Rejoicing at the misfortune of others

Of all the icky things our culture manifests, this one is a serious stomach-turner for me.

I’m sure the tragedy of the Titan submersible has not escaped your daily newsfeed. The Titan, which provided tours of the Titanic shipwreck, lost contact with its mother surface vessel about two hours into its dive Sunday morning on June 18th, about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The U.S. Navy said it detected what sounded like an implosion within hours of the Titan descending to visit the Titanic wreckage, which killed all onboard.

That you likely already knew. However, what you may not know is how far too many people have rejoiced over the deaths of those who were aboard the Titan.  

“I have nothing to say but eat the rich,” one Twitter user posted.  MSNBC contributor Elie Mystal said: “Next time some rich white person wants to take Sam Alito on an expensive trip, please take him to see the Titanic.”

There’s actually a term that’s been coined to define this skin-crawling attitude – the German word schadenfreude which is a combination of the German nouns schaden, meaning “damage” or “harm,” and freude, meaning “joy.” So you’re rejoicing over some injury or misfortune that’s suffered by another, especially when that someone is considered to be of a higher social, economic, or career status than you.

Commenting on the horrible remarks made about the demise of those aboard the Titan, LA Times columnist Jessica Gelt wrote: “Like a digital Tower of Babel, social media is evolving into an increasingly ugly and chaotic space — a real-time repository for our worst impulses, uninspired musings, scatological humor and ill-formed thoughts that should be kept to ourselves. It is an online Mall of America: vast, vacuous, relentlessly commercial and soul-sucking. And in a time of immense crisis — political, ecological, social — it has become a garbage dump of vile commentary publicly aired because that’s just what we do now.”

Yep, it sure is. It reminds me of the place in Scripture where Paul talks about the downhill slide of humanity and says that “evil people will proceed from bad to worse” (2 Tim. 3:9).

Welcome to worse.

When to rejoice

If you weren’t aware, the Bible has some pretty explicit instructions for us in this area that we should all take to heart.

It starts with Scripture saying that God doesn’t rejoice at anyone’s death no matter who they are or what they’ve done: “I take no pleasure [even] in the death of the wicked” (Ezek. 33:11).  

The Bible’s wisdom literature then turns its attention to us when it says, “He who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished. Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles” (Prov 17:5, 24:17).

Such an attitude was evidently well known even in the earliest of days, with the book of Job (which some say is the oldest book of the Bible) declaring: “Have I rejoiced at the extinction of my enemy, or exulted when evil befell him? No, I have not allowed my mouth to sin by asking for his life in a curse” (Job 31:29–30).

The only way in which Scripture speaks about taunting someone over their downfall is when a person receives the inevitable negative consequences of their own evil actions and has deliberately shunned multiple attempts at correction. Then wisdom itself says: “I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes” (Prov. 1:26).

David characterized those who hated him as “rejoice[ing] when I am shaken” (Ps. 13:4), but our much-different mandate is to, “rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15).

But sometimes that’s not so easy.

By and large, the church does an excellent job of weeping with those who weep. We have plenty of care ministries and individual outreaches to those who are hurting, so that base seems well covered.

But that first part? Applauding someone else’s sunshine is oftentimes difficult.

Why is that? There’s actually a body of psychological research on the subject with mind science saying we struggle at reveling with someone in their success because of envy, selfishness, comparison traps, resentment, and, in the extreme, narcissistic disorders.

This maps pretty well with what Scripture tells us: “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing” (James 3:16).

The bottom line for us is we’re not to follow the crowd into the poisonous pool of social media that seems to cheer someone’s ruin or, God forbid, death. Instead of having the “spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2), we’re told to “live by the [Holy] Spirit…Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another” (Gal. 5:25–26).

Easier said than done sometimes, but far more peaceful and Christlike.