The Words That Hurt the Most

I want to share a story with ya’ll about a very sad, concerning email I received from a dear friend of mine a couple days ago. I will leave him nameless, but for the sake of providing a name, I am going to call him Buddy. 

Buddy is a guy I had the honor of meeting and becoming very close friends with after God in his crazy, awesome, mysterious ways paired us up for a program here at SMU called Conversation Buddy Program. Buddy is originally from Saudi Arabia, but he has been living in Dallas for the past year receiving his English language credit at SMU. After completing it and passing way before the date he was required to pass by, he was then enrolled as an official SMU student and just began his first semester undergrad less than two weeks ago. Pretty cool, hu? I know we can all remember how exciting, nervous, and anxious we all were when we first started out here at SMU. Are we going to make friends? Will we like it here? Will we fit in with campus life and social life? How hard will our classes be? Will we succeed in not failing out? These questions, along with countless others ran through our heads weeks before we headed off to SMU, but none of us could have guessed what was ahead of us until we jumped on the first day and began this next chapter of our lives.

As hard as it was for all of us at some point during our first semester here at SMU, imagine how hard it would be coming here as an international student. My dear friend Buddy is experiencing first hand what that feels like. Not only is he faced with the same obstacles, questions, and trials that we all have had to endure, but he also has a few other, very important barriers he must experience. The first one, is the language barrier. Although he has a solid year of English under his belt and can now speak and write the language very well, it still is not second nature to him after only have learning it a year ago! So imagine getting your first intense English paper essay over a 400 page book…..except you had a difficult time reading and comprehending some of the language, and yet now you are required to write in your own words (in English) about a challenging topic. Talk about an extra burden added to your shoulders! However, although the language barrier is a challenging and difficult aspect itself, my friend Buddy wrote me the other day expressing his grief and anger, but most of all sadness, towards the extreme barrier he is facing right now: having to go to class every day with students who don’t care to get to know him because he is from a different country and doesn’t speak English as well as they do, as well as hearing whispers and comments made about how he is a “terrorist” because of his name and the country he comes from. Please just take a moment to reflect about how degrading and hurtful this would be to hear and face every day when you walk into your classrooms…

When I first read his email, tears immediatley began to form. My heart sank, my cheeks burned, my palms began to sweat, and I could feel grief and anger rocking from with in me. How is it, that in today’s world, people think it is okay to talk about another HUMAN BEING like this?!?! I mean, it totally blows my mind! Why the heck to people think that’s okay?!?! Buddy may be from a different culture, yes true. Buddy may not have the same skin color, yes true. Buddy may not speak English as well or be familiar with American culture, yes true, true, true! It’s all very true. But what justifies people’s behavior and attitude towards Buddy? What, because we don’t agree with his country on government affairs? Or is it because we think we have the right to associate him with being a terrorist because in history we have learned of people from his country who have been? What justifies one human degrading and demoralizing another human being? When you start to ask yourself this question, you will come up with the simple answer: nothing justifies it, nothing at all.

I must take the time right now to address this point to you however….

After the emotions I felt inside began to cool down a bit, the Lord immediatley humbled me. And I was face to face with humility and my pride. How often do I stereotype other people every single day I walk down the boulevard? How often do I make comments behind another person’s back about the way they look, speak, act, dress, behave? How often do I just let words slip out of my mouth that do nothing but degrade another human being, be it a classmate, a teacher, a friend, a complete stranger. The answer to all of these is more often than not. So you see, although I may not be calling Buddy a terrorist or poking fun at his English, I sure as heck make up for this by degrading others in various other ways, whether I mean to or not, whether I catch myself doing it or not. And that’s what is most haunting to me….the fact that I unconsciously do so, not even stopping to catch myself do it. I am no better than the person who calls Buddy a terrorist when I decide to call a girl a slut, yet how often I let my pride take the best of me and trick my mind into thinking I am somehow not as “bad” as a sinner. How foolish I am to think that!

The words that hurt the most, more often than not, are the words we let slip out of our mouths and roll off our tongues with out taking a second to realize what we are about to say. The words that hurt the most are not always the more obvious ones like “Buddy is a terrorist,” but rather the ones that our culture and society has adapted into its everyday conventional lifestyle such as: “you’re so gay,” or “you’re a retard,” or “wow, you have serious ADD.” The sad and unfortunate reality is that words like this have such a powerful impact of hurting and tormenting our fellow human beings then we like to realize. The truth is: we are all sinners, and we all fall to the world and what it teaches us. The world doesn’t take a second glance at phrases like these. The world says its just emphasizing your point, or its just getting your point across in a faster more effective way. How long will it take us until we stop listening to the world and start listening to God? When will we begin to take a moment to think about the words we say before we say them? When will the everyday stereotypes and judgments we constantly degrade others by come to a halt? If we’re not willing to be honest with God about the ugly truth that we all hurt one another by the words we use sometimes, then how will we ever be able to experience his grace and move forward changed? If we want to grow, if we want to be able to love others better, then we must get real with God about all the ugly stains of sin that cover our bodies. Although we may not be calling someone a terrorist, we may be making fun of a girl’s short skirt and mid-drift top, and defining her by an ugly stereotype.

Please pray for my friend Buddy and please pray for one another, that the Lord would allow our hearts to be changed and our minds to be renewed about the way we view other people. How often do we find ourselves letting classmates pass by us (like Buddy) with out giving them the time of day to get to know them and see how incredible of a person they probably are. Remember: Your words can hurt or heal. So what did yours do today?