Let Him Alone And Let Him Curse

I always love seeing something from a new perspective – where a new meaning becomes available and gets me thinking.

I found that in the first reading from the Hebrew scriptures today.

I’ll be honest, when I first read this passage, I found it confusing – with a bunch of names and language that seemed inaccessible. I was inclined to “skip it” and just write about the gospel [1].

But as I sat with it (and read it like 5 times just trying to keep it all straight), something else emerged for me.

In case you don’t have time for reading the entire passage, I’ll try to provide a brief summary. King David is on the run from a guy named Absalom, and Israel is in great turmoil. King David is up on the Mount of Olives mourning his current situation when along comes a man named Shimei who recognizes him as the king and starts cursing him (because King David had ousted King Saul whom Shimei was related to and had followed). So Shimei starts yelling and throwing stones at King David! Of course, David’s loyal followers say, “Let’s get this guy!” But David intervenes and says, “Let him alone and let him curse – maybe God has told him to do so.” And so the guy walks near King David and his crew for a while continuing to give the king an earful as they went along.

The moral of the story is crystal clear, right?

I’m not sure what you take from the story, but here’s what it said to me.

What do we do when feedback comes our way – especially something that we may not want to hear? How do we respond when someone is upset with us or has serious disagreements? Do we invite people to say more or do we tend to shut down, get defensive and dismiss them?

What I appreciate about King David’s response in this story is that he tries to stay open.  Clearly this is not a good time for him, and he could have easily said to Shimei, “Can’t you see that now’s not a good time!  Keep your opinions to yourself!”

Furthermore, Shimei is clearly upset and is not behaving nicely. In short, he’s delivering his critique and feedback in a pretty prickly way. Again, King David could have said, “You know Shimei, when you yell like that and use that tone of voice, I’m not going to listen to you..”

And even when King David’s team says, “Hey, this guy is a real pain and is clearly not a team player, let’s get rid of him!” David counsels otherwise.

David tries to remain open – as hard as it is.

Recently my father-in-law, Frank, forwarded a list of questions (which came from Kit Miller, formerly of the Gandhi Institute) that were titled, “22 Interview Questions to Complicate the Narrative.” [2] These are questions that are designed to help us engage with people who disagree with us or are offering something (feedback, a different position or critique) that is hard to take in. 

“Is there any part of the [other side’s] position that makes sense to you?”

“How do you decide which information to trust?”  

“What [might you have] oversimplified about this issue?”

“What do you want the other side to understand about you?”  

“What do you want to understand about the other side?”

“What do you think the other group thinks of you?”   

“What do you think the other group wants?”

“What do you know and what do you want to understand about the other side?”

These are some deep questions, and I know that even as I read them, I can feel resistance emerging in me – and I’m not even in the midst of a conflict as I’m reading them!

Now I have no idea if any of these questions were swirling around in King David’s head, but instead of getting all defensive and shutting down, he tried to remain open to the critique coming from Shimei.

Staying open is hard to do – especially when we feel attacked.

Just so I’m not misunderstood, I am not saying that we must endure and stay open to any form of critique and feedback. If someone’s yelling at me and throwing rocks, I’m probably going to head in the other direction! Nor would I suggest that we “welcome” and let ourselves be diminished and degraded by someone else’s feedback or critique.

And yet sometimes, if we can remain open and curious, people get beyond the vitriol and start talking about where they feel misunderstood, unacknowledged or in pain. The same might be true for us when we feel that we have been hurt or wronged somehow. We want to be heard.

In our current world, the act of staying curious and open seems to be a rare skill set, and we live in the midst of intense polarization and fragmentation. Yet these skills (and this posture) are the bedrock of developing the “beloved community” articulated by Jesus and so many others throughout history (In fact, even in today’s gospel reading, Jesus “hears out” a demon called Legion before he cures a man of that demon…). I often think back to Martin Luther King’s prescient words, “we must learn to live together as [family] or we will perish together as fools.”

Perhaps as we move through our week, we might notice the times we feel like we are shutting down and closing ourselves off to someone else’s feedback, point of view, perspective or experience. Maybe we can work to remain a bit more curious and open to what their experience is and try to get a sense of what is important to them. Maybe we can work to let in what it is that they have to offer – even if we disagree with it. And maybe we both can reach a new level of mutual understanding.

[1] Believe me, there’s a lot in the gospel that is worth reflecting on and if you want to take a deeper dive, I’d recommend that you read Ched Myers reflection on it here https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2016/06/16/confronting-legion/

[2] Developed by https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/