Exhorter Podcast
Welcome to the Exhorter Podcast where we aim to stir up love and good works, through bite-sized biblical discussion. This local effort of the Church of Christ located in Clovis California is hosted by Kyle Goodwin, Paul Nerland, Nate Shankels, and Jon Bradford.
Exhorter Podcast
67 - Do You Schadenfreude?
Have you ever caught yourself smirking when someone who sped past you on the highway gets pulled over? We've all felt that intriguing twinge of satisfaction at another's misfortune, and in this episode of the Exhorter podcast, we explore the curious emotion of schadenfreude. Through personal anecdotes and pop culture nods like Homer Simpson's envy-fueled glee, we examine how this complex feeling manifests in daily life and question whether it's inherently negative or a part of our human experience.
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Welcome to the Exhorter podcast, where we're here to serve love and good works through bite-sized biblical discussion. Welcome back. It's been a few weeks since we've had any new episodes and we had the holidays and we had just a lot of projects that came up. But we're starting off the new year strong and we're excited to get going for 2025. New year strong and we're excited to get going for 2025. We've had a lot of listener requests and we're going to try to address some of those in the next few weeks, if we can. Today, kyle, you are going to lead us through. I can't even pronounce it correctly, so I'm just going to let you take it away. What are we?
Kyle:talking about the word is schadenfreude. Would you like me to use that in a sentence Schadenfreude?
Kyle:Excuse me, okay. Do either of you know what that is?
Kyle:Only because you sent it to us yesterday.
Nate:It was like hey, look this up.
Jon:But I know what it is now. Is that harm joy?
Nate:Yeah, it's something I realized I do a lot more frequently than I should.
Kyle:It is a German word that means harm, joy. There is no English word that directly corresponds to it. So it's one of those words that it's hard to pronounce and maybe you've never even heard the word, but I guarantee you you understand the concept. Before we even define it precisely, let me just describe a scenario and then I think all of you listening will go oh, I know exactly what schadenfreude is. So the true story after spending all day yesterday studying this, prepping it, thinking about it, I'm driving home last night and there's this. I almost said idiot, but we shouldn't call people names like that. I think we did a podcast on that already driving like a Christian. There's this person driving a Mustang, and it's always Mustangs or Dodge Challengers, those new Mustangs right, yes, with the loud engines.
Kyle:And this guy is just tearing it up. He's one of those people who loves the sound of his engine and I don't know, do those guys think we all like that too?
Nate:He probably parks backwards where the front end is out.
Jon:So you, can see it. I don't think they're thinking about other people. Can you hear the?
Kyle:jealousy of this four-cylinder, 200,000-mile Corolla owner coming through the speaker here. Anyway, this guy is just ripping it up, he's driving recklessly, dangerously. He's revving his engine as loud as he can and a cop comes from behind me, gets over, passes me and pulls up to the guy and we're all stopped at a red light and I'm just sitting there like rubbing my hands together. Oh, here we go, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. And then, as soon as the light turns, green mustang peels it. Hair is out of there. Must not have seen the cop and the red and blue lights flash on. And I'm back there going. Yeah, we're gonna get him. You know, as I'm driving by, I'm just kind of gloating over it like justice was served. Yeah, yeah, all right. You know what? Do you know what?
Kyle:schadenfreude is then I do. Now it's simply having joy or rejoicing in someone else's calamity or misfortune. Yeah, now, the problem with this is so there's a problem with that?
Jon:Okay, yeah, sorry, this is a bad thing Well this is prevalent in politics.
Kyle:Well, this can come in many forms. This is a very nuanced idea, as we were discussing privately before we were recording. There's a lot of gray, not just because we're getting older and our hair is turning gray, but we're seeing a lot more gray, uh than our younger. More, uh, what's the word?
Kyle:you have beliefs, convictions, oh you're ideological idealistic yeah oh idealistic okay, yeah, more than our younger, idealistic selves, and so this is a very nuanced topic because it it certainly on the surface seems like something that is negative and and a bad thing. Yeah, there's a lot of negative emotions related to it. One of my favorite shows growing up and I'll I'll this to our listeners is the Simpsons, and most of my friends that grew up going to church We'll address that in the next Most of my friends, you know I know the person sitting next to me, john was not allowed to watch the Simpsons.
Kyle:Most of my friends were not allowed, but my family sat down and we all watched it together. We set the vcr back in the 90s and come home from church on sunday night and watch the new episode. And it's funny too to compare it to modern day television shows. It's not that bad at the time. I see why people had a cow, to quote bart simpson. But by comparison to most shows today, it's actually pretty wholesome, especially the early seasons.
