The Online Outrage Machine and Joy of Self-Righteousness

Schadenfreude (noun, from the German) 1. enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others --Merriam Webster’s Dictionary 

At professional baseball games there is an unspoken tradition concerning fans catching foul balls, baseballs hit out of play by the batter at home plate. According to Major League Baseball, 54 balls a game go foul on average, many of those into the stands where a lucky ticket holder just might snag the best of souvenirs. 

The tradition?

“Give the ball to the kid!” In other words, if you are a teen, young adult or adult and catch a foul, the kind thing to do is not to claim it for yourself but instead to hand it over to the nearest kid and/or youngest kid in the seats around you. It is the classy thing to do and worth the price of admission to see a little girl or boy’s eyes light up when they get a baseball! 

Or not.

Because there are also times when an adult, for whatever reason, won’t hand over the ball, and keeps it all to themselves. That’s when the chant “GIVE THE KID THE BALL!” breaks out around that less than magnanimous baseball snatcher. And if they refuse to give it up? Here come the boos.

Which brings me to a story about a scene that played out last Friday at a game in Miami where the Marlins were hosting the Philadelphia Phillies.  Phillie slugger Harrison Bader hit a home run to left field and one intrepid dad jumped into the scrum of folks scrambling to grab the ball and came up with it, then handed it to his young son, who beamed with joy.

But then….

A visibly irate Phillies fan marched over to Dad and insisted that she was entitled to the ball, as it had landed right next to her seat.  She was so vociferous in her visible anger that the father finally just handed the ball over to her.  Marlins employees saw what happened and delivered a baseball gift bag to the little boy and after the game, Harrison Bader gave him an autographed bat.  Alls well that ends well? If only…for a social media uprise began almost immediately and it’s gotten pretty nasty, as video of the altercation has gone viral.

Google “Phillies fan steals ball” and there are more than 8,000,000 results. Multiple videos are on YouTube, one with 221,000 views and counting.  The identity of the woman has not been revealed but that has not stopped internet stalkers from feverishly looking for her, and in at least two cases, misidentifying the person, causing two women to be bombarded with vitriol, contempt, and self-righteous anger.  As of today, September 9^th, the story still has legs. 

Online, folks can’t stop talking, opining, raging, ranting and complaining about it, and often clearly intimating they’d never ever do anything like that! When I was a kid me and the neighborhood boys played a stupid and sometimes injury filled game called “pig pile!” where we’d capture one of our gang, hold them down on the ground then everyone would pile on top.  Yup: that’s as dumb as it sounds and is a good metaphor for what happens so often now in social media land. 

On Tik Tok and Facebook Reels and Twitter and everywhere in cyberspace: there is so much energy unbridled often anonymous, often holier than thou, protest. And all over a dumb or thoughtless social faux pas or mistake that any of us could make on our bad days, when we use faulty judgment or let our emotions get the best of us.

Like that woman who stole the ball.

I guarantee you there are death threats roiling online towards her. That’s the norm in 2025.  One of the greatest of human sins is taking pleasure, even joy, in the suffering of others. We get to say “GOTCHA!” Point a finger of judgment. Take a moral inventory on another child of God while forgetting that we also do dumb, unthinking stuff too. 

I also think this cyber cruelty is born of the callous and mean ways we now go at one another in public. Like it’s okay to cross boundaries of simple human decency. And yes, we are led in example by our current President, who daily revels in bullying, insulting, threatening, attacking, and condemning anyone who dares to get in his way.

In my faith tradition, Jesus offers a merciful alternative to the human sin of self-righteousness.  “…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5) Wise advice to consider before we are tempted to trash someone for sins that we just might be guilty of too.

I’d like to think I would have been glad to let that kid keep the ball, but who knows?  As humans we all have within us the best and the worst of intentions and impulses. 

When it comes to the online outrage machine, “FOUL!” is certainly an apt description.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

In D.C. a City Under Siege and History Itself Under Attack

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”            George Orwell

Letter from Washington, D.C., August 2025

The thing that struck me was how like a ghost town Washington, D.C. was on my visit there last week, my first in almost 25 years. You could cross the wide and expansive Pennsylvania Avenue without a walk light, so sparse was traffic.  It was the emptiest I’ve ever seen the nation’s capital on my many trips there, starting way back to my first visit to the city on an eighth-grade field trip in 1975.

Where was everyone?  The crowds in long lines at museums and memorials…foreign tourists taking in American history for the first time…families from all over the United States enjoying a living civics class, America 101.  

