#2 Bind up the brokenhearted without fear or favor – Protest the ill treatment of both good and bad people. Pray by name
for all who suffer.
– Bishop Peter Storey
January 23, 2025
Dear siblings in Christ,
There is so much brokenness in the world. Always has been. St. Simon’s is a community that is especially gifted at caring for people in crisis. I watch you reach out with practical help all the time. Your financial generosity with donations to the Rector’s Discretionary Fund helps the stranger in need. Your care for our neighbors is clear as you protest systems that hurt or destroy, and you stand up for those who are most vulnerable. You listen. You care. You act. All of these actions bind up the brokenhearted.
It’s comparatively easy for our hearts to be turned over with compassion and care for people we know and love. Even when we care for strangers, we assume the best about them. What about defending people we don’t like or standing up for an opponent?
Schadenfreude is a handy word here. It is a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction when something bad happens to someone else, particularly an enemy or a bad person. The psalms are full of this kind of language and, oh my, have I been there. Seeing someone who has hurt us or someone we love can feel kind of satisfying. Don’t bad people deserve to be treated poorly? After all, they are only reaping what they have sown. They’re just getting a taste of their own medicine.
Protesting the ill treatment of an opponent means speaking up when they are unfairly criticized, treated unjustly, or defamed in any way. This doesn’t preclude fair criticism nor does it mean we gloss over our disagreements for the sake of keeping the peace or being nice (see last week’s reflection on truth). It means prioritizing respect and upholding that person’s dignity, even if they don’t return the favor.
It goes against the grain to stand up for an enemy or to protest the ill treatment of someone who does bad things. But it is really important for at least two reasons. First, the alternative only creates more hatred, more brokenheartedness. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Hate cannot cast out hate. Only love can do that”. When we accept the unfair treatment of an enemy, we have become them. We are then using the same hurtful tools they have chosen and for which we have rightly judged them. Not only does this amplify hate, but it changes us into people we are not meant to be. That is the second reason protesting the ill treatment of a person who does bad things really matters. What does it do to us when we don’t? Who do we become?
Sometimes our enemy evokes feelings of disgust or aversion in us. Sometimes their behavior and the choices they make are so clearly wrong and so clearly violate everything we value. We do not have to accept these behaviors. In fact, we are called by God over and over and over again to speak up, to act up, to show up in protest against those actions. But we must do so having set a guard on our hearts, that we not become that which we hate. Even that person whose behavior is the most despicable is one for whom Jesus died. Even that person is a beloved child of a ridiculously gracious God. And that is a really hard truth to accept. At least it is for me.
Bind up the brokenhearted without fear or favor. Protest the ill treatment of both good and bad people. Pray by name for all who suffer.
With you on the path,
Jenny+
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