Hurt Mail Is In - Hate Mail Is Out

Carl Trueman's latest essay is a zinger as usual. It's called, Is Hurt Mail the New Hate Mail? Here is his conclusion, but read the whole thing.

Thus, to complain that somebody has hurt you is, as noted above, to put an aesthetic category where a moral category should be. The question to ask is not "Do I feel pain?" but "What has this person done that has caused me pain?" If the person has maligned you, trashed your good name, accused you of being cruel to nice old ladies and puppies with injured paws, then you may have good grounds to feel hurt. But the problem then is not the symptomatic pain which you feel but your accuser's actual transgression of a moral precept, in this case, the breach of the Ninth Commandment. Don't whine about the effect; complain rather about the cause. Paul doesn't criticize others primarily for hurting him; he criticizes them for breaking moral commandments, for sinning against God.

Expressions of hurt are too often really something else: cowardly attempts by representatives of a cosseted and self-obsessed culture to make themselves uniquely important or, worse still, to bully and cajole somebody they dislike to stop saying things they don't want to hear or which they find distasteful. My advice to such is akin to that of the counselor in the Bob Newhart sketch: Stop it! If somebody's writing or speaking hurts you, ask yourself "Why?", don't whine about the discomfort. Get a grip, get yourself some trousers, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and please, please, please, don't hide behind the aesthetic pietisms of the tiresome and clichéd `feel my pain while I process my hurt' posse. Have the backbone, have the decency - nay, have the honesty - to take your licks and move on, either to addressing the substance of the argument or to some area of endeavour that is, well, perhaps less painful and hurtful for you.