The food trucks and t-shirt vendors lined up on the curb in front of the National Mall. But there were very few folk to buy sparkly red, white, and blue hats or orange popsicles or an all-American hot dog.  The double-decker tourist buses that ride up and down the streets were mostly empty. At the FDR and MLK memorials I toured on the Tidal Basin, the beauty and poignancy of those places seemed like it was reserved for just me.   

What happened to this so alive city of history and politics and power? 

I roamed the vacant halls of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and took in  Julia Child’s full Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen preserved for the ages. I entered almost unaccompanied the hushed space that houses the original “Star Spangled Banner” flag. I got a bit teary when I looked at that historic remnant which symbolizes our nation’s aspirational ideals of sacrifice, courage, and resilience. The flag was still there! But few to witness it.

What is keeping folks away?

Doesn’t help that the current occupant of the White House labels the city a den of thieves and place of uncontrolled crime, even though crime is actually down in D.C., historically speaking. Facts do not matter to our ever-performative reality TV President, who ordered the National Guard to patrol the streets, subways stations and parks. It felt like there were more khaki clad soldiers at so many corners, than out-of-town visitors or federal workers. 

And the feeling on the streets of our Capitol was one of fear.

Deep fear about what’s next from the chaos creating, revenge seeking, attention addicted commander in chief.  Would more federal employees face job loss, in addition to 300,000 people already laid off? More federal prosecutors fired because they dared to indict January 6^th insurrectionists? The current regime continues to slash and burn, with no plan really. Just torch it all down. A nihilistic fever has overtaken the folks in power in D.C., and the chaos shows no sign of slowing.

Even the exhibits I enjoyed at the Smithsonian museums are under siege. As the President wrote on Truth Social recently, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was….Nothing about Success…Brightness…the Future. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”

The exhibit voting and free and fair elections and another on the tapestry of immigration that makes America, well, great—are these on the chopping block? The African American History Museum taught me more about the story and legacy of slavery in America than I’ve ever learned before. How soon might it be censored, altered, or even erased in the days to come?  Like that history didn’t ever happen.

I love the Smithsonian museums because these try to tell the whole American story. Good, bad, ugly, everything. A story that includes everyone, no one left out or silenced. Maybe that’s why select exhibits anger some so much, those who would whitewash any history that discomforts them, contradicts their view of American greatness. I love America for its humanity and its flawed and beautiful nature.  Our American story is tragedy and triumph, and it is a story that is still being written and that is wonderful and amazing.   

My advice is to get to D.C. very soon.  We’ve no idea what is to come next for the Smithsonian, or for any of the repositories and landmarks of American history in the District of Columbia.  Our shared history and how that is told and what is being told is under attack.  And that is sad. And that is scary. And that is such a shame. 

And that is history in the making that I for one wish was not true.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

     

 

Go Away, Get Away, Be Away Before Summer Fades

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen

It’s breezy here this morning, about 11 am now, high thin clouds above, broken up by glimpses of a bright blue August sky.  Families walk by me with their beach implements in tow, on the way to spend the day by the sand and the surf. The laughter and chatter of children is everywhere, as kids ride their tricycles or glide by on roller blades, or take a walk with Meme and Papa so mom and dad can get a break.      

I am away.  

For the past four days I’ve gone away to a modest cottage on Cape Cod, a weathered abode, covered in grey shingles, with plenty of windows to let the sea breeze in, neighbors close by, enjoying their time away too.  There are bikes in the shed for long rides and board games in the closet for rainy days, and a list of recommended places for the best seafood and the tastiest ice cream nearby.  

We all need to get away. We need to escape, retreat, run off to…a seaside bungalow, or a lakeside cabin. We need to get away to a just big enough efficiency apartment in the heart of the city we love and then go to a show or the museum. We need to go away to the mountains and hike, to the plains with their stark beauty or the prairies with the grass that sways in the wind. We need to find our unique away place, a special and singular place where a visit renews our souls, rests our bodies, and resets our spirits.

Away.

It doesn’t have to be wicked expensive or overly chichi, or a destination touted by travel sites or a place made viral when promoted on TikTok, no. Away can be your family’s farmhouse up in Vermont that you’ve spent so many summers at, that makes you feel like a child again when you return.  Away can be as close as a day trip to a favorite local beach or to munch golden onion rings at the clam shack down the street or to sit in the stands at Fenway and watch a ball game on a warm summer night.

