I Laughed At Something I Did Not Think Was Funny

There is a half second at work that a great many people are still carrying, and none of them have ever described it to anybody.

Picture the woman in the room. Four people, standing by the printer, and somebody says something about a colleague who is not there. It is not cruel exactly. It is a joke about the way he speaks, and it is sharp, and it is funny in the way that unkind things are funny.

And everybody laughs.

And she laughs.

Not loudly. She does the smaller version, the exhale and the face, the one that means I am in this room with you.

And then somebody changes the subject and the whole thing is over in about eleven seconds and nobody in that group will ever think about it again.

She has thought about it perhaps two hundred times since March.

Here is what she cannot explain to anybody, and it is the reason this is hard. If she described it, out loud, to a friend, the friend would say it was nothing. And they would be right, in the sense that measures things by their size. Nobody was harmed. He never knew. It was a face she made by a printer.

And it has sat in her for five months, because size is not how conscience works. Conscience does not weigh events. It notices which direction a person moved in, and she moved toward the room and away from a man who was not there to be defended, and she knows it, and no argument about proportion touches it.

The account keeps the crying

There is a scene at the end of Matthew that is one of the most important passages in the Bible for people carrying something like this.

A man who had promised everything is standing by a fire, and he is asked three times whether he knows the person on trial, and the third time he does something the account does not soften.

Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. (Matthew 26:74, King James Version)

That is a far larger failure than a laugh by a printer, under far greater pressure, by somebody with far more reason to be afraid.

And here is what the account does next, and it is the thing worth noticing.

And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:75)

He went out and wept bitterly.

The account keeps the weeping. It does not tidy it and it does not linger on it either. It is one clause, and the man goes out, and the story continues, and by the end of the same book he is being given work to do.

You are not the first person to move toward a room and away from somebody, and Matthew 26 records a far larger version without one word of contempt for the man (Matthew 26:74), and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that account in front of somebody carrying eleven seconds by a printer.

And notice what does not happen. Nobody in the text tells him it was nothing. Nobody argues him out of the weeping by pointing at the pressure he was under, which was enormous and real.

You have not been argued out of your own conscience, and Matthew 26:75 lets the weeping stand rather than explaining it away (Matthew 26:75), and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a thing seriously without crushing the person under it.

Confess is a smaller word than people think

There is a line in John's first letter that is often read as a heavy religious transaction and is actually rather plain.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Confess there means to say the same thing. To agree with what is actually true about a thing rather than to argue with it.

Which is exactly what has been unavailable to her. She cannot say it to a friend, because they will make it smaller. She cannot say it to him, because that would be a strange and self serving conversation. So it has had nowhere to go, and a thing with nowhere to go does not shrink, it settles.

You have somewhere to say the true thing, and 1 John 1 makes confessing a matter of saying the same thing rather than of performing anything (1 John 1:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a conversation rather than a ritual.

And notice the two words in the middle of the verse. Faithful and just. Not merciful and lenient. Just, which means it is a settled matter rather than a favor being asked for.

You are dealing with something already settled rather than pleading for something, and 1 John 1:9 uses the words faithful and just about the forgiving (1 John 1:9), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that stick rather than leaving somebody to go round again in September.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could easily become disproportionate in either direction.

This is not saying she is a bad person or that the laugh reveals her true character. It reveals that she was in a room with four other people and that human beings are social animals.

It is also not saying it was nothing. It was not nothing, and being told it was nothing is exactly what has left it with nowhere to go for five months.

And it is not telling her to confess it to him. That would put a burden on a man who was never harmed and never knew, in order to relieve her own discomfort, which is not repentance, it is transfer.

And plainly: if this has grown into something that reaches into how you see your whole self, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you wants it all to stop, that is bigger than eleven seconds. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not weakness.

You are not being asked to make a scene out of this, and 1 John 1 makes the saying of it plain and short rather than elaborate (1 John 1:9), and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a right sized thing at its right size.