Yesterday I quoted Saint Paul, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” I wrote that in connection with the tendency of too many bloggers to just write neither exactly the truth nor to write in love. And, that is a serious problem, as I pointed out.
Truthfully, part of the problem has already been pointed out multiple times in blogs and books. Our tendency is, all too often, to speak the truth with little love. That is why Saint Paul pointed it out all so long ago. Working with people has two components, one objective and one subjective. The objective one is truth. But, the subjective one is how that truth is communicated. Saint Paul spent an entire chapter (yes, I know that chapter numbers were not in the original) talking about how love is gentle, kind, and thinks of the other. We try to excuse ourselves by talking about tough love or essentially treating everyone as though they were a Pharisee who needed to be strongly corrected by us. But, frankly, that is seldom the case. We use the concept of upholding the truth as our excuse to slam someone.
And, that is what worries me. If you look at my post yesterday I mentioned about the tendency we have to deny–or at least not mention–the negative side of our group and to write about ourselves in a purely triumphalistic manner. Frankly, it does not bother me if someone logically and strongly supports their church and the theology in which they believe. Let’s have no little debate, just like in Acts 15. It is when we stretch the truth and write about it in an inappropriate manner that it bothers me.
And it bothers me because it is an exact mimic of what is happening right now in our culture. There is little doubt that everything from twisted versions of the truth to outright lies are being spoken by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Add to that the incredible judgmentalism for anyone on the other side of the aisle and we have a recipe that is driving our nation to what may be a horrendous conclusion. In a consistent fashion people in politics are minimizing to exonerating their own people of any “guilt”–no matter how obvious their infraction–and maximizing the infractions of other people and insisting on punishments that are draconian, at best.
And, the same is going on in way too many “Christian” blogs. The theological position about people with whom the blogger disagrees is all too often either misquoted or stretched beyond recognition. I have read blogs in which they point out some pastor’s fault–no not a “sin unto death,” a fault–and then proceed to argue that the pastor should be banned for life or must publicly make an apology. And, needless to say, the wording of the repentant statement must be exactly in the way in which the blogger specifies, just like our culture supposedly requires–at least according to our current crowd of political extremists. In passing, that is fairly far from Our Lord Jesus asking Saint Peter whether he loved him three times. Very little detail there!
And, here is the problem, besides just the rather obvious problem of neither speaking the truth nor speaking in love. If a secular person reads enough of our blogs, what conclusion would he/she draw other than there is no difference between us and any particular political extremist other than we use religious language? I realize that not all our blogs are that way. There are many very good blogs that are worth reading and avoid the tendency towards judgmentalism, stretching the truth, and misquoting other Christians. Unfortunately, enough of our blogs are that way that it strongly hurts our Christian witness.
As Saint Paul says, brethren it should not be so.
….issues of God ..salvation..doctrine..are highly charged emotional issues due to the finality of what the dire consequences of getting them wrong will be…this “pressure” in itself is enough to ratchet up the discourse to emphatic language..”im right/your wrong” …its hard to “feel the love” when your mad at someone..in A.A. we have a saying:”give others the right to be wrong”…now THAT takes alota Love…
Yes, and in AA one has to admit that there is a Supreme Being who knows more than you and cares for you. That certainly helps one to be able to give the others the right to be wrong since one has to not only admit one is wrong to even begin to progress in AA but also to admit that there is someone who is not wrong (Supreme Being).
So, all in AA begin on the common ground of being wrong on many issues in their lives. That is what Christians are supposed to do. We begin on the common ground that we are all sinners and none of us are righteous, uhm, except for those of us that never quite learned that lesson correctly.