getting some perspective on annoying people

I was writing in my journal yesterday about my frustration–my anger, really–with a coworker, using ink on paper as a way to vent and perhaps to find some perspective. I wrote,

“I feel like he is often–always!–judging me. And he is arrogant–and insecure, and well-intentioned. But he doesn’t extend grace to others. Should I expect an atheist to be grace-full? I suppose not.”

It occurs to me as I read this that perhaps it says a lot more about me, that possibly I’m the insecure one who is often–always?–judging this coworker, and that perhaps I’m not extending enough grace in his direction. I’m not sure. I do know that I generally bite my tongue, keep my thoughts and anger to myself, and try to overlook this person’s behavior in a desire to be Christ-like. I believe God has given me interaction with this person for two reasons: to refine me, and to offer an example of Christian kindness to someone who has had pretty negative experiences with those wearing the name of Christ. And I don’t say this as an attempt to pat myself on the back; it’s only by the grace of God that I have worked with this individual for years and not told him off. God gets all the credit for whatever I have accomplished in this situation.

But all that kindness has cost me a good bit internally, as I have regularly directed rants toward this person in my thoughts and found myself really angry. Yesterday morning, I woke up angry, and recognizing that’s not a good thing, I decided to write and move the rant outside my brain.

So back to perspective: as I paused to consider that I shouldn’t expect godly behavior from a godless person, I was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. In “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,” Hopkins describes his experience of darkness, what a number of scholars have identified as depression. As Hopkins considers his “black hours” and his seemingly unheard “cries countless” for help, he arrives at a startling and profound conclusion:

I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

There’s a lot I could say about these lines, but I’ll confine myself to what’s relevant to this post: the lost suffer as believers do, “but worse” because they suffer without God.

That made all the difference for me yesterday morning: my problems, even my problems with this person, are slight compared to his problem, that he is separated from God. As a result, I was able to be graceful with this person, and not a begrudging, “I’m doing this because it’s right but I’m not happy about it and God owes me for putting up with this person” sort of grace (that is no grace at all).

What perspectives allow you to love the annoying?

Tagged as: anger, depression, Gerard Manley Hopkins, grace