As the media was spooling down off of the high tide of deliberation over Jeff Bethke’s Jesus>Religion YouTube video, another controversial video went viral. Tommy Jordan of Albermarle, NC, posted this video which was intended to discipline his daughter for posting a disrespectful Facebook rant against her parents. Jordan reads his daughter’s post, responds to it, and then proceeds to shoot several rounds into his daughters laptop (which he had just recently updated and repaired) with a .45 caliber handgun.
Throughout the video, Jordan – an IT professional, and self-published author – puffs on a cigarette and smolders over the disrespect shown by his daughter. As of this writing, he has had over 3 million views of the video, thousands of comments, posts, and according to his Facebook page, calls from the media. This has all transpired over the last 3 days.
Unlike many bloggers and internet opinion wonks out there, I am going to refrain from judgement. Jordan defends his parenting style, and he has lots of “fans” for reacting in such a public way. He has already had to pass the judgement of local police, as well as social services. Many have called for his arrest, many have called for worse. I am extremely uninterested in joining the choirs on either side.
Instead, I want to write about anger. Interestingly enough, my men’s group at church just focused on anger as our topic of discussion last Wednesday. So when Jordan’s video hit the internet media jackpot today, I immediately thought of what we had talked about. Can anger be sinful? When is anger OK? How should we deal with anger healthfully?
Jordan was angry – no doubt. And his anger manifested to the point of frustration that he decided to take his parenting dilemma public and resolve it with a violent act. Evidently, he really wanted to get through to his daughter. To say he lost his temper would be putting it mildly.
Ephesians 4:26 says, “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry…”
Jordan posted this response to a reporter inquiry from the Toronto Star on his Facebook page. Below is an excerpt:
Q: How did your daughter respond to the video and to what happened to her laptop?
A: She responded to the video with “I can’t believe you shot my computer!” That was the first thing she said when she found out about it. Then we sat and we talked for quite a long while on the back patio about the things she did, the things I did in response, etc.
Later after she’d had time to process it and I’d had time to process her thoughts on the matters we discussed, we were back to a semi-truce… you know that uncomfortable moment when you’re in the kitchen with your child after an argument and you’re both waiting to see which one’s going to cave in and resume normal conversation first? Yeah, that moment. I told her about the video response and about it going viral and about the consequences it could have on our family for the next couple of days and asked if she wanted to see some of the comments people had made. After the first few hundred comments, she was astounded with the responses.
People were telling her she was going to commit suicide, commit a gun-related crime, become a drug addict, drop out of school, get pregnant on purpose, and become a stripper because she’s too emotionally damaged now to be a productive member of society. Apparently stripper was the job-choice of most of the commenters. Her response was “Dude… it’s only a computer. I mean, yeah I’m mad but pfft.” She actually asked me to post a comment on one of the threads (and I did) asking what other job fields the victims of laptop-homicide were eligible for because she wasn’t too keen on the stripping thing.
We agreed we learned two collective lessons from this so far:
First: As her father, I’ll definitely do what I say I will, both positive and negative and she can depend on that. She no longer has any doubt about that.
Second: We have always told her what you put online can affect you forever. Years later a single Facebook/MySpace/Twitter comment can affect her eligibility for a good job and can even get her fired from a job she already has. She’s seen first-hand through this video the worst possible scenario that can happen. One post, made by her Dad, will probably follow him the rest of his life; just like those mean things she said on Facebook will stick with the people her words hurt for a long time to come. Once you put it out there, you can’t take it back, so think carefully before you use the internet to broadcast your thoughts and feelings.
Tommy Jordan has not let the sun set on his anger, as seemingly he has made amends of sorts with his daughter. He has also come to an understanding about the consequences of his actions. The lesson he was trying to teach his daughter had a much deeper effect that what he intended or expected. As Jordan points out to his daughter, the impact on their family is astounding. The world is full of hatred and anger, and much of it has been focused on Tommy Jordan and his daughter. “One post, made by her Dad, will probably follow him the rest of his life…you can’t take it back, so think carefully before you use the internet to broadcast your thoughts and feelings.”
As a final observation, Jordan had joined in a MDA pledge fundraiser last month. Prior to his video, he had received $320 in pledges. Due to his notoriety, he now has received over $3300.
In conclusion, take heed to your anger. Remember Tommy Jordan. Remember Paul’s admonition to the Ephesians.
