May Rush Limbaugh Reap What He Sowed

I don’t know if Rush was a good person. I don’t know his heart or his mind. I don’t know the actions he took in private, or his relationship with the Lord.

But I do know what he said in public. I know how he made his money. I know how he exploited pain for cheap laughs. How he weaponized anger and resentment. How he claimed to talk for people on one hand, yet pushed them to elect politicians and policies that hurt them on the other.

I do know the things he suffered with in life, and how he never publicly extended empathy to people who suffered the same way.

He was, in public, a hypocrite and a rabble rouser. He baited race and made bigots comfortable. His words were mysiginistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — and I’m sure I’m missing a few more.

Yet I don’t want to celebrate his death — spike the ball on his grave and spit on it. Because then I would be acting like him. I am not him.

I am better than his words and actions.

I am a Catholic who believes in a redemptive Lord. A Christian who believes God carries the sword of vengeance on my behalf. And while this does not mean I don’t fight my own battles — I am and I must — it does mean that I leave ultimate judgement up to the Lord.

Rush made hundreds of millions of dollars. In this life he was comfortable. Yet cancer humbles all. And no amount of money can placate that kind of pain.

Maybe in his last moments he saw his wrongs and made an earnest reputation of his acts. Maybe he asked for forgiveness. Maybe it was granted. I don’t know.

But I do know this: we can only judge him on what we saw. On what he did. On who he affected and their effect on people and policy.

So while I will not celebrate his death, even in jest, I will also not allow his multitudes of egregious acts to be washed clean. He should be remembered, as a public figure, for his public acts, not for what he may have been in private.

He had the platform to do good used it the most horrid, cynical, dispicable of ways. His charitable giving, no matter how generous, will not erase how he earned his money. This Is how I will remember him. This is how he — we — deserved to be remembered: not for who we could be, but who we were.

May he reap for eternity what the Lord saw him sow in totality.