Kyle:I mean, there's one episode in particular where homer's uh, homer simpson's neighbor, ned flanders hi, diddly ho neighbor, exactly. He's presented as this squeaky, clean, uh, you know, super faithful christian. He's got this perfect family, always happy, always seems to have things together, and that's meant to be. Uh, juxtaposed with with their neighbors, the Simpsons, who are always in chaos, constant chaos, and Homer is, throughout the show, very envious he's also dumb, of the kind of life, yes, but he's very envious of the life that his neighbor has, that Ned always has the nicest stuff, his kids always are well-behaved, and so there's a lot of envy and jealousy there.
Kyle:And then in one episode, ned Flanders, who is revealed to be left-handed, wants to start a left-handed store, the Leftorium All left-handed stuff and he puts all his life savings into it and it flops and the whole episode is about homer just rejoicing over it and gloating and, like I said, the show actually has a lot more um heart to it than most people realize it's. He sees how much ned is suffering and actually helps rally the town to, starts telling all his left-handed friends and helps rally and they save the business and has a good kind of heartwarming ending. But the main focus of the show is that that just he's envied ned for so long and now he's just rejoicing over his failure. So envy is definitely one of those very negative emotions that's often associated with it.
Kyle:Yeah, I totally wanted to do a nelson like and that's the other thing too, that that's all throughout the show is Nelson months, the bully who's always there to laugh. When somebody gets beat up, somebody gets pants, somebody loses something, he's always there to laugh at their misfortune. So that brings up another element to it. There's the envy side of it, but there's also the humor side of it, I think I'm I'm gonna talk about some things that we're all guilty of.
Nate:I mean america's funniest videos oh, it's all about people breaking bones and hitting heads, but yeah, but they're running to win ten thousand dollars, so you know, see, this is where this is okay, this is where it gets kind of they submitted their video to be viewed right.
Kyle:It's their fault exactly this is where it gets a little bit nuanced, but strictly speaking, watching and laughing at someone's misfortune is, by this definition, schadenfreude.
Jon:So is it just the enjoyment, like, what's the level of looking at misfortune? Is it like joy or is it like pleasure, like I'm trying to understand?
Nate:like Well, okay, so like if I, if, if, if my daughter bonks her head from, like you know, being a doofus and running into. She's not hurt, she's not actually injured but you're glad that she learned a lesson yeah, teach her a lesson, well, but it's not. She's not actually injured, whereas, you know, maybe she gets in a accident that has more lasting consequences. Well, if someone were to be glad about that, then then I would be like hey, come here, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got some schadenfreude for you.
Jon:But so that's the kind of trying to understand the nuance of that. There must be a very specific rule about the If only there was a specific rule about it. It's kind of a complicated idea, so you could look at it as into. Justice has been served, and so I am just happy that justice has been served. Is that the same.
Kyle:There's another aspect of it, so we see it in different areas. Simple humor, and that requires some critical thinking. As far as am I laughing at someone's serious misfortune Because none of the people on America's Funniest Videos. They're not there, like in a neck brace, paralyzed from the waist down, yeah and we're laughing at them. Right it's, it's pretty low stakes.
Nate:They slipped and fell in the mud, or yeah something yeah there was no long-term issue as a result of the thing that happened in the right, so technically speaking, that is what we're talking about, but it's not.
Kyle:It's not the same thing as envying someone and relishing when they fail, because I'm jealous of what they have and I love seeing them fail.
Nate:Right, or when a foreign leader or a leader that you didn't like gets assassinated and you're like yeah, ok, ok.
Kyle:So there's. There's the envy side, there's the humor side, which is itself not always wrong, which is itself not always wrong. There's kind of a light side and a dark side, to use some Star Wars terms. We have to use a Star Wars illustration in every episode, and so, on the darker side, you have envy, but on the lighter side there's simple humor. This is a hard one to categorize. Is they're schadenfreude over justice? So, osama bin Laden, after 9-11, all of our focus as a nation, our political leaders, our military, was focused on finding Please silence your cell phones. That wasn't me, that was you.
Nate:John, don't look at me and blame me.
Jon:Is it my laptop?
Kyle:Sorry, I just have phones everywhere, oh my goodness, his burner phone for his girlfriend, his burger phone for his girlfriend.
