What Internet Comments Reveal

I knew I needed a good night’s rest after yesterday.  My head was sort of spinning after reading all the comments I received and also reading the comments that the CNN.com article received as well.  Plus, yesterday was an exciting day for us in that we got to find out the sex of our fourth baby!  It is a boy!  So that really took precedent in our day yesterday as my oldest daughter went to the doctor with me because she was so excited to see what we were having.  And she was very much hoping for a boy, as we all were.  And praise God that everything looked healthy with our little boy as well.

So my head needed a break yesterday before I could do any more posting.  But now I do want to address some thoughts that have been running through my head as I have read what everyone has to say, as well as continue to use this blog to expose some misconceptions about our lives and our husbands.  So this may take a few days.  My husband is also addressing some of his own thoughts over on his blog, so be sure to go check him out as well.

So first, I had just a couple of general observations about what people are saying through these comments.  But let me start off by saying that my comments in the article were not made by someone who had followed the Tiger Woods story in any capacity.  I think I read one article on the story in my Google News Page.  I am not naturally a big news follower, which has actually helped me in this life.  I have no idea what the newspapers or internet sites are saying about my husband.  The reason is, as I mentioned in my comments, this is a life of ups and downs.  The media will love Joe one minute and cancel interviews with him the next.  It is the nature of the media to always look for the hot topic.  And for me, I know what I choose to fill my mind with affects the way I live.  As Jesus said in Luke 11:34:

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.

This means that I what I choose to read, listen to and talk about in a given day is going to affect the state of my heart.  So as much as I can, I want to stay away from digging into other people’s dirt (or hearing negative words about my own husband).  But the natural tendency of our human hearts is to want to do this.  We want to justify what we know resides in our own heart.  We want to feel better than the next guy.  So there is a pull to see how much more messed up another person’s life is.

So my comments about the Tiger Woods’ situation simply came from knowing that they were dealing with personal matters in a very public spotlight.  And being a wife myself and putting myself in Elin’s shoes to think how I would feel.  When you truly do that, I am not sure how you can feel anything but empathy towards someone who must be hurting.  But the comments of so many people revealed that the attribute of mercy is severely lacking in our society today.  It made me very sad to see that the majority of people who commented had no compassion for Elin simply because of one of numerous facts, including:

1. She has money
2. She must have “known” what she was getting into marrying a professional athlete
3. She set herself up as a trophy wife

And numerous people wanted to compare their lives to hers or mine and show how much tougher they have it.  And with that, I am not disputing, I am sure that the majority of the world has a harder life than Elin, or even myself (although I am in no way putting our family in their category).  But if you were writing your comments from a computer in a place with a roof over your head, clean clothes on your body, a stomach with food in it, and fresh water available, you have it better than probably 2/3 of the world too.  When we get into comparison mode of trying to show how our life is so terrible, there is always someone worse off than ourselves.  And when we are in a time of struggle, I doubt that it would feel very comforting to any of us to hear, “Oh cry me a river, you don’t have it that bad!”

Pain is real and we all deal with it.  That is the world in which we live in.  And often the toughest part of pain is feeling like there are not others who are in any way trying to empathize with you, but would rather throw stones.  That is where Jesus is so amazingly and beautifully radical to me.  In John 8, the religious leaders have gathered around to stone a woman who has committed the act of adultery.  This was a very serious crime and worthy of death.  But what was Jesus response to them?

And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Is any of us without sin?  No, of course not.  All you have to do is listen to your own internal thoughts for a mere 30 minutes and in them you will find hate, complaining, ungratefulness, jealousy, envy, strife, gossiping, etc.  But the words that were spoken about Tiger and his wife do not reveal this humility.  They reveal a pride and arrogance of not truly knowing ourselves and what we are capable of.  And words are extremely powerful.  The old adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is completely ridiculous. Words do hurt, and they are powerful.  In fact, we are told by our words we will be condemned or justified (Matthew 12:37) because our words reveal what our heart is truly like (Matthew 12:33-35).

I still have a long way to go in this because I know too often my tongue is a deadly weapon (James 3) that does not always bring blessing.  The internet is a place where we need to be especially careful because it provides anonymity to say whatever we feel like it.  But our words have consequences, to others and in our own heart.  Let us all seek to speak words that build others up today!