Launching Campers, Holding Grudges

I have to admit, it was unclear to me what Thurman was trying to say in his chapter on Deception.  I guess he was approaching it from the point of view of the weak, who must use deception as a means of protection against the strong.  That's a very one-sided view, in my opinion.  Deception works both ways, and generally it boils down to the same thing no matter how you approach it: lies make things worse.

Take this example from the summer camp where I grew up.  I have lived there for seventeen years and worked there for the past five summers, and by now I know that camp counselors like to have fun with gullible campers.  Personally, I hate lying, even when the purpose of the lie is "just have fun" or "they don't need to know the truth about that."  I find that saying "sorry, I can't tell you that, it's none of your business" works pretty well for the second instance.  In the first...well, that's where the interesting stories come from.

Before I was old enough to work on staff, some counselors decided to "have some fun" with their campers during canteen hour one day.  Spying a small wooden platform in the ground, a camper asked his counselor what it was for.  The correct response was: "That's a cover for the septic system".  What the counselor said was: "That's the camper launcher."  This one instance of deception quickly grew into a camp-wide charade on the part of the staff and a matter of great concern to the gullible children.  An elaborate set of rituals had to be in place in order for the "launcher" to work...staff members heightened the drama and prolonged the lie by stealing components of the launcher's regalia.  Those same staff members were captured by mobs of campers and tied to chairs.  Little girls became overly excited and worried what would happen to the camper after "launch", a development which led to blankets and pillows being brought to cushion the child's fall.  Finally, at the end of the week, an announcement was made: the camper launcher was not real.  Some campers had left early, and so went on believing this lie until hopefully someone corrected their false thinking.

What does this story have to do with Thurman's chapter?  I'm not totally sure, but basically my point is that lies are powerful and harmful.  I would have to say the same thing goes for chapter four of Thurman's book, Hate.

I think Thurman's chapter on hate is a little clearer than the chapter on deception, but could be boiled down to one sentence: hate hurts you as much (if not more) than the person you hate.  I should know, because I spent years of my life hating people for things they had done in the past, even things that had been done by their social groups and not them as individuals.  I let my hatred for my peers (and this is high school, by the way) fester in me for years.  And who did it hurt?  Me.  I'm still scarred by that hate, and I feel oddly disconnected from those years of my life because of it.  By the time I graduated, I was on better terms with most of my graduating class, but the emotional memories that really stick with me are negative.  I don't know how to change that, other than to tell myself not to allow hate to creep in again.  I need God's help with that more than almost anything else.