Nate:So, kyle, this is a really good point, because the Bible talks about both of these things, like not rejoicing at people's calamity, and yet there are verses that talk about I think maybe in the Psalms or Proverbs where someone's happy that justice has been served, and that was obviously the misfortune of another, and that is where it can feel at times like the Bible is talking out of both sides of its face.
Kyle:There Proverbs, chapter 24 and verse 17, says do not rejoice when your enemy falls and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and it displeases him and he turn away his wrath from him. So you do have that warning Don't take pleasure and rejoice in your enemy and his failures. But then we do have other examples where we are pretty much told to do that very thing, and we have lots of examples In the book of Psalms. We have what's called the imprecatory Psalm and its language, and there's quite a few of them. When you start reading through the book, there's 150 psalms and quite a few of them are imprecatory, asking for God to take action against your enemies, and so there are quite a few scriptures like that.
Nate:Well yeah, psalm 5810,. The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done. They will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Kyle:Well, that's a pretty gruesome image, but it's biblical.
Nate:There's an extreme example of schadenfreude.
Kyle:Well then, you know, I've got one proverb. We just read Proverbs 24 that says don't rejoice in your enemy's failures. But then Proverbs, chapter 11 and verse 10, says when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices, they shout for joy. When the wicked die.
Nate:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I know that this is a personification in Proverbs 1, but I think it's talking about wisdom and folly. It says I, in turn, will laugh when disaster strikes you. I will mock when calamity overtakes you. You know, there's an example, I think, of schadenfreude.
Kyle:All right. So in Jeremiah, chapter 11 and verse verse 20, with regard to babylon, and we remember that babylon was sent by god to punish the wickedness of the people of judah. But they're still the enemies. And so jeremiah says in chapter 11, verse 20 but o lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart in the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. O lord of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them. So he repeats that a couple of times in his book and all over Deuteronomy 32, verse 43, moses tells them to rejoice, o nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.
Kyle:Maybe one distinction I'm seeing here are you guys seeing the same thing? That there's a difference in rejoicing over the calamity of your personal adversary versus, in a more corporate sense, the adversary of God fails. Do we rejoice because, well, justice was done? Do we rejoice because God won was done? Do we rejoice because god won?
Jon:can that be isolated into people?
Nate:or is it kind of like separating the sinner from the sin, kind of thing, like like evil is being uh, beaten and therefore we are glad at that, um, but individuals, uh, you know, we, we don't want to see individual souls condemned that sort of. Is that kind of?
Kyle:yeah and I. One thing I've noticed when I've gone through a lot of these examples is that they all seem to be the rejoicing would happen after they're defeated, after all hope is gone. You don't rejoice over someone's calamity while they're still around, while they still have a hope of restoration or repentance, but after they've been defeated. Then that's when we see the examples in the Bible and that might be a very subtle distinction, but I think that could be an important one too, that we don't gloat over someone's calamity while they're in the middle of it.
Nate:Oh yeah, yeah, Too soon, too soon, like that phrase, like the, the, the. Maybe the meaning in that phrase is it over someone in the midst of it or before their calamity is complete.
Kyle:In the Bible they seem to be rejoicing after their enemies. They might call for vengeance from the hands of God, for him to take action, for him to take action Again. We always have to remember Romans, chapter 12, that talks about in verse 19 that vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So it might be an important consideration that God we leave the dispensing of justice to God. We can call for his vengeance, but I think we also need to acknowledge most of the imprecatory. Psalms also involve pretty intense self-reflection.
Jon:I mean, if you're having that kind of vengeful thought about it and getting that kind of enjoyment out of it, I think it's easy to see when you feel like it's going wrong or not. You know you're never going to feel that way about your kid or someone learning a lesson. You're not going to feel that you don't delight in the harm or the severity of whatever it is. Maybe you might be pleased at some point that they're learning a lesson, but never at the detriment of their safety or health or feelings or anything right. So I think it's that the vengeance, these words associated with it give it that kind of obvious wrong feel to it. A lot of this is probably based upon your overinflated sense of righteousness of yourself.
Jon:Otherwise it's log and spec kind of thing right, like definitely don't want this to come from a sense of feeling we're higher and mighty, you know, or like an overinflated sense of self. Does that make sense?
Kyle:I think, we should consider degrees of this as well. That delight or joy in someone's downfall or calamity is wrong, but satisfaction in knowing that justice maybe took place is not quite to the same degree as delighting.
Kyle:I mean Ezekiel, chapter 18 and verse 32, god plainly says I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God, but he's just and righteous and executes righteous judgment. And so he does take the lives of people as an execution of justice, but it doesn't mean he delights in it. He takes no joy in it. So well, we may look at Osama bin Laden, capturing him, having him put to death. That's justice, that's fair. It feels like there's some satisfaction that who is arguably the mastermind of, of the attack on our country.
