Judge not lest ye be judged.
— Matthew 7:1
The other day I asked a friend for a list of my good and bad points. Things that men would either be attracted or repelled by. Paddy included the fact that I have a blog about my thoughts and might discuss a man in it as one of my downsides.
Well. Yeah. I gotta cop to that. I do typically let men know about the blog if I see them more than once. That doesn’t mean I let them opt out of appearing, but I do let them know it is a possibility. And it is relatively anonymous. Mostly. Kind of. It’s not like anyone reads it anyway.
So I started a post about it, to sort it out in my head. I am sure there are people who have recognized things about themselves here. Mostly they are nice things. I don’t think people mind the nice things. Some of them aren’t necessarily kind. Some of the things I say about myself aren’t either. It’s often a snapshot of my state of mind at a given time. No more, no less. A few people impact my state of mind more than others. One person in particular has probably read some things that were not pleasant. Nothing I wouldn’t say directly, but I will say some pretty harsh things to some people.
In any case, in spite of how it might look, my random rants do have some thought behind them. I do try to consider feelings as much as I can while still explaining my own. This is where I work things out. I try not to hit anyone with emotional anvils. I’m not always successful at it.
Then after the post was partly done, I got a mean message from a random guy on an online dating site and put all that thinking aside.
On the online dating site OKCupid, my username is ImPerfect63. I like to think it’s a cute bit of wordplay–is it “I’m perfect” or is it “imperfect?” The answer, naturally, is both. Perfectly imperfect. This guy thought my username was an abomination unto the Lord, and thought he should take the opportunity to throw some Christian hate at me. Jesus loves a hater, just like Jesus loves everybody…but that doesn’t mean I have to!
This guy apparently has not been paying attention in Sunday school, and missed all of the New Testament teaching about love. Luckily for him, I was there that day so I could send him a verse to start off his remedial Bible reading. A semi-snarky response that could still pass for sweet.
Then I posted it on Facebook. It was funny.
Some may think I was being just as un-Christian as the mean guy on OKCupid. There, you are wrong. I am not a Christian at all. It was snarky in a purely non-denominational way. A friend suggested that it might be better not to feed the unkindness, and said he thought I should take down the post. He was right, and I did. I may not be a Christian, but I do try to live by one rule, which is not to be a dick.
It’s not a very fancy rule, but it does the job.
The world is full of enough hate without picking on people’s usernames online. It’s true. It’s also true that I didn’t need to feed into it by responding to the message or posting it on Facebook. Even if it was funny. Which it was.
I am looking for the High road, here. Where’s my fucking map? That’s right– the person I am the meanest to on the blog handed it to me. With love, even.
So is there a point to any of this? No, not really.
Maybe this.
People who really care about you will tell you when they think you are wrong. Sometimes in a nice way, and sometimes in the way I do it. I try to be kind. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes they do. We keep caring about each other, and we keep trying to encourage each other to be better people.
Some of us (ahem, me) just don’t really have the best technique sometimes.
I’m glad people love me anyway.