Faithful Wounds

saying hard things to people

The wise say…

Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools,
or you will become as foolish as they are.

Be sure to answer the foolish arguments of fools,
or they will become wise in their own estimation. (Pr 26:4-5)

It just doesn’t do to quote verse 4 without verse 5 or verse 5 without verse 4.

It’s the wise who recognize that life is mostly lived in the grey and not in the black and white. There are times when the only healthy response to a fool is to ignore their foolishness and not get sucked into their madness. But there are also times when the only healthy response to a fool is to confront their madness head on and call out their foolishness before they do irreparable harm to themselves or others.

Gregory the Great, before we discovered the purpose driven life and the certainties of church growth principles, literally wrote the book on pastoral care in the sixth century. Looking after the souls of people doesn’t always lead to the development of wisdom but it did for Gregory. Sharing his wisdom about the pastoral care of souls, he wrote to prospective shepherds things like this…

Let the ruler not relax the care of the inner life by preoccupying himself with external matters, nor should his solicitude for the inner life bring neglect of the external, lest, being engrossed with what is external, he be ruined inwardly, or being preoccupied with what concerns only his inner self, he does not bestow on his neighbours the necessary external care.

More than simply trying to convey the concept of balance, Gregory is offering something even more challenging: discernment. Sometimes you are in a season (or perhaps a moment) where you need to be seriously focused on your inner life – and sometimes life is to be found around you rather than in you and an inward focus will miss what God is up to. Discerning the moment you’re in is wisdom.

Bonhoeffer, in his big little book, Life Together, offers us some guidance that can seem contradictory until you’ve tried doing life together. In an either/or world, Bonhoeffer invites us to practice both/and – like the sayings of the wise and the guidance of Gregory the Great. In chapter four, Ministry, he gives us some golden advice on how to do Life Together well in the form of descriptions of the ministry we are called on to practice with one another. Here’s his list of our various ministries…

Holding One’s Tongue

Meekness

Listening

Helpfulness

Bearing

Proclaiming

and finally

Authority

On one hand, Bonhoeffer tells us, we need to bear with one another. He writes, “The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated.” And a minute later, under ‘Proclaiming’ he writes, “Where Christians live together the time must inevitably come when in some crisis one person will have to declare God’s Word and will to another.” Sometimes it’s a “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” but other days it’s “get your sh*t together, bruh.” Bonhoeffer says, “Reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin.” But he keeps insisting that the context of all of our confrontation has to be a history of not judging, empathetic listening, holding our tongue most times and thinking others are better than ourselves and so on. Essentially, we earn the right to reprove because of the sacrificial way we’ve put up with each other’s stuff and been there for each other along the way.

This is probably the spot where we say something about marriage and parenting and best friends.

The tricky bit is holding onto everything that comes before “Proclaiming” faithfully and living 95% of your time there so the last 5% feels like it’s coming from love.

I remember being on a church board with a man who lived at 99.5% “Proclaim.” He would often remind us, after saying something especially negative or hurtful, “I like to shoot from the hip!” Which, in his mind, absolved him from being what the rest of would describe as “being an asshole.”* Bonhoeffer writes, “The speaking of that Word is beset with infinite perils. If it is not accompanied by worthy listening, how can it really be the right word…If it is contradicted by one’s own lack of active helpfulness, how can it be a convincing and sincere word? If it issues, not from a spirit of bearing and forbearing, but from impatience and the desire to force its acceptance, how can it be the liberating and healing word?”

The wisdom I stole from my friend Paul is this, “No relationship can flourish in an atmosphere of disapproval.” When the primary vibe we feel from a person is that they mostly don’t care for us, our relationship will never be healthy or mutually beneficial. If all my wife ever told me were the things I do that irritate her or frustrate her (and it can be a long list) our relationship could not bear that kind of weight. But when she lives (and she does) in the other 99.5%, the hard things can sting, and I might need to go sit on the back porch alone for a little bit or go for a walk, still – I will receive them and they will make a difference in me for the better.

It’s equally unhealthy for us, when we have a good grasp on the other aspects, to be afraid to “Proclaim” at important moments. Bonhoeffer writes, “We speak to one another on the basis of the help we both need.” And, “Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship…” It’s not really about percentages or balance nearly as much as it is about discernment and your own character. If you find yourself delighting in saying hard things to people, it’s almost never the right time for you to say something that calls someone else out. If you never have time to listen or bear or be helpful in a person’s life, you should never find time to critique something they could do better.

But we can’t give in to the “paralysis of analysis” either and try to figure out if we’ve reached the proper percentages to tell a friend who is speaking to the wait staff in a harsh and condescending way that they’re being an ass.

I think most of our interactions with each other come down to our willingness to be in the moment and let love guide our conversations and shape our interactions with each other.

Years ago, in a time I wish I could go back to now, I had the youth group from our church on a retreat weekend at the camp we attended every summer. I was trying to build a fire with damp wood along with a friend, one of our youth leaders, and my son Nathan, still in elementary school, came over wanting to help us get the fire started. I don’t remember what my son did exactly but I do remember that I was feeling so much frustration trying to get the fire going with rain-soaked wood that I said something short, and severe. Then I sent him to find his mom to help her find wood with the youth group. Poor guy dropped his head and walked off in the direction of his mom. As I went back to the fire-starting, still frustrated, my friend said to me, “Wow. That was harsh.” I was gob smacked. That last person on the earth I would want to be harsh and hurtful with and there I was being an asshole to my own son. I saw it as quickly as that and stood, caught up with my son and apologized for being a jerk.

I’m grateful my friend didn’t stop to calculate percentages or preach a sermonette with scripture references to me but instead simply made an observation I couldn’t argue with. That was the love I needed in that moment.

One last thought. The thing that makes it all work in doing life together this way is being the kind of person who recognizes love when it’s offered and doesn’t confuse it with someone being an ass. And vice versa. We should accept someone being a jerk to us but we all desperately need people in our lives who tell us when our zipper is down, when we have stuff stuck in our teeth and when we’re being an asshole. As the wise say, “Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.” We just need the gift of discernment that comes with wisdom to tell the difference between sincere friends and kissy enemies.

*theological term.