The Hardest Pill to Swallow
A few days ago, after my post about how we will all receive hate (whether reasonable, unreasonable, or for made-up reasons), I woke up to two things:
More unsubscribes than any other day in the 4-year history of this blog, and
More email responses than any other day in the 4-year history of this blog, including this gem:
"Hate is deserved. People earn it. It's what you get when you are disgusting and evil. If people don't want to be hated, they shouldn't act like pieces of s*#&. Your post served no point, try again."
I happen to have this person's phone number, so I called him to discuss. I won't share our entire conversation, but I do have permission to share this piece:
Me: "Do you think I am disgusting and evil?"
Him: "Of course not. Doesn't everyone love you?"
Me: "Haha, I suppose some do, but that probably doesn't count the people who have threatened to harm my children or publicly tried to burn my business to the ground. Do you think you're disgusting and evil?"
Him: "You know I'm not. I'm a good person. I'm not hurting anyone."
Me: "Well, I personally know at least two people who despise you so much that they would probably pay good money to see your marriage disintegrate, your business disappear, and your life destroyed. They hate your guts."
Him: "What are you talking about?!?! I haven't done anything to deserve that!!!!"
Me: "I agree. I know you're a decent guy who is trying to do the right thing. I know you mean well. I know your heart. I don't think these people are being reasonable at all. But this is exactly what I was talking about in that post!"
The conversation lasted another 30 minutes after that, and by the time we concluded, I think he understood what I was trying to communicate in that post. This is indeed a hard pill to swallow. The fact that there WILL be people who hate us to a spine-tingling degree is so difficult to grasp. Perhaps our world has always been this way, but either way, it seems to have trended more in this direction in recent years.
As I previously wrote, I don't say all this to discourage people or spark the very hate I'm trying to condemn. Rather, I want to double down on my original point that if what I'm saying about people hating us either way is true, we ought to do the things we're called to do, serve the people we're called to serve, build the things we're called to build, create the things we're called to create, and engage in the work we're called to pursue.
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