Bad or Hurt?

By: Missionary Team

You look around at the world and you see how bad everyone is. You see all of the mistakes that people make. You see the sins they commit: sex outside of marriage, drug use, alcohol abuse, homosexual tendencies, etc. But answer me this: why are they doing the bad things that they are doing? Because they're bad? Because they're evil? I think it is because they are hurt. Let’s use Loki from the Marvel movies as an example. Loki is the younger brother of Thor(the heir to the throne). Thor is the favorite child. He starts out as arrogant, prideful, and self-focused. He does care about his family and friends, but he puts his own desires above their needs. Loki grows up in his brother’s shadow. Thor does everything well. He’s liked, and Thor is going to be king. What is Loki going to be? Loki doesn’t feel that he is as well-liked as Thor. He doesn’t feel that his father, Odin, is as proud of him as he is of his brother. He feels overlooked and unappreciated. He then finds out that he is adopted. Loki lived his whole life thinking he was one person and found out that he was adopted and was also part of the group that Odin fought against, the Frost-Giants. Talk about a bad day!!! Loki’s world was shattered.

Let’s take a look at the wounds that he was suffering from: Rejection, loneliness, confusion, fear, uncertainty, failure, feeling unwanted, just there to be used, unloved, and identity crisis. Ouch! Have you ever felt any of these things? If so, then you know what Loki was going through. He tried to overcome these things by proving that they weren’t true and that he could be a son of Odin. He came up with the plan to let the Frost-Giants into Asgard so that he could destroy them and prove his worth. It was not a good thing to do, but he did it out of a place of hurt, fear, and confusion. He was afraid to be a Frost-Giant, he was afraid that he was not really an Asgardian, which was what he thought he was for years, He felt like he was just a stolen piece of property, and was just a means to bring the war to an end, a pawn in the war. He loved Odin, which is seen by his concern for his health, but he didn’t think that his father loved him. His entire plan to let the Frost-Giants into Asgard, and let them almost kill Odin, was so that he could save his father and be a hero. He was just trying to earn his father’s approval and love. This can be seen when at the end of the movie Loki says, “I could have done it father, for you, for all of us!”~Marvel’s Thor. All he wanted was to be accepted and to be Thor’s ‘equal’. Does your heart go out to him?

It has been said that “hurt people, hurt people”. This is so true. When someone is hurt and is trying to cope, they hurt people. That’s what Loki did. Everything Loki did in the first Thor movie, was all about him trying to prove his worth and earn his father’s love and acceptance. Was it right? No, but does it help you understand better? Have you ever been hurt, and hurt somebody because of it? Maybe you were having a bad day and so you lost patience with your little brother. Or maybe you're struggling with your father leaving you, and you don’t feel good enough, and it leads you to leave your own family. See, hurt people, hurt people. It’s not good, but it’s true. Just because someone does bad things and makes bad decisions, does not mean that they are a bad person. They may not even know better. For example, the man who says that he is gay or the woman who says that she identifies as a man, why do they do these things? You may never know, but you can’t judge them. Most likely, they went through something really hard and didn’t have the proper help to get through it. Don’t judge them, love them!! They need someone to care for them, not to tell them that they no longer belong. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Hate the wrong, but don’t hate people. Love them, and be Christ to them. “Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge” ~James 4:11