Kyle:Yeah, justice was brought to. We might take satisfaction that we maybe need to be cautioned against delighting, getting too excited over that or enjoying it like we don't take pleasure in the death of anyone but we can be satisfied that justice is that a. Is that maybe a fair way?
Jon:yeah, because how does that correlate with the sanctity of life as well? We understand that there's a cause and effect, we understand that there is justice in that sense, but do we delight and are we happy when someone meets that kind of an end?
Kyle:And then how do we balance this with David cutting off the head of Goliath and parading it around? Did he get a little carried away there? Because, I was thinking like that's kind of crossing a line, but Goliath challenged God.
Jon:But that's just because he couldn't put Goliath on a spit right, like he is too big.
Kyle:Yeah, because I feel like I just said maybe we shouldn't.
Nate:I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's right.
Kyle:I just said maybe we shouldn't. I don't think that's the case, I don't think that's right, maybe we shouldn't get. I just said maybe we shouldn't get carried away and rejoicing or delighting, and then it looks like David kind of gets carried away. But yeah, I don't.
Nate:I don't know Like. I keep coming back to the idea I love when evil gets what's coming to it, but does that necessarily mean that I want that person to you know to burn in hell for all eternity? Like I wish they would have changed.
Kyle:Well, consider what it says in Revelation, chapter 18 and verse 20 regarding Babylon the great.
Nate:Yeah.
Kyle:Rejoice over her, o heaven and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has pronounced judgment against her on your behalf. Yeah, yeah, and that.
Kyle:I've lost without getting into it. Uh, there's different views on Babylon the great. I'll just suggest that that is Rome who persecuted Christians. And then, similarly, uh, revelation also talks about um. Revelation, chapter 19. After this, I heard what seemed to be the loud, the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out hallelujah, salvation and glory, power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just. He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth. So, all throughout revelation, there are these images of rejoicing over the enemies because, and their downfall, because it was, uh, an expression of God's righteous judgment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when it's evil, we should rejoice in a certain way. When it is God claiming victory in judgment over evil, do we rejoice?
Nate:that evil lost or the good won, good one. Well, I mean, do we lie to?
Jon:ourselves too? Do we just? Do we kind of as long as we say glory to be god, you know, uh, you know, justice was done, yeah, um, are we kind of whitewashing it as well?
Kyle:like I knew, this was going to be a fun one for us to discuss. There's I wish you guys could see this. There is a lot of furrowed brows going on right now. There's a lot of gears turning in in our heads right there.
Nate:I think here's the thing is I let's say we're coming to like that's okay, but didn't we like to talk over no, no, you first I understand I would like to say something I understand that death through justice exists and I'm okay with that.
Jon:I'm okay with death penalty, I'm okay with life ending as a matter of justice.
Nate:I think that is a biblical principle.
Jon:I'm okay with that. But being okay with that and understanding that there's value in that, there is justice in that, it's different than enjoying it. You see all these times where people forgive someone for taking the life of their kid and stuff you know in a courthouse, now that doesn't mean that they don't have cause and effect and that they shouldn't have consequence for their actions right.
Jon:But you have a situation like that where you see someone taking that higher road uh, where forgiveness is. It's hard to then think, okay, someone doing, someone doing the opposite, fry them, just being so exuberantly glad about it. I, I can't say being in the same shoes. You know, I would. I don't, I wouldn't know what I feel, but there's something that does feel off about that right that when you would have that kind of joy in something like that and maybe that schadenfreude is, maybe I'm going to the extreme with like death penalty and like that kind of justice with schadenfreude, maybe it's literally like the guy getting pulled over by the cops, it's maybe.
Kyle:Well, that's what I mean by it. Comes in degrees because, maybe, maybe I shouldn't have gotten so animated with the, with the mustang, the loud mustang guy that got pulled over.
Jon:I mean rolling down your window and cheering and clapping. It was probably I got.
Kyle:I probably got too excited over what was a probably end up being a bad day for that guy. But but also he's driving around like an idiot you know, like an idiot I'm not calling him.
Jon:Indeed, I'm saying his behavior was idiot, like now I know now what if that guy was driving erratically putting other people in harm and they got pulled over? You know, you're always going where's the cop when you need one right. And so they actually got pulled over and you're thinking thank goodness. Well, you know, goodness, I'm so happy that that person was humbled and taken off the road at this point in time because someone could have been hurt. Now my joy is a little different than the joy that I would be going like, ah right, Well, that brings up a good point, because maybe it shows why we should be so cautioned.