Everyone needs to go away on regular basis. As a discipline.  And not just in summer.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded by the ding of cellphone notifications and the click clack of our laptop computer’s keyboard, we just need a break. A chance to catch our breaths.  To sleep late or take a nap in the hammock mid-afternoon. In these times when TV and the “news” are on everywhere we go (home, restaurant, bar, on the gas station pump, above the dentist chair!) we need to step away from the storm and bluster of it all. Turn away from and turn off all those empty-headed talking heads that make us despair.

With no “away” we risk becoming zombies in life, overworked, numbed up and zoned out because the pace and the volume of modern life is just too much to take. Doesn’t matter if you work for UPS or at Market Basket, or as a teacher or banker or stay at home parent. The only people who do not need to get away and take a break are….well, no one.

God did take the seventh day of Creation off, to rest, after all. No doubt God was exhausted by the effort of lighting the fuse on the Big Bang, then making everything from aardvarks to zebras, then going into overtime to make us cranky, pain in the tush, human beings. Talk about a divine effort!  After that job even the Creator of Everything That Is needed some zzzz’s, precious time to do, well…absolutely nothing.

I write this essay in the first week of August which means if you’ve yet to enjoy a summer get away, if you have not escaped somewhere, to anywhere but here, times a wasting. We’re going to need all the energy we can muster come September and the new school year and summer’s end and more of the continuing chaos being sowed by the folks in D.C. (I for one wish they would go away! Often too!)

So, here’s some unsolicited life and spiritual advice. Just go. Get away. Find your away place. Pack a bag.  Hold the mail. Put down the phone for the day. Trade wingtips and high heels for flip flops.

And then enjoy. Really enjoy that place called…away.    

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

Kindness ALWAYS Wins The Ride and Race of Human Life!

"It takes courage to be kind.”   --Maya Angelou

Kindness is an amazing and oh so needed virtue in our world now and always. Kindness happens when we treat another person with love, with care, with respect, honoring their dignity and worth as fellow human beings on the earth.  For folks of faith like me, kindness is at the heart everything we believe and everything we do.  You see, if I say I love God but then fail to love a neighbor, well, kindness loses. God loses in a way.  

We’re living in times when it might be tempting to conclude that kindness is somehow out of fashion now. Kindness is too risky, or it feels scary in practice. Kindness is even a sign of weakness on our parts and not strength. Kindness just does not have the fortitude to survive in our sharp elbowed all too cynical world. 

That’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Kindness still matters. Kindness is the most powerful energy to change this world for the good.  Just ask folks like me who in less than two weeks will participate in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC) charity bike ride across Massachusetts, the weekend of August 2-3^rd. Thousands of us PMC folk—riders, volunteers, and donors—we will dare to be kind. To practice kindness that moves us to help those in need, folks battling cancer, people who love someone with cancer and neighbors and strangers who lost someone to cancer.

Thousands of riders from all over the country and world will get on their bikes, cinch up their helmets, and then ride tens of thousands of mile to be kind. To show folks who have been hurt by cancer that someone is on their side, pulling for them, praying for them and riding for them. 

I’m a sixteen-year rider, been a church pastor for 35 years, and on this earth for 64 years, and I have never experienced such a huge and wonderful gathering of kind folks as I do in the PMC.  We’ll try our best to both talk the talk of kindness and ride the ride of kindness too!  If you’d like to donate, please follow the link for my ride at the end of this essay.  

Here are some of the amazing numbers which mark the PMC.

$76 million: 2025’s fundraising goal to support research and care at Boston’s world class cancer institute, the Dana Farber (DFCI). 

One-billion dollars plus: total money raised by the PMC since its first year, 1980.

One-half, as in fifty percent of all the new cancer drugs developed in the United States in the last five years came from the Dana Farber.

One hundred percent: when you give a dollar to the PMC, ALL OF IT goes directly to cancer care and research.

186 miles: the distance from Sturbridge to Provincetown, Massachusetts, the longest of the PMC rides this year.  

78,000: the number of pedal strokes for an average rider like me to go that entire 186 miles, from the hills of central Mass to the dunes at the tip of the Cape.

6,800: the number of folks who will ride this year.

3,000: the number of volunteers who will support the PMC riders.

Priceless: with each mile pedaled our world gets closer to a cure for cancer and becomes a kinder place. So, on this upcoming August weekend, if you see PMC riders cycling the highways, byways, and hidden corners of the Bay State, please wave, smile, say a prayer, and remember that the main fuel which gets us all the way from start to finish is simple human kindness.  

To donate to my ride: https://profile.pmc.org/JH0352

To make a general donation: https://donate.pmc.org/

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.