Ep. 29 - How To Deal With The World's Hatred
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.35233
Summary
How do you deal with all the hatred you get from the world when you try to speak your truth? How do you handle the hate you get online and in the real world? What do you do to deal with it?
Transcript
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So the number one question that I hear when I travel around the country and I meet people
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at speaking events and that kind of thing, by far, without a doubt, the number one question
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I guess people have noticed that I tend to attract quite a bit of vitriol and hatred.
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A lot of people don't like me, and they are very eager to let me know that they don't
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like me and to let me know every day, all day, constantly.
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Now, bring out the violin and I'll tell you more of my sad tale.
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I probably attract a higher volume of it than most people just by the nature of what I do
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for a living, but I'm certainly not the only one.
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I'm sure you have noticed this as well in your own life, that if you try to speak any kind
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of truth whatsoever, people are going to come after you and you're going to deal with it
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And I assume that when people ask me this question, the reason I get it so often is that people
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are looking for insights they can use in their own life, not because they want to hear my
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Usually when I'm asked this question, the answer that I provide is, I think, unsatisfactory
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But now that I've had time to think about it, I want to try to answer it again.
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And I think the first thing that we have to do, if we're going to talk about how to deal
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with the hatred from the world, the backlash that you get from defending your belief system,
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first thing we have to do is reiterate again and understand and embrace and accept that it
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Jesus warns us about this repeatedly, and his warnings certainly apply to our culture probably
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more than most, but they do apply to all cultures throughout time.
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But on the other hand, so it seems almost counterintuitive because we also are a culture of indifference.
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And you would think, if you didn't know any better, that one of the advantages of living
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in a lazy, apathetic, and different culture is that you can say and do whatever you want,
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and nobody will pay attention or care because they're all too busy watching their five hours
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of TV a day, and they're online, and they're obsessed with movies and video games and everything,
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and they're too immersed in that world to even care what you're saying.
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Most of the time, you can say what you want and do what you want, and nobody will care.
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Because part of that, that's why so many people will say, you know, hey, let people do what
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And they feel like that's some sort of virtuous moral code to live by.
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So I don't, you know, as long as they're not hurting me, I don't care.
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But everyone who really lives according to that motto, it's just pure laziness on their
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It's not, it's not like this is not some virtuous restraint on their part.
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They really just don't care about anything or anyone, and they just want to watch TV.
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These people, the average American who is living in this deluded world and is just entertaining
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And I do believe this applies to the average American.
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I know I'm taking a dim view of the average American, but I'm sorry.
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They're floating along on the current, don't care about anything.
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And they're just staring at screens, not ever taking even a moment to really think about
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The only thing they're thinking about is, uh, what's the next show I'm going to watch?
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So to live in this world of comfort and luxury and entertainment and moral numbness, in order
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to really live in that world, you cannot accept any truth.
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Every truth in your life has to become your own version of that truth because a truth has
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a hard edge, you know, and, uh, once you inject truth into your life, well, then now you have
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to kind of start conforming yourself around it and, uh, and you can't live entirely according
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So if you want to live that way, you must in the end, reject all truth.
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So people that are in this fog of, uh, indifference, if you come in and you inject any truth into
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that fog, it doesn't matter what it is, if you introduce any truth, that's when they're going
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to detach themselves from the screen for long enough to devour you and rip you to pieces and
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When you threaten this indifferent, lazy life that they're living, which is the only thing
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they really care about, when you threaten that, when you interfere with it, that's when they
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When you criticize, when you, when you cause them to look at themselves in the mirror, when
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you criticize their precious, sacred lifestyle, because these days that's the one thing you're
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Anything can be justified as long as it's my lifestyle.
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Actually, I can criticize it because I think it's wrong just because it's a choice that
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No, I mean, a lot of personal choices are wrong and I think it's wrong.
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But once you take that attitude and that approach, that's when they will descend upon you.
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And, um, so then the hatred is inevitable in that case, and it's going to be very, very
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Well, the honest answer is I have historically handled it very, very poorly.
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I'm working on it, but I have handled it poorly.
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And I, but I have found through trial and error that there are three serious mistakes you
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can make when dealing with the hatred of the world.
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The first mistake is to, uh, take it personally and to be offended by it and hurt.
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We should never allow ourselves to be personally offended by the sniping and the vitriol from
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the world, particularly when that, when those personal attacks come because you said something
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It's illogical anyway, because when someone comes after you and says the most awful things
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Now it may be about you, you know, on the surface, what they're saying may be personal
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and they may be talking about you on the surface, but really it's not, they don't care about
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It's the thing that you said, the position that you took.
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And because they're too lazy and they lack the intelligence and the energy to engage the
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belief system itself, they will instead take the lazy shortcut approach and attack the person
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who holds the belief because that's the easiest thing to do.