Kyle:I think schadenfreude is just part of human nature. It's something that, if we don't even know what that word means, it's something we all understand. It's something we're always going to be fighting this urge to rejoice over other people's calamities, and I think we do need to be careful, understanding that it isn't an all bad thing. But also, I think we always need to pair it with self-reflection and just caution ourselves from getting carried away with it. Because why was I so excited? Well, it's probably because all the other times some person who is driving like an idiot cut me off or sped by me really fast in a dangerous way, and there was no cop, like you just said, john, where's a cop when you need one?
Kyle:Well, so am I really like that angry with this guy? He wasn't really that offensive of a driver, he was just driving a really loud Mustang in an obnoxious, slightly dangerous kind of way. But I've seen a lot worse. But it's all my pent up frustrations over the other people that didn't get caught and I just dumped it all out on this guy, and that shows how easy it is to become misguided and get carried away. I think that's another big red flag with this is. We see how rejoicing over God's victory or rejoicing over the defeat of someone who stands opposed to God not our personal enemy, but true evil when it is defeated, we see that it can be good to rejoice over that, but sometimes we do a bad job of attributing something to God that maybe he didn't do. La is on fire right now. Okay, yeah.
Jon:I mean, I was looking at all these tangible examples right now and there's that one, and then there's also the election.
Kyle:Yeah, there's one thing with maybe you're a MAGA Republican but maybe there's just some normal people that just think he was the best option, but they don't necessarily love everything about him. But there is rejoicing because your candidate quote, unquote won. But then you see all the the clips on youtube liberal tears yeah, how many hours do you spend watching?
Jon:oh, I don't but, my point is the question here is like how, how often, as soon as the election was over that there was a epidemic starting of people?
Kyle:compilations all over the place. Yeah, liberal tears, there's a little show called lefties losing it like that.
Jon:That's the the name of the show that started years ago, but I mean it coined especially with the idea of republican nelson's pointing at actually all those people that show is actually run by the show is actually run by australians.
Jon:I think it's really funny. They look at our nation, they're it's like they're commenting on it, right, yeah, and the problem is is a lot of that's baked into humor and so we need to have like, like humor is one of those we need to have a good, healthy relationship with, because humor can can go bad and can can be bad, and well, then there's also like, oh, I was just kidding, right, where you can?
Kyle:you can bail out of a bad if. If a joke goes badly, you can just say well, I was just joking, you know, I didn't mean it, but you get all these situations like Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, and there were, I think there were a lot of people that were reveling in her death and I don't know that that was a good look for Christians. That, well, I shouldn't say I don't know that wasn't a good look for Christians. Well, and getting back to the LA fires, I have seen a lot of people not a lot, but I have seen some videos going around Facebook suggesting that the day after the Golden Globes, and there's jokes about.
Kyle:No one acknowledged God. Ha ha, we're such a godless city. Then the fires break out. I think we're quick sometimes to attribute something to the working of God that we just don't know. God is active in this world. He's sovereign over the whole world, but I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to say, well, that was God doing that, when I don't know.
Nate:It's interesting. As we're talking, I'm really thinking about like, am I glad? I am so glad when evil loses and good wins, just generally speaking, like it, what I've, you know, and I just I look at the political realm because, because I think there are things in the political realm that are evil and I think that there are things and and people who represent good things, and I am happy when the evil loses and the good wins, in my opinion. But then I think about like individual, like an individual on death row. Maybe they committed a serious crime a long time ago and now they're going to die. Am I glad that justice is administered, certainly, but could I potentially look at that person and have some empathy and go you made a mistake, you know, and, uh, the result of that is you losing your life, uh, and am I going to rejoice at that?
Jon:another thing to think about, too, is do we schadenfreude? Am I saying that?
Nate:you have to say it right schadenfreude, schadenfreude, just like so, um, do we see this in the church?
Jon:oh, oh, oh, boy, do we ever see this in the church? I mean, we're bringing in the scale down here, obviously we're not talking about dramatic things in the mirror but do you ever? Do you ever see this in the church? Do you see someone struggling with something and you go?
Nate:they got what's coming to, yeah, oh maybe.
Jon:So the tree, um, I don't know like I've. I've obviously yeah, if it's a human nature thing, then it's going to happen in different scales and so maybe we start. We start, you know, closer to home, and then we can scale out right and closer to home. I'd say with our families and with our um, with the church and with our, with our brethren.
