Charlie’s name has stirred so much anger (and love, I must add), but in hearing others speak with such fire, I am reminded of my own past.
Oh man, it actually hurts me to look back at myself.
The way I enjoyed wielding my words like weapons. Too often, I have wounded relationships with words. Too often, I have felt proud of how sharp I could turn a phrase, how deeply I could make it cut.
Even after I first accepted Jesus into my heart, I carried that same cutting way with my words. I was always ready to write on behalf of someone I cared for, crafting a “talking point” that could be effective and sting, because I wanted them to win.
My attitude was: Cross me, I dare you. I will slay you with words.
Then this season of heartbreak arrived, and it has settled in. That’s when I realized how much I needed God. That’s when I saw how sorely I needed Jesus to teach me a new way to be. And now I am reduced to no longer having my words as weapons.
Something in me has softened. The vitriol that once burned in me to put an ignorant person in his place is gone. I simply do not have it in me to cut people down. I would rather pray for them.
So when I see Charlie defined by the harshest names, I pause. I recognize the old me would have relished in destroying folks who spoke ill of Charlie.
I believed in Charlie. What I think Charlie sought, at his best, was dialogue, an exchange of ideas in the hope that something larger than us might be revealed.
That “larger than us” thing is God.
In my shoes now, I know what it is to be reduced to my worst words and actions. Turns out, my own words have worked against me. I feel their accumulated weight now more than I ever have.
Judgment belongs to God. What belongs to me is prayer, humility, and the daily choice not to return contempt for contempt. Conviction is one thing, but to often it turns to contempt, and that only hardens the heart.