“Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.”
-1 Thessalonians 5:11
I wish this verse reminded me more of the Church.
Sadly, today the interactions of believers, especially in public and on social media, more often than not are focused on attacking others rather than encouraging them. They are about tearing down rather than building up.
Do not get me wrong; there are certainly times that we should confront injustice and abuse within the Church. But when we do, we should remember that we do so with the goal of building up and encouraging victims of injustice and abuse.
Confronting issues within the Church should not be about “building our brand” or stirring up controversy but about showing love to those whom the Church has failed to properly love.
If we, the Church, are characterized more by attacking what is wrong than cultivating what is good, maybe we should pause and reflect on our motivations.
This is something I struggle with.
There is a sappy version of Christianity that never looks at injustice and pretends everything is always rainbows and sunshine. There is also a cantankerous version of Christianity that always needs a fight. It may be a fight with “the world,” or it may be a fight with parts of the Church we take issue with, but there always seems to be a fight.
While the sappy and cantankerous versions of Christianity get more public and social media attention, we should be wary of both. Truly building each other up and encouraging one another does not ignore what is wrong, but it does avoid dwelling exclusively on what is wrong.
I think the key to all this is love. Defining love requires rigorous theological and philosophical work that I will not go into here, but there are three elements of love that I believe are important in this discussion. First, love is self-giving. It requires an emptying of ourselves, our pride, our insecurities. There is no true love that is focused primarily on self. Second, love seeks the good of others. It is not focused on what is good for us personally. Thirdly, love delights in the object or person loved. Delight is important and often missed.
We can’t love what we disdain or what we don’t care about. There is no generic love of humanity in a person who does not like people. I cannot claim to love someone I despise. I cannot encourage or build up those I am seeking to destroy.
I wish I could say, “as indeed you are doing.” I wish I could say, “as indeed I am doing.” I try to. But too often, I fail.
A Quote to Consider
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
-Flannery O’Connor
There are things that are true, but we wish weren’t. Part of maturity, spiritually and as a person, is aligning ourselves with what is true. In the ultimate sense, that means aligning ourselves with God, who is Truth.
It also means acknowledging what is really true whether or not we like it. It is true that I can become frustrated and speak in unloving ways to those whom I love. I wish that were not true. It puts a knot in my stomach to admit it. But it is true, nonetheless.
In our culture, it has become vogue to say, “my truth.” Many Christians really object to that. But there are clearly truths that are rooted in each of us subjectively. But not all truth is my truth. There are objective, even eternal truths that exist outside of ourselves. Those are the truths to which Flannery O’Connor is referring.
Sometimes we will not like those truths. I do not like that the history of the United States is a complex tapestry of freedom, oppression, liberation, hope, and so much more. I wish we had a clean, simple, heroic story. We don’t.
It is difficult for me to stomach that I have ancestors who owned slaves. I much prefer the part of my family story that is about fighting for Chicano civil rights. Yet, both are true.
Truth can be hard, but it can also be liberating. The ultimate Truth is God. The Logos of God is the Truth that Jesus proclaims will set us free. It, or rather, He, is the path, whether or not we are able to stomach it.
A Prayer
Lord,
Forgive me for the times I have been more eager to criticize than to encourage. Teach me to speak truth with humility, confront injustice with love, and delight in the good of others. Help me to build up rather than tear down, even when the truth is difficult.
Amen.
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