A Little Kindness When Your Daughter Ticks You Off

I just watched a YouTube video of a father who was really ticked off because of a rant his daughter had posted on Facebook about how unfair her father was to expect her to do so many chores and how hard her life was.  It was the kind of my-parents-are-so-unfair screed that many of us unload on our friends when we are fifteen. 

This father was not amused.  He made an eight minute video decrying her post, answering her complaints one by one with the same outrage many of us parents would like to dump on our own children when they are rude and unappreciative.  But this father videotaped it, took his 45 and unloaded nine rounds into her laptop and then put it online for all her friends to see.

I hope that by now someone has helped him see exactly where his daughter learned how to vent her anger.  He has now validated her belief that when you are angry you should tear down the other person and humiliate them.  And he took it a step farther, in the name of teaching her a lesson.  He violently destroyed her laptop.  I fear that she will learn that lesson from him all too well.

There is a better way, a way that transforms evil to good and anger to love. When we mistreat someone because they mistreated us, it only multiplies the wrong and escalates conflict.  It never ends well.  When we respond to evil with love we start to transform what is hurtful into that which gives life.

It is a hard thing to do.  Before we can return love for evil and redeem a wrong with compassion, we have to take a step back.  We need to take a long walk, or write a letter and tear it up or get down on our knees in prayer.  To be angry is human and to want to hurt someone when we are angry is instinctual.  But God has planted better possibilities within us.  The first step is to cool off before we respond.  Sometimes we have to cool off for a long while.

How I wish that father had taken his gun and locked it up before he pulled the trigger and taken his video and hidden it in the back of the closet until he could get some perspective on teen angst.  Then he might have been a father who calmed down and later told his daughter how hurt he was and opened an opportunity to listen to her.  That’s hard stuff.  It is the way taught by all religions because it is God’s way.  It is truly life changing.

When we are angry with family, friends, neighbors, strangers, politicians and everyone else, let us take a step back and choose the way that opens up the possibility of relationship.  Let us choose a way helps us and the one who hurt us to grow into better people.  That makes for a better world, the kind of world in which we actually want to live.