The post he took down

One · What happened

The score, and the post that came down

Jenna Johnson danced a samba on the show’s first Super Bowl Night, IBTimes UK reported. Johnson, a professional dancer, had choreographed the routine for herself and her partner, Harry Shum Jr. Judge Carrie Ann Inaba called out a lift, which the outlet gave in her words as both feet off the floor at the same time with a partner’s help. Johnson was surprised by the call. She is married to Val Chmerkovskiy, also a professional dancer on the show.

TheWrap reported that Chmerkovskiy reshared the clip on TikTok and wrote under it “Put some respect on her name,” adding that the judge was “trippin’ talking to her like that.” In a TikTok story he wrote, “You almost saw Fresh Prince enter the ballroom last night.” TheWrap said People was the source of the second line. Many readers heard in it a reference to the slap at the 2022 Oscars, and he deleted the story, according to the reports.

Inaba had not seen the post herself, IBTimes UK reported. A Page Six story on Instagram brought it to her. She reposted the Page Six image, a side-by-side of Chmerkovskiy and Will Smith, and thanked Page Six and Entertainment Weekly for bringing the post to her attention. Her caption was a question about what people were doing now.

On 15 October Chmerkovskiy apologized, according to TheWrap’s report of the statement. He posted the statement to Instagram Stories, where he wrote, “I have reached out to Carrie Ann to apologize directly and personally.” He added that he wanted to apologize in public. He said he was in “a fortunate position to have a platform” and needed to pause and think before he posted. The reports quote no statement from ABC about the post.

Two · What it is doing

When someone marks down the person you love

“Put some respect on her name” was the first thing Chmerkovskiy wrote, under a clip of his wife being scored. A husband or a father can feel the heat in that sentence. Standing up for his wife was a good thing for him to want, and nothing in the reports says otherwise. Fathers and husbands who have watched a coach bench a daughter or a supervisor correct a wife in front of a room know how the reply gets built before the other person has finished talking. Proverbs 29:11 describes that minute for any reader who has lived it, “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

Page Six had put the dancer’s picture beside Will Smith’s. A reader who saw it had a second decision to make, about whether to enjoy a man’s embarrassment. Job counted gladness over an enemy among the sins he would answer for, “If I have rejoiced at the ruin of him who hated me, or exulted when evil overtook him” (Job 31:29). The verse places the sin in the heart, ahead of any forwarding. Gladness at a stranger’s trouble needs no audience to count.

“I will do better moving forward,” Chmerkovskiy wrote. A reader can settle in a single sentence whether an apology from a stranger is real or staged. Nobody outside the two households knows what passed in the direct contact the statement mentions, or how either of them has spent the days since. Whether the apology is real is a matter between Chmerkovskiy, Inaba and God.

Three · Where the ground is

The officer’s hand in the courtyard

On the night of his arrest Jesus stood before the high priest. One of the officers standing by struck him with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered, “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?” (John 18:22–23). Peter stood at a charcoal fire in the courtyard that night (John 18:18). The answer Jesus gave was a question, put to the man who had hit him in front of the other officers.

“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). Peter wrote that of Christ, to scattered Christians. Two verses on he says what the suffering was for. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). For a reader who trusts him, those sins include every reply he has sent in anger.

Paul told husbands in Ephesus, “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28). A man who feels a criticism of his wife in his own chest is feeling what Paul describes when he tells husbands to love their wives, and the letter never calls that feeling a fault. Not once. The next verse says a man “nourishes and cherishes” his own flesh, “just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:29). A husband’s work is the nourishing and the cherishing, and a line written to sting a judge does neither.

The order of the apology

Chmerkovskiy’s statement names the private apology first and the public one second. Jesus told a man at the altar who remembered a brother with something against him to leave the gift and go. “First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:24). The reports cannot say what was in his heart when he wrote the apology, or when he wrote the story. The order is on the record, and a reader can follow it.

The sentence nobody recorded

The line a reader regrets most may never have been posted anywhere. A kitchen table or a parked car held the sentence, spoken to a wife or a child, and nobody deleted it because nobody had recorded it. David wrote of a sin he had kept hidden, “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5). A pastor can sit with a believer on the way to the person he wronged.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Each of the five can be done from a keyboard or a kitchen table, with no word from ABC needed.

1. 01

   Type the reply, then delete it unsent.

   Pick the last time somebody marked down a person you love in front of other people. Write out the reply you wanted to send and read it through once. Delete it before it goes anywhere. Proverbs 12:18 says, “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Then send the person you love one plain line saying you saw what happened.

2. 02

   Ask the critic one honest question.

   A coach or a supervisor will mark down somebody you love before long. After the others have gone, ask him what the standard is. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Ask it face to face in a level voice and listen to the answer all the way through.

3. 03

   Go to the person before you go public.

   Call the person your line hurt before anything goes in writing. Jesus told the man at the altar to leave his gift and “first be reconciled to your brother” (Matthew 5:24). Take the matter to your pastor if the person will not answer, and ask him to sit down with you at church this week.

4. 04

   Leave the side-by-side unshared.

   A friend will send you a clip of somebody caught out. Leave it where it landed, with no reply to the friend and no forward to anybody else. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Pray by name for the person in the clip and for the person he hurt.

5. 05

   Ask your spouse what to do next time.

   Sit down with your spouse and ask what you should do the next time somebody marks your spouse down in public. Ask once and listen to the whole answer. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”