Pity and Judgement

At the end of March I got the news that P's fiancée has ended their relationship and is moving out... about a month before their planned wedding.
Again, I have mixed feelings about this.
I can't help but think that it is the best thing for her, as she is still quite young and has the opportunity to have a full life with a younger man, children and all the rest of it. And I admire her courage, actually... It was always a rather large factor in their relationship that because P is old enough to be her father, any children they had would be roughly the same ages as his grandchildren. This would be, though not unheard-of in society at large, certainly strange and awkward for the rest of the family.
I also feel pity for P; however, it's mixed with that same tendency toward Schadenfreude mentioned in my last post. Common sense says he chose what he wanted, claiming he knew the risk; he paid a very high price for it, and has now lost his gamble. You make your bed and you lie in it. Tsk-tsk.

But I did live over three decades with this man and I find I can't be that callous. My own family of origin had its issues but was only "normally" dysfunctional. I have no personal experience of what it is like to be raised by a mother who had no nurture in her, who didn't want you and is afraid of all things male, yet got affirmation from her surroundings by having borne you (the only male child). Or to be the helpless victim of a father who raped you for years as a child, claiming this was how you "became a man", and when challenged later denied it had ever happened. All this and more clothed in an outward show of piety and religion which allowed no questioning and provided no escape.
What does such an upbringing do to a person?
What compartmentalization of heart and mind is essential to survive such a childhood?
How possible is it for a sensitive individual to even face those demons, let alone find freedom from them? (And don't give me that trite old "all things are possible in Christ" line. They may be possible but they very often do not happen. We live in the tension between the Now and the Not-Yet, and many things we wish were Now turn out to be Not-Yet.)

A and I are currently halfway through a very helpful book by Dr Gregory Boyd called "Repenting of Religion". In it he explores many of the questions that have nagged at us in the "package deal" we have been sold as "Christianity". His bottom line on judgement is (in an unfairly abbreviated condensation) that it is simply not our job. Judgement as we know it is part of the original sin of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, rather than from the tree of life. Jesus came to save the world and not to condemn it, and we are his followers.
Now, being a sheriff's daughter, I am waiting to see how Boyd distinguishes between "adjudging" a situation (in which we must be free to call something evil which is evil and see to it that there are consequences for that evil, in order to protect others from it) and "judging" the person involved as unworthy of our respect. I admit I have trouble respecting a person who deliberately harms others or who is so self-centered that they harm others without apparently thinking or caring about it. It is for me very difficult to "ascribe to that person inestimable worth" because of Jesus' dying on the cross for them just as much as he did for my own failings.
However, I fully admit that I'm a hypocrite in this, because I am able to still love and ascribe worth to myself when I've been an asshole; to see that act as the exception and not the rule; to know I am capable of better. If I really believed what Jesus did on the Cross, I would be able to transfer that to others without so much struggle.

But if there is one thing that is clear to me, it is that I do not have the information upon which to make an accurate judgement of another person. God is the only one with all the knowledge of DNA, family history, personal chemical imbalances, outside influences beyond their control, and all the other myriad factors which go into the process of a person expressing themselves through action (or the lack thereof). I can and do identify acts as good or evil (probably also inaccurately) and indeed, in order for there to be anything which could be considered a functional society, there must be recognition of such things. It's true that this life is set up so that to some degree we will always reap what we sow. This is built into the universe and it's senseless to fight it.
But when I go beyond that, as I so easily do, and say "Well, serves him right!" or gloat over someone's misfortune which I, in my supreme wisdom and impeccable insight, deem as having been brought about by himself, this is where I cross the line into judgement which was never intended for me. This only feeds death, both in myself and in the other person.

So I am in this place where I both pity P for what I have deemed his poor decisions, but am also genuinely sad about the authentic pain he is undeniably feeling. It doesn't matter who put the knife in, the cut hurts just the same. I don't know how capable P is of feeling others' pain-- it often seemed to me he simply could not grasp mine. But I know of myself that I have, through no fault of my own or credit to myself, better raw material built into me, a better internal infrastructure to deal with such things. It's just the roll of the dice, really.
I am sad for P at the same time that I hope this will be what helps him find the courage to examine how he got to this place. He sacrificed everything for what he wanted, and had it for 3-4 years. Now he doesn't have that any more, and has meanwhile lost most of what used to make up his life. Maybe in time this stark and uncomfortable reality will be enough of an impetus for him to examine why it was that he wanted those things in the first place, and find healing not only for this wound, but for the wounds which led to it.

In any case, the type of "closure" on my past marriage that I had thought would happen before I left Austria is no more. But in a way, this too is closure. If she left him now, she would have left him at some point anyway, and probably better before a marriage ceremony and possible children than afterward.
I'm moving on with my life and do not --yet!-- regret any decisions I have made. Part of me is sad that P can not be as happy as I now am. But part of me is glad that whatever happiness he does find in future has a better chance to be built upon reality than I believe this one was.