January 07, 2010
We Need to Talk
In our family it’s never a good sign when you hear someone say, ‘Why don’t you sit down, we need to talk’. You know immediately that the conversation is either bad news, or else the discussion will be about a behavior that needs correction. It’s hard to be on the receiving end of a sit down talk, but harder yet if you are the one with the burden of correction. Paul often used the Epistles as a means to tell the churches ‘we need to talk’. I wonder how my congregation might react to a letter saying, “So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.” (2 Cor. 2:1 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I have always been a very private person. This has caused problems in my family, and it has caused me some amount of anxiety within the Lord’s body. But it has also caused neither without also supplying benefit to my family and comfort while amongst my brethren. God made every human to be individual as well as mutual. When people sit down to talk problems and solutions, individuality and mutuality must both be respected by all parties. My penchant to maintain my privacy arises from my lack of trust in others understanding and extending respect for individuality. And giving too much respect to individuality makes me reluctant to approach another person regarding his behavior. This has become a fault of our society.
-----But the Bible promotes respect for both. It is the individual whom Jesus desires to save, to know, and to grow. Otherwise church would be no more than a Marxist collective where the individual is meaningless and dispensable except for his utility to the mass, and the Lord its tyrant. That is not at all the dwelling place of the Lord pictured in Eph 2:21-22 into which each of us are built. I Corinthians 12:26 speaks straight to the significance of the individual within this structure - when one suffers all suffer, and when one is honored all are honored. Paul’s exhortations that we should each please our neighbor and look to one another’s interests also confirm it. His attitude toward the individual is that he should be concluded in his own mind about certain things, and there is some amount of his faith he may have to keep between himself and God (Rom 14:5 and 22). This is where it gets difficult. Since he also acknowledged that none of us see things clearly (I Cor 13:12), how can I, from my dim perceptions, clearly guide my neighbor, or how can he guide me? Yet the Bible calls us to outdo one another in showing honor and to submit to one another, attributes of mutuality.
-----None of us are perfect in our understanding of godly ways, therefore, neither are the standards and traditions of any group. I welcome a call to recognize standards and traditions because respecting them is not for their honor, but for the honor of those who hold to them. And this is the heart of God and His Word - right relationships between living beings. But I have failed to develop this same principle regarding my need to call another for a sit down about some behavior of his, unless it concerns a clearly stated Biblical imperative or a legal matter. So the propriety of calling one another onto the carpet is less about the propriety of rules and regulations, and more about the effectiveness of how we each respect, honor, and treat one another. In these the individual privately exists to draw from himself what truly benefits others, and in that is mutuality, which is love. So if I must address another person’s behavior, I find myself being reluctant to talk rules and regulations and spending more time talking about limited personal freedoms around others for the sake of their sensibilities. At the same time I feel like a confusing milk-toast. But I often wonder if Paul may have felt a bit that way too at II Cor 2:1 and Phil 3:14-16, “...I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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