternal life now.  Your eternity does not begin at your death.  It’s already begun.  Once you are saved, God invites you to re-purpose your life for better, more productive use.  2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”  We’re the same and yet not the same.  Somehow we are made new, ‘re-purposed’ and called to serve Him in a new way.  

So the question is, how are you spending your eternity today? This life is not a waiting room that we merely occupy before we enter eternity.  This life is our daily opportunity to show our love and appreciation for the salvation that God has freely provided to us by serving Him. God wants you to re-purpose your life to further His kingdom.  What are you good at?  What do you enjoy doing?   Re-purpose yourself so that you use your gifts for the glory of God.  All you have to do is to ask God to show you where He wants to use you.  Notice that you have a choice.  God has made you into something new, but it’s up to you if you will allow Him to use you. 

It’s so easy to let days, months and years pass without ever attempting something great for God.  But if you’re not willing to risk anything for God, you won’t accomplish anything great for Him either.  It’s easy to settle for a comfortable life.  It’s in my nature and yours to seek comfort.  But God didn’t save us to make us comfortable.  He saved us so that we would live re-purposed lives, showing the love of Jesus Christ to whoever we can, however we can.  I need to remind myself of this every day because it is so easy to choose comfort and convenience over serving others.  As Andy Dufresne famously said in The Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin.”  I pray that we would all use choose to use the precious time and resources that God has given us to get busy living as redeemed and re-purposed instruments for His kingdom and His glory.  

Love Does

 I just finished reading a book by Bob Goff called “Love Does.”  The premise of the book is that God calls us to live with whimsical love. The word whimsy means extravagant, fanciful, or playful.  To love whimsically means that sometimes you have to DO things and not worry about the expense, or whether the thing makes a whole lot of sense.  Goff told story after story of what it has looked like to love whimsically in his life, and I have to admit that I was jealous.  He has lived a life of adventure. As we get older, we get more cautious and conservative.  We worry about things a lot more than we did when we were younger. When I was younger, I didn’t worry about anything, and that’s not good either!  But I never want to get to the point where I don’t DO anything for fear of whether I can afford it, or whether I have time or who will feed my dog, or whether the house will be standing when I get home.

When the prodigal son returned home, his father ran after him and embraced him and kissed him.  He dressed him in the finest clothes, put a ring on his finger and killed the fattened calf so they could celebrate his return. That’s whimsical love.  It’s extravagant, expensive, over the top love. It was so much more than the prodigal could ever have hoped for, especially after the way he insulted his father by asking for his share of the inheritance while his father was still alive. I want to love that way.  

This afternoon at about 3:30 we heard that our nephew Luke will be graduating from US Navy Boot Camp on Friday in Chicago.  He has worked so hard to get to this point. About 5 weeks into the 8 week basic training program, they told him that he was not progressing well enough and they added 3 more weeks to his basic training.  He was devastated.  His graduation date was rescheduled to August 3, but the Navy tells all the families to buy flight insurance if they plan to attend graduation, because any trainee can be held back again at the last minute.  

Molly and I had been talking about going up to Chicago for the graduation but as the days passed with no assurance that Luke would graduate, we gave up on the idea.  But reading “Love Does” has changed my thinking. There’s no reason why we can’t go to Chicago on a moment’s notice to be at his graduation.  Well, actually there are a bunch of reasons why we can’t go, but whimsical love doesn’t worry about the reasons why we can’t go.  Instead, it figures out a way that we can go.  

So here’s the plan. Molly and I will drive through the night tonight to get to Chicago tomorrow morning.  It’s about a 12-13 hour drive.  We are going to go to the Chicago White Sox game at 1 pm.  I’ve never been to the new stadium so I can check another stadium off my list. (I swear that’s not the reason we are going!) Then we will meet up with Luke’s family, that’s Molly’s brother Paul, his wife Lois, and their kids who many of you have met.  They can only get 4 tickets to the graduation, so Molly and I won’t actually get to see the graduation, but we will see Luke after for a while.  I think it will mean a lot to him that we made the effort.  Then we will drive back on Saturday.  

Does that seem crazy? When I was young, I would have done it in a heartbeat.  Now that I am older, I hemmed and hawed.  But love does.  So we are doing it.  We are so proud of Luke and we want to be there to share his moment with him.  When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that was not convenient.  It was painful, humiliating, shameful and worst of all, He was separated from His Father while He bore His Father’s wrath for the sin of the world.  If He had not done it, none of us could be in heaven with Him someday.  He had to pay the penalty for our sins.  Love Does. That’s how Jesus showed His love for us. In comparison to that, what’s a drive to Chicago and back to show our love for our nephew?