OLD TESTAMENT: 1 KINGS 17
POETRY: PROVERBS 17
NEW TESTAMENT: LUKE 1
Do you ever secretly celebrate inside when someone you Do not like very much gets in trouble, or hurt, or worse? Be honest. Maybe It is when the class bully gets taken down. You have that secret satisfaction of seeing the bad guy finally get his. I confess that whenever I watch the movie A Christmas Story each yet I get a certain bit of satisfaction when Ralphie loses it and goes to town on Scut Farkas and nearly pulverizes his long-time nemesis. People often do it instinctively. The cheer when the opposing quarterback gets sacked for the third time or when the opposing teams best player fouls out of the basketball game you sing, “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.” (Do they still do that at basketball games?” I am sure more than a few haters of former President Donald Trump took great delight in seeing him on trial and hearing the lurid details drug out before Melania and the rest of the world to see.
Did you know that there’s actually a word for that? It is a German word called Schadenfreude and it is an emotional experience of finding joy in another’s misfortune or struggle. The Very Well Mind website says: “Schadenfreude is a German term that translates to “damage” (schaden) “joy” (freude).It is the ripple of delight you get from watching fail compilation videos, or the twinge of excitement you feel when a rival coworker doesn’t get the promotion they expected.”
The day back when President Trump announced that he had Covid Webster’s Dictionary says that Schadenfreude was the most looked up word that day. Lots of people took great delight in seeing Trump get Covid. Or when notorious child molester Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell a lot of people were celebrating. And if you were around and conscious when they finally found and killed Osama Ben Laden you know there was a lot of celebrating going on that day.
If Schadenfreude is so common, we all do it, it must be okay, right? Well….. let’s go back to yesterday when we talked about God’s desire for us to flourish. We said that the book of Proverbs provides wisdom to help us pursue a flourishing life. Does taking delight in the pain, suffering trauma of people that we Do not like lead to a flourishing life? Today’s Proverb, Proverb 17… By the way, did you notice that this week the Proverbs match the day of the month. Today’s the 17th and we’re looking at Proverbs 17. By the way, you can start on the first day of the month reading 1 Proverb a day and essentially read the entire book of Proverbs through every month (when there are 31 days in the month it matches up perfectly.) Among the many excellent little nuggets in today’s Proverb we read: “Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker; he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.”
Oops! You know all those things we just said about schadenfreude? This Proverb is saying that It is not very wise to engage in in finding joy in someone else’s suffering. The path to a flourishing life does not include celebrating when our frenemy gets in trouble, gets hurt, fails a test, loses their job, breaks up with their boyfriend/girlfriend or any of the other things you can think of celebrating.
Those of you who are particularly clever might say “now wait just a darn minute there, doesn’t God sometimes celebrate when his enemies get theirs?” You make a good point. Psalm 2:1-6 says:
Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
Here we have God laughing derisively at His enemies failed attempts to destroy his anointed King (that would be Jesus, by the way). If God can do it, why can’t we?
I Do not have a lot of time and space to unpack the theological complexity of that question, so I will simply say “He can, because He is God and he knows everything including what’s in a person’s heart. We are not God, and we aren’t the judge and can’t know what’s truly in the heart of another.
What I can say is what Jesus, who came to teach us how to have an abundant, flourishing life said. Jesus said that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (see Matthew 5:43-48).
What about that first bit in today’s Proverb where we are told that when we mock poor people we are actually insulting God? What does that mean? It is so easy to judge others harshly without having all of the facts. In ancient society in many cultures it was believed that the reason people suffer is because they did something wrong to tick off God or in other cultures “the gods”. Even among God’s people the Israelites it was a commonly held misconception that people who suffer physically or financially or relationally are just getting what they deserve for the bad stuff they must have done. The Book of Job goes to great lengths to debunk that false belief. Job was a very righteous man who suffered terribly for no good reason. Bad things really do happen sometimes to good people and It is not our place to judge others or mock them for their suffering because we think that they deserve it.
And while the Bible does talk about God laughing at those who oppose his anointed King there in Psalm two, we need to look at the greater story of God in all of the Bible. This is well captures in Ezekiel 33:11 “Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
God gets not joy from seeing even wicked people suffer or die. God was not celebrating when Jeffrey Epstein killed himself (or was murdered) in his jail cell. There were no parties in heaven the day Osama Ben Laden was killed. God doesn’t take joy in seeing the wicked suffer, and neither should we. God’s heart is for even the most broken, evil or lost people to change direction and turn to Him for forgiveness and healing. That should be our attitude as well. We need to practice love and grace not mocking judgment and schadenfreude… even when our worst frenemy gets dumped right before senior prom. That’s the way of wisdom, the way to true flourishing.
~ Jeff Fletcher
QUESTIONS:
- Have you ever felt Schadenfreude (or joy at someone else’s misfortune) before?
- How does it change our hearts to ‘love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us’? Does that kind of attitude lead to a hardened or softened heart?
- How can you practically practice loving your enemies? What are some ways you can put this teaching into practice this week?
Seek Grow Love 