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They don't want to apply their minds at all, uh, or expend the energy required to listen to
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So instead they'll, they'll listen for long enough to, to understand that they disagree.
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And then they'll just try to rip you apart personally, maybe bring your family into it,
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whatever they can do to hurt you and shut you down and make you afraid.
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And then they can go back to what they were doing before.
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I will admit that I made this mistake early on when I first started doing this, when I
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first, um, gained an audience online and I was giving my opinions to a relatively large
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group of people, the first couple of times that I experienced a massive blowback and backlash
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for something that I said, where, you know, it's hundreds and thousands of people that
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are attacking you and there's hate mail and there's comments everywhere.
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And it's just first couple of times I'll admit that I was overwhelmed and, um, and I did let
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And I read some of the comments and I did take them personally.
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I know we're not supposed to admit this, but I did early on.
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You know, when you're, when you're not used to it, it can be very hard.
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Second mistake is, um, on the opposite end of the spectrum.
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There are people that they get the hatred, the blowback, and their first reaction is to
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Now we have to overcome that reaction, but it's a normal human reaction.
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But then there's the, the, the people who, who, and these are internet trolls.
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Basically, this is, this is, this is what ends up a person like this with this reaction
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could eventually become an internet troll, an infamous internet troll.
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That's someone who thrives on the negative attention and likes it.
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Um, there are a lot of people in the pundit commentator class, conservatives and liberals
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They really like to be hated because it's attention.
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It is, it's a lot of very energetic attention directed at them.
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Now me, I've also made this mistake at the, at the beginning experience the blowback.
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And so then I thought, well, the best defense mechanism is to try to like it somehow.
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And so I tried that as a defense mechanism to shield myself.
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I tried to put on this thing of a, you know, well, I'm living rent-free in your head, you
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know, and, and, and, and to really take some sort of pleasure in it.
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It didn't last for me because it didn't come naturally to me.
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So I couldn't stay like that for very long, but I did try it.
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And what I can say is that thriving on hatred is as bad as being hateful yourself.
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It's probably worse really, uh, to actually enjoy it.
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It's, it's, it's a sick, demented thing, but there are a lot of people in that camp.
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The third mistake is, um, the mistake that I settled on for a long time, which is to be
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And I'm very guilty of this third mistake, uh, of, you know, not being afraid of the
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hatred and not enjoying it either, but just feeling nothing much of the time.
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And I think most people think this is the right approach.
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You hear people all the time declare, oh, I don't care what anyone thinks.
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And we sometimes will confuse this attitude with strength.
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We'll think, well, that's what it means to be strong is to not care.
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Well, you shouldn't care what the world thinks.
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Don't care about their opinions, but that's not strength.
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If you really don't care, it's kind of like a sociopath who has literally no fear or emotion
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Even when he puts himself in harm's way, because fear is an element of courage.
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If you have no fear whatsoever, then you cannot be courageous, even if you're doing something
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You're only doing it because you don't have that natural human reaction of fear.
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So being numb to the opinions of the world and being numb to the hatred, well, that doesn't
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That means that you've been worn down and beaten down, and now you're just sort of this
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What I've realized is, after a long time of kind of taking this approach of saying, well,
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I really don't care what people think, even if 50,000 people are saying the worst things
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After a while, I realized that, you know, this doesn't seem right.
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It shouldn't be pleasure, either, on the other end of it, but I should feel something, right?
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How can you have swarms of angry people shouting at you and feel nothing?
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And what I've realized is, well, I mean, look at what the Bible says.
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So we should care, not because we care what they think in the sense that we want them to
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like us, so we're going to adjust our opinions to make them like us.
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But when people hate us, I think we should care for their own sake, because they're wallowing
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and stewing in this hatred, and we should pity them for that.
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We tend to gloss over these parts of Christ's teachings.
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We basically gloss over everything you said, but especially stuff like this.
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We gloss over it because it's become kind of a cliche.
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We've heard it so often, especially turn the other cheek.
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We hear it so often, it's become just kind of the part of the vocabulary, part of the
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That's the worst thing, really, that can ever happen to the Bible is when it becomes a cliche,
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when we turn it into that, which is what we've done.
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If we really thought about it, if we didn't gloss over it, and we really confronted these
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teachings, turn the other cheek, pray for those who persecute you, we would see that
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these are radical, really challenging commands that Jesus is giving us.
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I think most people, although we look at that and we say, oh, yeah, sure, turn the other
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And we'll say, oh, yeah, I do that all the time.
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I think if we were to be honest, we may look at our own lives and realize that we have never
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We have never prayed for those who persecute us.
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I realized, at a certain point, I realized that.
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I don't think I've ever, I got all these people attacking me.
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I'd like to think that I have, but I don't think I ever really have.
