One of the Cruelest Things I Ever Said to Anyone (And One of the Most Amazing Stories of Forgiveness I Have Ever Experienced)

When I was a freshman in high school, I was a complete and utter jerk.

All I wanted was to fit in with “the cool crowd.” I let a boy I didn’t even like or respect kiss me just so I could wear his football jersey on a game Friday. I gossiped and giggled with girls who were mean—just because I wanted them to not be mean to me.

And one day, one terrible day that still fills me with regret, huddling on a school bus, laughing that wicked laugh that only comes from a soil that has been fertilized with the stench of rotting, dead, vile words, I said something to one little girl that was, beyond a doubt, one of the cruelest thing I have ever said to anyone.

I will not tell you what I said. They are words that never need to be repeated. Ever.

I didn’t even know what the words meant when I said them as a stupid, confused fourteen year old. I did, however, understand the shock that shot across this (beautiful! sweet!) little girl’s face when I said them. I saw the tears form in the corners of her eyes even though she kept her face still like a statue and even smiled a tiny smile as if to say, “Hah hah hah. Yeah. That’s so funny. See? I can laugh too.”

It was dark. Mean. Inexcusable. A deadly, restless poison that flowed right out of the broken cistern of my heart.

But do you know what? It was only a few months later that God forgave me all my sins and saved my soul and made me a new person. As His Holy Spirit began to live in my heart, I was convicted about all sorts of things, including these evil words I had said to this completely innocent victim.

So of course I went to her and apologized and begged her forgiveness. I never thought she would even listen to me—she surely had ever reason to refuse to even look at me! But all I remember is that she forgave me. And as far as I know, she has been able to continue to forgive me all of these many decades. (If not, I hope that she will let me know so that I can apologize even more profusely!)

Like so much of my life, I pray that my children and any children I have the privilege of serving and leading can AVOID being like me. Because I’ll tell you what … you NEVER want to see that flash of shock, hurt, fear, rejection, cruelty slam across the face of another human being in response to the words you have said. Believe it. It is wicked and evil and to be intentionally, purposefully, prayerfully avoided.

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” James 1:26

Thank you for forgiving me, ol’ MCHS alumnus. Your suffering and your forgiveness has had a profound impact on my life (and my speech!) for thirty years now.

 Gratefully,
Tara B.

PS
Doesn’t this all remind you of what CS Lewis wrote about “The Inner Ring”? Oh! If you have the time, read it all. But if not, here are just a few excerpts:

“In the passage I have just read from Tolstoi, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organized secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it …

People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside … From outside, if you have despaired of getting into it, you call it “That gang” or “They” or “So-and-so and his set” or “the Caucus” or “the Inner Ring.”

All this is rather obvious. I wonder whether you will say the same of my next step, which is this. I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.

I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only not a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together … It is necessary; and perhaps it is not a necessary evil.

But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter.

The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline. But all these would not satisfy us if we did not get in addition the delicious sense of secret intimacy.

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it-this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this.

Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.

It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists.

The choice is still before you: and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters. And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colors. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still-just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naif, or a prig-the hint will come.

It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play: something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”-and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure-something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world.

It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face-that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face-turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude: it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school.

But you will be a scoundrel.

Of all the passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skilful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things … The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.”