“Forgive me, but it's hard to be a human”

Let’s talk about Congress.

No, not the story you’re probably thinking of. Although we’ll get to that later.

I read last week that the son of Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) committed suicide on December 31, 2020. On January 5, Raskin and his wife wrote a deeply moving obituary for their son:

[In school], his irrepressible love of freedom and strong libertarian impulses made him a skeptic of all institutional bureaucracy and a daring outspoken defender of all outcasts and kids in trouble. Once when third-grade Tommy and his father saw a boy returning to school after a weeklong suspension and his Dad casually remarked, ‘it looks like they let finally let him out of jail,’ Tommy replied, ‘no, you mean they finally let him back into jail.’…

He hated cliques and social snobbery, never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line — ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.’…

Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

Reading the newsletter where I first heard about this and the full obituary by the Raskins, I was struck by two things:

Last year was incredibly hard in many ways. It drove home the fact that we simply don’t know how much time or opportunity we’ll have to interact with others. Maybe we’ll have the countless hours over many decades that we expect, or maybe pandemic or violence or accident ends a life much sooner, or maybe life continues but lockdown or geography or changing circumstances makes the relationship impractical, or maybe a relationship that we took for granted decays or is torn apart. Why not take the opportunities we have to give others humor, joy, knowledge, or goodness?

And last year drove home the fact that we simply don’t know what pain others are going through. As we careen through life, scrambling to meet our obligations and check off items on our agendas and satisfy our wants and goals, we’re often oblivious to the nicks and dents we inflict on others who are similarly hurtling down their own paths, and we’re often oblivious to the opportunities we have and miss to make someone’s life better. Often these oversights and injuries are easily shrugged off, forgiven or forgotten, but how often do we unwittingly place a burden on people like the Raskin family who, because of the pain they’re going through, may not be able to handle one more thing?

This may seem trite, but it’s important. Please bear with me.

There are lots of sayings that I could quote right now. “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” “If you can’t find anything nice to say, don’t say it.” “If you can be anything, be kind.” And so on. These are, frankly, cliches. As such, I dislike quoting them. But calling a statement a cliche doesn’t mean it’s false; it’s merely lost its impact due to overuse because it’s true. Maybe it’s time to reclaim the impact.

Kindness is often equated with niceness - pleasantness, politeness, a kind of superficial avoidance of anything displeasing. It goes much deeper than that. After all, when Paul talks about God’s kindness in Rom. 2:4 and Tit. 3:4, he isn’t saying that God is pleasant or polite; he’s talking about God’s work throughout history to restore humanity’s relationship to him, culminating in sending Christ. And when Paul exhorts us to be kind in Gal. 5:22 and Col. 3:12-13, he links it with “bearing with one another and forgiving one another… just as the Lord has forgiven you; and to all these virtues add love.” The standard of how we treat others is how Christ himself treats us! “Practice random kindness,” indeed.

The events in the Capitol building last week are, I believe, the dark inverse of this. No one wakes up on a sunny day, feeling that all is well with their life and the world, and says, “I think I’d like to participate in a deadly riot today.” Instead, it grew out of many years of political partisanship and mutual hostility, and repeated choices to double down on grievance and anger instead of looking for common ground, and looking for the worst in your opponents instead of extending grace, and a willingness to listen to cynical or deluded or self-serving people who fan the flames of it all. Any single act may seem harmless, but - without minimizing the responsibility of everyone who directly participated in or instigated last Wednesday’s events - it all built up until chaos and destruction and death resulted.

It’s easy to think that small, day-to-day gestures have little impact. But, again, last year - and last week - show that’s not the case; the opportunities taken and missed, goodness such as Tommy Raskin’s life and pain such as his death, all ripple out and affect others far beyond what we can see. In fact, our actions toward others are the greatest impact we can have. As C.S. Lewis writes,

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. — The Weight of Glory

So practice kindness. Make others’ lives easier rather than harder. Remember that it’s hard to be a human.

Hug everyone in your household. Send an encouraging note to a coworker or fellow churchgoer. Give your parents, siblings, or adult children a phone call. Turn off your electronic device so you’ll have more time for others. Go to bed early so you’ll have the energy and patience to be kinder tomorrow. Complain less. Most folks on Facebook and Twitter probably already know what things bother you; you probably don’t need to inform them. If you’re struggling, let people know. Kindness doesn’t mean being dishonest, and you give people an opportunity to be kind to you. Respond to bad political news with lament and prayer instead of outrage and grievance. Forgive others, as Jesus forgave us. Do what you can to help those around you take a tiny step toward everlasting splendor.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. Crisis counselors can also be reached by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741. — “Uphill” on Tommy Raskin