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Now, part of the issue with these aspects of Christ's teaching is that they seem, at
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They seem to contradict other things that he said, because this is also the same Jesus
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who famously fashioned a whip out of cords and drove the money changers out of the temple,
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He was assaulting people with a whip and turning over tables.
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I mean, it's, this is, it's a crime what he did, right?
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This is also the same Jesus who says, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword, dividing
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This is the same Jesus who said that I wish you were either hot or cold.
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And because you're lukewarm, I spit you out of my mouth.
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But at other points, it seems like he's telling us to be mild, but not lukewarm, telling us
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But yet over here, he's flipping tables and using a whip.
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I mean, it just, it seems like, how do you make sense of all of it?
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And you realize that you make sense of it this way.
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Then what Jesus is saying is, when you personally are being attacked, when your own personal honor
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is being assaulted or questioned, that's when you turn the other cheek.
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That's when you don't respond with this kind of force, right?
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But when God is being attacked, when your faith is being attacked, when we're dealing
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with heresy and sacrilege and blasphemy, when, when truth is being attacked, even when your
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family is being attacked, well, that's, that's different.
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Then we are supposed to rise up and respond with force, respond vocally.
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Even, even respond, even be militant in our defense of God's honor and of truth and virtue
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Now, we, we tend to get this, we, we tend to get this backwards, I think, a lot of times.
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What we'll do is we'll see the world attacking God and our faith and truth and committing
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And that's when we say, oh, we'll turn the other cheek, be the bigger man.
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But then when, when that, when the, when the, when the hyenas, when the pack of hyenas move
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on from there to us and they start personally sniping at us, that's when all of a sudden
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And, uh, and, and that's when we want to rise up in defense of ourself, but it's supposed
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Strength is being willing to, you know, put yourself in the midst of it and to, to jump
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in, to defend these things that are beyond you and above you and are bigger than you.
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But when it comes to personal hatred and personal persecution and people coming after you personally,
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that's when we're not supposed to muddy ourselves by flinging mud at the mudslingers or debase
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ourselves by trying to defend our own personal honor to people who don't really care about
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So there's no point forceful and vocal in our defense of God's honor and of truth and
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But when it comes to personal attacks, personal insults, personal affronts to those, to those
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specifically, Christ says, turn the other cheek.
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He doesn't snicker like a little troll and find some perverse pleasure in it.
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Instead, he's resolute, he's confident, and he's uninterested in getting involved in bickering
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And, um, when people personally insult him, he just, he's not going to get down there.
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He sees how pathetic the whole scene is, how miserable these people are, how empty their
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And Christ gives us the perfect example of this approach, of course, during his passion.
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Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
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He said that while he was nailed to a cross in unbearable agony.
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And we're never going to attain that level of heroism and selflessness, but we could still
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And I think that many of us have never really tried this, but it is possible to pray for
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And I'm still, like I said, I am not the perfect model of this whatsoever.
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So I don't put myself forth and say, do what I'm doing.
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And what I've found is, you know, for me right now, most of the time, when I get personally
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attacked, if I'm personally attacked, and if I turn around and pray for the person attacking
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me, the prayer that I'm saying silently in my head is not 100% sincere.
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I want it to be sincere, but it's not because I'm still ticked off at the guy.
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But I'm at least right now, I'm just at the point, I'm at the very beginning, I'm just
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I'm trying to develop at least the habit of being attacked.
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And the first thing is to respond by praying for the person.
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But I think that's what we have to do a lot of times in life is, even if your heart's not
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in it, even if you're not feeling it, do the right thing anyway.
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Go through the motions, at least in the beginning.
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And then eventually, your heart will start to change along with it.
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Especially when God sees you putting in the effort and really trying.
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It's like, it's not enough to be really, you know, to be good, to be good people.
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First, we have to really desire to be good and to do the right thing.
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We have to, at least want, we have to, we have to, maybe we need to desire, we have to want
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You have to want to want to do the right thing.
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And once we take that first step, then hopefully the rest will follow.
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And so when people ask me, how do I deal with the haters?
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And maybe we can all, you know, work on this together.
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Because the other thing is, look, last thing I'll say is it's the only thing that works anyway.
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Like so much in the Bible, these are moral truths, moral commands.
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But also on top of it, it's just, it is also good practical advice for how to live.
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It isn't merely that we can't turn the Bible into merely a collection of life advice, you
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know, so it's not just that, but it is also that.
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So when it comes to personal attacks, it's like, there's nothing else you can do anyway.
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When people are personally insulting you to get down in the mud with them and to try to
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defend yourself, it just doesn't, no matter what, that's how insults work.
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That's sort of the point of them is that no matter what you say, once you're insulted
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personally, no matter what you say to defend yourself against that insult, it's only going
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It might as well just take the higher approach that Jesus is prescribing for us.
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Because on top of being the right approach, it's also the only one that works.