Nate:Is is it's like when you're I just thought of this example Maybe it does or maybe it doesn't apply, but when my kid, I tell them don't touch the stove, don't get close to the fire. And then they touch the stove or they get close to the fire and they get burned. Am I glad that they got burned? No, but am I glad that they learned a lesson? Yeah, oh, I hope that they did.
Jon:Yeah, um, but if it's a brethren that you've been warning and telling them, or they, they said that's not a problem. Or they say my kids are great, they're fine, they're wonderful. And then one falls away like, do you know? Like at what point do we, do we ever have that kind of you know, that comeuppance kind of kind of feeling? And we should? That's obviously. We're saying that's wrong. Right, we shouldn't have that kind of.
Nate:Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. We shouldn't be like Nelson.
Jon:We shouldn't invert that.
Kyle:Yeah, that's Romans 12, verses 14 and 15. I think that's an important we could find some sort of closure on this topic. I look at it as exercise caution. This is just part of human nature. We all wrestle with these feelings, the spectrum of feelings from simply satisfied to know that God has dispensed justice to full-on gloating at the other extreme. We need to exercise caution and self-reflection.
Kyle:Romans 12 and verse 14 says bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Not rejoice with those who weep or over those who weep. Similarly, jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount love your enemies and bless those who curse you. The mount love your enemies and bless those who curse you. Knowing that vengeance belongs to God frees me up to simply love people and show them kindness, knowing that God will take care of things.
Kyle:Well, this discussion, much like in studying for it, has been frustrating in some ways, because when I approach a topic, I want to understand all of it. I want to grasp every aspect of it in my mind and and fully understand it. And this is one of those things that I don't. I don't feel like I come away with a hard and fast set of rules and how to, uh, how to handle these feelings. But I think caution is warranted and we should look at uh, maybe less is more.
Kyle:When it comes to schadenfreude, I'm reminded of some examples in the Bible when David's enemies like King Saul died. Well, 2 Samuel 1, the whole chapter is a tribute to the fallen king. And you'd look at that and think well, he should be rejoicing that his enemy, who tried to kill him on multiple occasions, is dead. But he chose to honor the man because of his position.
Kyle:And I think sometimes we rush to moralize misfortune. Something bad happens and we want to apply some sort of cosmic justice to it or say that God has done something, when we just don't know what God does and does not do. One final example is Luke 13, when they come to Jesus and they told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them do you suppose these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered these things? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. I think in times when we're tempted to rejoice over misfortune, we need to be slow to do it much like anger slow to anger but quick to think Self-reflection and make sure we're not taking too much delight in others' misfortune.
Jon:Well, thanks, kyle. Thank you for that. I mean educating on a new word, hell, no.
Nate:I've heard it, I just never knew, what it meant.
Kyle:A new word, but a familiar emotion.
Jon:Familiar emotion. And I'd say that you might be able to have that joy inside that justice is done, but that doesn't necessarily mean your actions outward need to be anything other than what Romans 12, 14 and 15 say. Bless those who persecute you, bless those who do not curse, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. So thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to the Exhorter podcast.
Nate:Stay tuned for a few more episodes Like subscribe and share with your friends or people who maybe something bad has happened to them and you want to help them by giving them this podcast. It's great. Would this be more for me? If something bad happened? I'm not sure I wasn't thinking too hard. I wasn't really thinking too hard. Yeah, you know one of the thoughts that I had and, John, maybe you can edit this back in or edit it out no, Because it's worthless. Maybe I was listening to Mel Gibson the philosopher.
Jon:The old M Gibson, old Mel, let's just call him M Gibson.
Nate:But I think he said something that was I think it was profound, and he said you are responsible for not the first thought that comes into your head, but the second thought, and you are responsible for your first action. And I thought that's a good point. You know, maybe our first thought is schadenfreude, like, ah, they deserve it, but what's our second thought? Okay, well, here is a person who you know, they, I don't know, we just we think through the situation more than just reacting with our, with our feeling.
Jon:Yeah, and you can actually have that feeling inside, but you know, as Christians we are supposed to walk. You know different and so doesn't mean we need to act on that, do?
Nate:we wait for the outward perspective we can.
Jon:We can be very empathetic, sure yeah, and still value justice inside, like that point. M Gibson, what a scholar yeah, yeah yeah, you may or may not have found the Joe Rogan podcast. His house just burnt down while he was laughing about it on the Joe Rogan podcast.
