Recently I had a clergy friend of mine do a stupid thing. The details are not important. The point is that is action was out of character, caused embarrassment for himself and others, and did not reflect the intelligence that he normally displays. It got me to thinking about what causes us to do stupid things from time to time.
Another friend and I were talking about this and he made some very wise comments that I pass on to you. First, he said, I would want to know what medicine the person is on. As it turns out, the friend that did the stupid thing was on some fairly strong medicine. Given our modern eras tendencies to use stronger and stronger drugs, we need to be alert to the fact that drugs can mess with the minds of the most rationale of people.
The second question that we should ask, is what type of pain the person is experiencing in their lives. We are talking psychic pain here. We know that the sudden loss of a child in a family can cause such psychic pain that it destroys the marriage that otherwise was happy and strong. The emotional pain caused by marital problems, professional problems, financial problems, etc. can be deep enough for some people that they will “act out” in bizarre ways.
There are times when a friend does a stupid thing. We can go to that person and speaking the truth in love we can inquire about medicine and psychic pain as a first step towards responding to them. We can ask the same thing about ourselves when we have acted out of character. While we would like to think that a person is always in control of their behavior, the truth is that none of us are immune to forces beyond the rationale.
